In a recent episode of HBO’s Succession, billionaire daughter Shiv Roy learns that she can’t hire her preferred divorce lawyer because the lawyer is “conflicted out”. Surprised that her husband, Tom Wambsgans, would have chosen the same lawyer she wished to retain, Shiv inquires after a few other top New York divorce lawyers, only to discover they too were conflicted out. Shiv realizes Tom “met with or retained every useable lawyer in New York” to prevent them from representing her against him—a move her shrewd father pulled on her mother many years before. (“I got mommed,” Shiv later tells . . . [more]

A number of years ago, my boss told me he wanted to have a one on one meeting. He was leaving the organization shortly, and he had never done a one on one meeting with me except on my request, so I knew something was going down.

We sat in his office guest chairs, across from one another, as was his habit. He said he wanted to touch base before he left the organization, and then the meeting began. It turned out to be largely a recitation of my flaws and missteps as an employee over the years we worked . . . [more]

Canada’s Federal Court is the go-to forum for intellectual property litigation in Canada. While provincial superior courts have concurrent jurisdiction over infringement proceedings, for several reasons, rights owners often look to the Federal Court to start their proceedings and some recent announcements have reinforced this dominance of the Federal Court for intellectual property matters.

Legislative Background

The Patent Act, Trademarks Act and Copyright Act all include provisions granting concurrent jurisdiction to the Federal Court alongside the provincial superior courts. For example, section 54(1) of the Patent Act states that infringement may be brought in superior courts which is concurrent . . . [more]

The publisher Springer Nature is issuing books with such subtitles as A Machine-Generated Literature Overview, while ChatGPT is being credited as co-author on research papers published in Elsevier journals. Yet Springer Nature’s premier journal, Nature, declared in January, that papers generated by a large language model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, will not be accepted for publication: “An attribution of authorship,” states Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, “carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs.” This soon became part of Nature’s authorship policy. Then on March 16th, the U.S. Copyright Office launched . . . [more]

The U.S. Bar Exam is a high-stakes gamble for would-be lawyers, and a school’s pass rate is a rather high-stakes marker of a law school’s success in creating lawyers. In the next three or four years, the bar exam will be changing in most U.S. jurisdictions, and this creates a number of opportunities for innovation and opportunities for chaos.

Why is the exam changing? The National Conference of Bar Examiners puts it this way: “Set to debut in July 2026, the NextGen bar exam will test a broad range of foundational lawyering skills, utilizing a focused set of clearly identified . . . [more]

“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. … [The English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. …”

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

That v-Lex and Fastcase have merged, now called v-Lex Group, is an important and certainly interesting development for customers on both sides of the Atlantic and far beyond, continuing a process in which the two businesses have been steadily advancing through acquisition and consolidation. The deal, ironically, was announced within days of Thomson Reuters having sold, to an alternative asset management firm, a majority stake in one of its significant businesses aimed at legal markets.

Some might argue that neither v-Lex or Fastcase is young enough genuinely to be labelled “disrupter”, but both have built reputations . . . [more]

The Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan (FCAA) recently launched a new legal guided pathway and online dispute resolution platform to resolve consumer disputes. I had the privilege of working with the FCAA Consumer Protection Division team to develop the legal guided pathway portion of the project called Consumer Rights. This includes twelve dispute areas ranging from auctions to vehicle dealers.

The goal of the Consumer Rights pathway is to help consumers and businesses resolve issues in a fast, efficient and fair manner. It is an interactive pathway that takes the user through a series of questions and . . . [more]

This post was co-created by Kari Boyle and Matt Sims, with help from ChatGPT.

“How do we create value that is distinct from what machines can do faster and cheaper? The answers will shape our future.” Greg Satell, Note 1

The legal profession is experiencing a transformational shift, with AI and automation changing the way legal services are delivered. However, despite the advancements in technology, there are still essential aspects of the lawyer/client relationship that only a human lawyer can provide. In this article, we will discuss the unique value provided by lawyers and how lawyers can identify and build . . . [more]

Three months ago, I had never heard of ChatGPT. Now, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t find myself talking about it. How will it impact teaching? What about exams? And most importantly of all, how will it affect the practice of law and the work of the judiciary – for in the end, that’s what will determine the answers to the first two questions.

The locus classicus when it comes to the adoption of new innovations is a 1962 book by Everett Rogers, a professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, Diffusion of Innovations. In his . . . [more]

Recently, delegates from around the world visited xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations’ territory in Vancouver to attend the fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (“IMPAC5”). Three thousand attendees took part in the week-long event after it was postponed for over two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada is committed to protecting 30% of land and ocean by 2030 (known as “30 by 30”) – a goal reaffirmed through the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Agreement, which Canada signed in December 2022. Currently though, only about 14% of marine areas have been protected under Canadian law. To meet that goal . . . [more]

In “Open Access & Legal Scholarship” Revisited: Part I, Hannah revisited John Bolan’s “exceptions to the exception” of the lack of open access (OA) in law. She considered the success story of CanLII, commercial repositories, increased interdisciplinarity, and the access to justice movement. In part II we would like to consider some of the factors that have contributed positively to the growth of the “exceptions to the exception” but also note the challenges they raise for the future.

Many experts in the field have examined the broader trends in OA. For a comprehensive review on where Canada stands on . . . [more]