Solicitor-client privilege is the strongest privilege protected under law but at times lawyers’ honour it in the breach. In Canada, the Privilege has been elevated to constitutional or quasi-constitutional status in many circumstances. In fact, the Supreme Court has accorded the Privilege stronger protection than most Charter rights because it is not subject to the reasonable limits test of section 1. In the course of researching my book Solicitor-Client Privilege, I came to realize that in Canada the Privilege enjoys higher status and stronger judicial protection than in virtually any other country. That’s why I came to refer to . . . [more]

Twitter permits (nearly) anyone to broadcast their views on whatever is going on around them, whether a recent Supreme Court decision or the latest Taylor Swift album, as soon as the thought pops into their head.

For lawyers with an active Twitter presence (most of whom identify themselves as lawyers in their bios), the line between the personal and professional realm can be blurry. Tweets about cases and developments in the law are readily interspersed with tweets about the Blue Jays’ roster moves and the latest episode of The White Lotus. It’s easy to slip out of . . . [more]

Concerns for the wellbeing of older persons are rarely framed as human rights issues entrenched in age discrimination. This may now be changing after the shocking revelations of maltreatment and excess deaths of older persons in Canadian care homes in 2020.

The abuses exposed in 2020 were predictable consequences of Canada’s longstanding neglect of older persons’ fundamental rights. Decades of efforts by Canadian civil society organizations (CSOs) along with international CSOs, and UN human rights bodies may now be gaining traction in a drive for a United Nations (UN) treaty to spell out and guarantee the fundamental human rights of . . . [more]

Our U. S. midterm elections are almost over and it looks like things will be getting back to a new normal in Washington, DC. During this tense and contentious season my colleagues at the Law Library of Congress continued to publish excellent legal research information guides and other information.

On November 16^th they announced their Human Rights Day Lecture to be held on December 8^th. “This event will feature a panel discussion concerning two foundational legal documents, Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest.”

On November 7 they posted the November top tips In Custodia . . . [more]

When it comes to initial consultations for your firm. The ideal conversion rate for turning initial client consultations into clients is not 100%. It’s counterintuitive, I know. It seems like if a potential client shows up in your office who needs the kind of legal help you provide, that it is some kind of failure if they don’t hire you. It feels bad. Like you’ve been rejected.

That’s the wrong way of looking at it. It’s prioritizing an emotional frame over an analytical one. You’d think we, as lawyers, wouldn’t often prioritize emotions over analysis, but when it comes to . . . [more]

“I think it’s exciting. Marketing is exciting. Lawyers must embrace it.”
– Tom Curry, Managing Partner, Lenczner Slaght

For legal marketers, building strong, trusted relationships with partners and management is vital to a thriving career. If you’re lucky, you might even work at a firm with a savvy Managing Partner who understands the power of building a dynamic legal marketing function.

Tom Curry is the Managing Partner at my firm, Lenczner Slaght. When I first met Tom, I was immediately impressed by his knowledge and passion for marketing and business development. Tom is a legal marketer’s dream. He is . . . [more]

Patent applications are filed, work their way through the patent office, some are granted and after twenty years, they expire. How many patents are actually granted, and now many make it to expiry?

I tracked the 42,000 or so patent applications filed in Canada with a 2001 filing date. All of these patents expired by the end of 2021. Overall, about 43% of the original applications were granted, about 18,000. About 105 were involved in litigation in the Federal Court.

Only about 17% of the original patent applications were granted and still enforceable in 2021 when they expired. About 30% . . . [more]

From across the border, Canadians have been watching the fallout from recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court. In its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA (West Virginia), released this past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In this post, we examine the implications of the West Virginia decision: What are the effects of this decision during a global climate crisis? How does the U.S. Supreme Court decision compare to Canadian courts’ treatment of regulatory authority? And more importantly, how do we respond when a . . . [more]

Should judges make pop culture references in judicial decisions?

This column argues that they should not. As elaborated below, pop culture references risk being more obscuring than elucidating, more alienating than welcoming, and possibly soon out of date. While judges and lawyers may find pop culture references “fun”, the public isn’t well served by this practice.

For readers seeking a thorough overview of this topic, I recommend Michael Conklin’s recent article arguing that American judges should refrain from making pop culture references in their decisions. Many of the points I make here are shared by Conklin, and his article was . . . [more]

I wrote about the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent restatement of the open court principle in a column last year. In that column I suggested that the court had opened the door for more requests for closed hearings in its decision of Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25. Some courts have disagreed with this assessment and at least one court has agreed with it. What is clear from the recent caselaw is that courts are more focused on the evidence necessary to support confidentiality in what would otherwise be open proceedings. Speculation of harm to an important public . . . [more]

I have championed ways of increasing the public availability of research and scholarship in these Slaw columns for well over a decade under a variety of names, from open access to the catchy right to research (R2R). I picked up R2R, as I’ve noted, from the inspiring Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law in an initiative led by Sean Flynn. What I’ve now realized about R2R is that it can be read in two historically significant ways, with the difference between them neatly capturing what sets Prof Flynn’s and my current . . . [more]

Family lawyers cross-examining victims of intimate partner violence (“IPV”) gets little attention in legal ethics literature. To be sure, there is a considerable debate and body of scholarship focused on the conduct of lawyers acting in criminal sexual assault cases, much of which can be analogized to IPV. However, in the family law context there are usually multiple issues to be determined, including the well-being of a third party (i.e.: a child). There are serious problems in family law with abusive spouses self-representing to gain access to their former partner and directly questioning them about the abuse. But my concern . . . [more]