Rules that cry out for amendment. The need for simplicity and clarity. The desire to develop “innovative measures to ensure that the procedure in civil litigation is understandable by members of the public, the steps necessary to finalize a dispute are minimal and the cost of such procedure is reasonable.”

Those who watched the opening of the courts earlier this week would be forgiven for thinking that these are the words of Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz. In fact, they are taken from a report of the Civil Procedure Revision Committee authored almost half a century ago. In the last . . . [more]

A personal injury lawyer knows, perhaps better than most, of life’s fragility. I represented a woman who lost her baby boy in a car accident. When I met her at the hospital she was beyond distraught – not in the sense of becoming more and more frantic, but of a person who had entered another phase of life, a life lived in silent tragedy. She held a worn look, her wrinkled clothes betraying days of use, the smell of dried sweat and tears emanating so much sadness. As I held her hand, she recounted what had happened, second by second, . . . [more]

Not since the pandemic began have we seen a live legal tech conference with more than 3000 people onsite, the third largest ILTACON ever. There was no virtual option. So back they came in droves, clearly pumped up at the thought of seeing one another in person. There were also over 160 exhibitors, a good number of them first time exhibitors.

How Was This ILTACON Different?

Overwhelmingly, attendees were talking about the pandemic and how it forced law firm IT departments to support working from home and major changes to workflows. According to ILTA’s 2022 Technology Survey, cloud adoption was . . . [more]

Justice is fair when it is available to everyone. While everyone agrees that access to justice is important, our system struggles to meet this expectation. However, there are innovative projects underway that are having some success in meeting this daunting task. The Rural Mobile Law Van is one such innovative project that is successfully tackling the problem of identifying undiscovered legal need and bringing assistance to people who would otherwise not receive help with their legal problems. This goes beyond what the formal justice system can do. This project is contributing to a broader concept of what justice and access . . . [more]

I feel honoured to have had the chance to participate in commemorative events today at Parliament Hill and Lebreton Flats and to have shared that moment with family. I am grateful to the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation for their warm welcome on to their traditional, unceded territory. If you were not able to watch the events, please do via APTN National News.

While there are many moments from today’s solemn events that will stay with me; I was particularly struck watching a fifty-meter-long banner stroll past me adorned with forty-one hundred plus names of little ones who never made it home. . . . [more]

This post is for law firm leaders as well as for senior managers. My last submission to SLAW focussed on ensuring you don’t alienate your law firm with your decision process. This one focusses on another barrier to firm success: bullies.

Cutting my teeth as a law firm marketer, I was very aware of law firm bullies. Managers (like a Marketing Manager or Director but really, anyone in a senior but non-lawyer position in a law firm) have lots of responsibility and there are high-expectations for our ability to get things done. But we have very little power. This makes . . . [more]

I have spent the last five months moving out of Washington DC and back to Milwaukee WI. That’s where I met Simon Fodden many years ago. We later reconnected when he asked me to start blogging for SLAW. These transition moving months have been very chaotic both personally and nationally. The trauma of viewing the insurrection on January 6^th continues to linger. Watching the subsequent hearings of the United States Select Committee on the January 6^th Attack on the US Capitol has been riveting and eye opening. The videos are available on the Committee’s website. More hearings should . . . [more]

New academic year; new legal research tools. Something new always comes out right as another cohort of students is gearing up to begin their law degree. And, as with many new product launches these days, “artificial intelligence” is often a prominently displayed term with accompanying materials. As legal publishers continue to launch AI-driven research tools in Canada, what do students and other novice researchers need to know to be prepared for their first forays into legal research?

Lexis recently launched the latest version of their legal research platform, Lexis+ Canada, for Canadian law schools. It features significant updates that employ . . . [more]

This submission is part of a column swap with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) bimonthly member magazine, AALL Spectrum. Published six times a year, AALL Spectrum is designed to further professional development and education within the legal information industry. Slaw and the AALL Spectrum board have agreed to hand-select several columns each year as part of this exchange. 

When I was first asked to write an article on technology for the visually impaired and its role in legal research, I confess that a small part of me flinched inside. I wondered what I could say that would . . . [more]

The role of the United Nations (UN) human rights chief is under intense international scrutiny after the long-awaited release of a strong report on grave human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. On 8 September, a new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), Volker Türk, was appointed to assume the role after Ms. Bachelet’s four-year term ended at midnight on 31 August 2022.

The transition to the new High Commissioner offers an opportunity to reflect on what has been described as the UN’s toughest job, some even wondering if it is impossible. The High Commissioner is . . . [more]

Establishing patent infringement can be difficult at the best of times but when the technology alleged to infringe a patent is primarily software, there can be extra hurdles for the patent owner. Some recent court decisions reveal some of those challenges.

To prove infringement, a patentee has to show that the activities of the defendant fall within the scope of the claims of the asserted patent. Photos, and engineering drawings or even samples of the product can be used to prove the features of the product or process at issue.

When the patent relates to a particular a software implementation . . . [more]

In overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. the Supreme Court signaled a radical break with the history of the Court, executed in the name of an historicist “originalism.” David Cole, the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, noted in the New York Review of Books (August 18, 2022) that “never has the Court eliminated a constitutional right so central to the equality and autonomy of half the nation.” But then he also observes that “never has so much changed in a single year” for the . . . [more]