Pronouns are currently a hot topic in the legal profession, following recent measures by Canadian courts to prevent the misgendering of courtroom participants. Directives in British Columbia now require lawyers and parties appearing before courts to proactively identify their titles and pronouns (see the directives of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the Court of Appeal, and the Provincial Court). Other Canadian courts have followed suit. For example, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario appellate courts encourage counsel and parties to share information about their titles and pronouns when introducing themselves in court.

Some object to these . . . [more]

I’m a strong supporter of stepped dispute resolution clauses in contracts. Business people want a chance to negotiate or mediate a solution to their problems before handing things over to lawyers for arbitration or litigation.

I often recommend stepped clauses to clients when we were negotiating technology contracts. And I still recommend them as a mediator and arbitrator.

But several speakers at the CanArb Week conference earlier this fall reminded us of some of the potential pitfalls of these clauses. And some recent court decisions have highlighted the risks.

One of the most serious is the risk of inadvertent (or . . . [more]

Written by Silvia Battaglia and Shannon Meikle, law students and NSRLP Research Assistants

The NSRLP receives a great deal of mail from our community, and every week we receive emails from people sharing their experiences as self-represented litigants (SRLs). Last year, we began receiving a lot of emails from SRLs who had requested accommodations in the legal process, needing courts to recognize and adapt to their cognitive disabilities (requesting, for example, more time to respond, frequent breaks in hearings, etc.). In a nutshell: they were not being accommodated. We read their stories with concern and became aware of the need . . . [more]

Just When You Thought You Had Perfected Your Cybersecurity Training for Law Firm Employees . . .

Time to think again. It’s no secret that cybercriminals have increased all kinds of phishing activity since the pandemic. More people utilizing consumer grade equipment in a less secure work-at-home environment creates a fertile ground for phishing attack victims.

According to a ZDNet report, phishing attacks are shifting to mobile devices. That’s not surprising since mobile devices are the primary computing technology for more than 50% of users. The goal of the attackers is to obtain usernames and passwords that could be used . . . [more]

A SLAW Commentary by: Richard Jochelson, David Ireland, Melanie Murchison, Tan Ciyilepe, and Silas Koulak

The Pandemic has posed a number of new challenges for law schools in Canada and we are faced with new questions which will need to be settled in the near future. Immediate issues include: what will the acceptable quantum of online course delivery be after the Pandemic according to the National Requirement set by the Canadian Federation of Law Societies; will student and administrative meetings continue to be held via videoconference; should support staff, students or Faculty commit to some form of . . . [more]

Disclaimer: I am required to teach legal citation to keen 1Ls that are learning about snails in bottles, individuals masturbating in windows, cannibalism at sea, and cricket games. I am never surprised that they do not find legal citation particularly exciting. However, unexciting does not mean unimportant. I understand and value proper citation and appreciate the efforts that McGill Law students and faculty have put into the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation since 1986. Please note that my comments address only the English content.

Slaw is no stranger to posts about the Canadian Guide . . . [more]

Access hesitancy is a widely acknowledged and persistent barrier to providing access to justice services. The people-centered approach that is integral to the Legal Health Check-up (LHC) can identify disadvantaged people with problems and provide them with help, in a manner that they will hopefully perceive as providing fair and just resolutions to the problems with which they are struggling. In that way, the LHC model offers a one good solution to the problem of access hesitancy.

The original Legal Heath Check-up project, carried out by Halton Community Legal Services (HCLS) began with the objective of recruiting community organizations . . . [more]

To address the growing problem of trade secret theft hurting Canadian businesses and innovators, the federal government needs to consider a major legislative reform to its existing IP laws. It is time to start thinking about passing a federal Canada Trade Secrets Act.

The idea of a legislative answer to the problem of trade secret theft in Canada is not new. The Alberta Law Reform Institute proposed model legislation in 1986. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada did the same in 1987. Although these early model laws were for adoption by the provinces, they could easily be . . . [more]

Based on a SLAW post I wrote in 2017, I was recently asked to speak at a conference for women lawyers on leadership. The article focussed on how to effectively lead practice groups and client teams. The date of the original article serves as evidence that I’ve been encouraging leadership skills development in lawyers for a long time, but it really began in the early 2000’s when I developed my initial processes for practice group management. Back then, I quickly realized that most of my training and support would need to be with the practice group leaders. They set the . . . [more]

Artificial intelligence is briskly transforming consequential decision-making, disrupting democratic institutions. Most recently, some 26 000 Dutch parents of immigrant background or members of cultural communities stood wrongfully accused of defrauding their government with disastrous consequences, including suicide. It later surfaced that the authorities had naively procured an algorithm to more efficiently detect the fraudulent obtention of child benefit subsidies. Unbeknownst to the AI deployers or its victims, the procured algorithm insidiously factored ethnic origin in its assessment, thereby effectively disproportionately singling out immigrants or those holding dual citizenship. Disturbingly, this occurred notwithstanding multiple stringent, time-honoured legal prohibitions on such practices . . . [more]

I wish to consider two copyright initiatives currently underway in Canada and the United States, as they bear on changes in intellectual property law, and hold lessons for my efforts to increase public access to research and scholarship. Researchers are identified as a concerned party in the Canadian instance, while the American example, if tangential to scholarly publishing, still raises questions about copyright today that only serve to encourage my own thinking about copyright reform.

On July 16th, 2021, the Government of Canada issued A Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things on . . . [more]

Librarians and information professionals often play a role in advocating for the open access (OA) to information. I consider myself one of those advocates and will discuss what I think that means.

My OA journey began in an academic environment with the open sharing of research and educational materials, and the enthusiastic promotion of Creative Commons (CC) licences. Later experience outside of an academic institution showed me that “open access” can be applied to all types of materials, incorporate different kinds of open licences while respecting copyright law, use intricate business models, and involve competing ideologies.

If we look back . . . [more]