The Criminal Law Series from Emond Publishing has won the 2018 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing. The series is a collection of practical, accessible and affordable handbooks to assist criminal practitioners, judges and students.

The winner was announced yesterday at a reception held at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) being held in Halifax. The Award is handed out annually by CALL.

It is meant to honour publishers who have produced excellent products and to encourage excellence in new publishing endeavours.

Other nominees for this year’s Award were:

• Alberta Law Review

The Ontario government is updating the accessible employment standards to make employment more accessible to people with disabilities. Consequently, the Employment Standards Development Committee would like to get interested stakeholders and the public’s feedback on the initial recommendations to the 2018 Review of the Employment Standards under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

The following is the Employment Standards Development Committee’s initial advice and recommendations on the initial proposed Employment Standards, itemized and organized by focus area, and some thoughts. . . . [more]

It has been a long term goal for us to have a substantial collection of legal commentary on CanLII, so we are thrilled to be able to tell you about an expansion of CanLII’s secondary sources section to include law reviews.

Law reviews are often the only place a particular topic is discussed, and they often provide insight into the law for a particular jurisdiction where no one else does that make them invaluable for research.

In addition to being able to navigate within the commentary section by law review and issue, results from law review issues will appear in . . . [more]

Starting tomorrow, the Supreme Court of Canada will publish Cases in Brief on the Court website, and on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. These are short, plain-language summaries of Supreme Court decisions.

The first such Case in Brief will be made available tomorrow at noon in the case of Carson v. The Queen.

In a statement released today to Court staff, Chief Justice Richard Wagner writes:

“We’re doing this because we want to be more transparent and accessible to Canadians—but we’re also doing it because we must. The reality is that there are fewer journalists covering the Court than

The 2017 Ontario Accessibility Compliance and Enforcement Report is now available online and outlines the activities undertaken by the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in 2017 to oversee compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and its accessibility standards.

The report explains the results of the December 31st compliance reporting obligations of obligated organizations, and the various audits and inspections conducted by the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in 2017. Overall, the report clearly indicates that there is a lot of enforcement work still needing to be done for Ontario to reach the goal of becoming an accessible province . . . [more]

Blockchain removes intermediaries from transactions. For the most part that’s a good thing – but it can also have unintended consequences. For example, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin flow between people much like paper money would be handed over. No financial institution is involved in the transaction. The same is true for other assets being tracked by blockchain technology, such as corporate shares.

When someone dies or becomes incapacitated, trustees or attorneys typically get control of that person’s assets through the intermediary. For example, if a trustee knows that the person has a bank account at bank X, they merely contact the . . . [more]

Students of the UVic Environmental Law Club contribute the following guest post. They discuss their initiative to conduct an all-day legal research event, putting their learning of the legislative research process toward a public interest effort. The event was inspired by a national student-driven research event on another issue a year ago. We thank Slaw’s Kim Nayyer for coordinating this submission.

Friday February 2, 2018, the UVic Environmental Law Club coordinated a full day research-o-thon involving more than 50 law students from UVic. The event: “Mining Law in BC – Digging up a Dirty History” focused on the history of . . . [more]

It seems to me that Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench is increasing its reliance on endorsements. These do not appear to be published on CanLII or any other case law database. For instance, in JAP v MJP, 2018 MBQB 1, an endorsement issued by Rivoalen A.C.J. is referenced in para. 4, and in DW v Peguis CFS, 2016 MBQB 32, an unreported endorsement by Dueck J. is referred to in para. 34. Perhaps, at least in summary judgment matters, this is a response to the comments of the Manitoba Court of Appeal in Hyczkewycz v Hupe, 2016 . . . [more]

Over the winter break, I was able to catch up on many podcasts gathering cyberdust on my iPhone’s chips. With 2018 upon us, this may be a good time to review some of my favourite commuting companions and feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments below. In no particular order…

The Docket

Listening to Michael Spratt@mspratt and Emilie Taman @EmilieTaman chat about Canadian legal issues, their family and anything else that catches their attention is just like pulling up a chair into their family room. The tone is casual. The topics are timely and the banter . . . [more]

A reader in search of a new book could be forgiven for taking a pass on The Mighty Hughes. After all, what could be interesting about the life and times of a saint who was neither mutilated nor martyred?

Such a reader should think again.

The story of the life of Ted Hughes QC, OC is a tale of aggressive virtue. His pursuit of honest outcomes and dishonourable individuals has brought him respect and fame throughout Canada. In the pages of Craig McInnes’s biography, Hughes is depicted as a heroic figure who has, at times, brandished the sword of . . . [more]

The publishers in the legal industry often get a bad rap, either for their lack or insufficient level of innovation, the cost of the services they provide, or the reluctance to transition entirely to digital.

We gave the publishers an opportunity to weigh in on these issues at the Ontario Bar Association’s TECHxpo 2017, where Colin Lachance, CEO of Compass (formerly Maritime LawBook), Eric Wai, a Managing Director at LexisNexis Canada Inc., and Fred Glady, Vice President of Customer Segments at Thomson Reuters, joined us.

The first myth we dispelled was that print was dead in the legal industry. . . . [more]

Great post by John Sheridan over on VoxPopuli blog: “Deeply Intertwingled Laws.”

He starts off with this comment:

“There is no other form of written texts quite like legislation, nor a form so suited to the web. In retrospect, readers of legislation had been waiting a long time for a hypertext system, such as the web, to be invented.”

Sheridan is currently the Digital Director for the National Archives of the United Kingdom and led the team that brought us legislation.gov.uk the “official home” for UK legislation from 1237 the present.

Anyone who has done any legislative history . . . [more]