London’s Emerging Leaders organization just released survey results about attitudes of younger workers resulting from lack of employment opportunities. The unemployment rate amongst recent graduates is higher than the general unemployment rate, and I suspect many who are employed are under employed.
Are employers partly to blame for this? One of the problems cited by the Emerging Leaders executive director is the typical requirement of “3 to 5 years experience“. Employers surveyed ranked ambition and attitude ahead of qualifications as the top factor in hiring a candidate. But how would an employer ever know that a job candidate had . . . [more]
After a 20 year campaign by TV lobbyists, on 31 October the UK Court of Appeal welcomed cameras into their courtrooms.
Live transmissions will operate with a 70-second delay so that the judges can halt broadcasts if there is evidence that needs to be excluded for legal reasons or to screen out offensive language.
Proponents believe it will assist the public in understanding the way courts work and to see the way justice is delivered. Not all jurists are in favour: read the views of Helena Kennedy Q.C. here. . . . [more]
In Flander’s Fields
by John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow . . . [more]
Inspired by Simon’s Guy Fawkes day post and still being in the midst of budget season I thought it appropriate to think, and write, about what services should be blown up. Indulge me by thinking about the services within a law firm – my perspective is from the library department, but let this inspire your inner stop sign.
Reports clarify that “missing stop signs are considered an emergency and are immediately replaced”; by analogy, stopping a non-value adding service is a way to ease pressure on people with heavy workloads – an immediate solution.
Thinking about my law library it . . . [more]
Four hundred and eight years ago today the public in England learned that on the previous night the king’s men had foiled a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament with eighteen hundredweight of gunpowder that had been stashed in the basement and enhanced with timbers and iron bars. The target of the plot was the king and queen who were scheduled to attend a ceremony at the House of Lords on the 5th of November. In all, some thirteen men were arrested and the eight survivors were swiftly tried and executed. The event is commemorated in England as . . . [more]
According to an article in the Globe and Mail, newly appointed Justice Nadon “has been told” — presumably by the Chief Justice — to stay away, because of the pending challenge to his status.
The article quotes a letter by deputy registrar, Mary McFadyen, written at the behest of “the court” to the provincial and federal governments, making clear that:
. . . [more]As questions concerning the legality of Justice Nadon’s appointment are pending before the Court, it has adopted the following measures to ensure that justice is both done and is seen to be done in an independent and impartial manner: 1.
The chances of winning the Lotto 6/49 jackpot is about 1 in 13,983,816. The odds of a lawyer winning that jackpot are exponentially higher.
Don Worme of Semaganis Worme in Saskatoon hit the winning number on Aug. 31, 2013. He did not come forward as the winner until this past week, making sure his practice was in order first.
Worme won $14.7 million, the largest win in Saskatchewan. Worme has indicated he plans on making contributions to some charitable organizations, but has something else in mind as well. He plans on using the funds to “super-charging” his practice, which focuses . . . [more]
Once upon a time, Humpty Dumpty reminded Alice, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more or less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Readers of this blog, and others who follow Canadian politics and law, will know that there is some controversy surrounding the appointment, by the Prime Minister of Canada, . . . [more]
the (proclaimed by others) progenitor of the law and economics movement.
. . . [more]The appeal of the Coase theorem, and to lesser extent the “Theory of the Firm,” to legal scholars is somewhat puzzling. While many law professors resisted the impulse to explain the world in terms of implicit contracts and around alleged costs (the even more speculative reliance on alternative uses of factors of production has been, to my knowledge, ignored), more subscribed. This is odd. One might have thought that lawyers would viscerally sense the importance of history, of power, of institutional arrangements — of lots of things besides
Earlier this month here in Nova Scotia we undertook an exercise in democracy, the very foundation of our legal system. From a numbers perspective two very interesting numbers came out of that exercise. Firstly, the results of the election proved to be the first time in 130 years that a first term government in Nova Scotia was not returned to power. This is not a political blog so I’m not going to go into any depth on that point other than to say that something happening for the first time in 130 years sounds like a significant event but actually . . . [more]
This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada | Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada