Lucy McSweeney, the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario, joins this years list of individuals being recognized as Leaders to be Proud Of and champions of diversity by Out on Bay Street. Lucy received this year’s Professional Leadership Award.

Lucy McSweeney was appointed by the Ontario Government as the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario in 2010. The Office of the Children’s Lawyer is part of Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General and provides legal services on behalf of children under the age of 18. The Office is unique as it offers the most comprehensive government-funded legal service to children in the world. The . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was signed in Rome on November 1, 1950, by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, and came into force on September 3, 1953. The Convention was one of the first instruments to give effect and binding force to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If writing is hard — and it is — then legal writing is both easier and more difficult still. Easier, perhaps, because it is stylized: everything from briefs to judgments and legislation is carefully cropped of individuality and approximated to yesterday’s example — understandably, because “It’s not about you, writer” and it is about avoiding risk.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

More difficult, because, well, because life must break through from time to time if legal writers are not to fall on their quills or die of acute accidie. It’s far from easy to give . . . [more]

A recent survey from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) shows a disturbing trend that online surveillance often happens without transparent judicial oversight, and yet appears to be raising relatively little concern among the public. As a result, the CIRA, which is the organization that manages the .CA Internet domain, is calling for a national dialogue on online privacy.

We’ve referred to the matter of governments spying on citizens a number of times here on Slaw, particularly in relation to the feebleness of the “it’s only metadata” excuse. If you’d like more confirmation that metadata has the power to breach privacy in a serious way, have a look at the affidavit — the “declaration,” to be precise — by Princeton computer science prof, Edward W. Felten filed in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit. Professor Felten takes you through the process step by step, intending, of course, to educate the court about these technological matters.

There’s perhaps a natural . . . [more]

Lawyers routinely send demand letters to those who may offend a client’s rights in some way. The easiest, but often ineffective, way to do that is to fire off a missive citing every possible legal theory that is being breached, and threatening to bring down a reign of legal terror so intimidating that the recipient will quake in their boots and comply.

Sometimes that kind of letter is so over the top that it isn’t taken seriously. Especially in todays world of social media, it can actually backfire due to the Streisand effect.

So it is noteworthy when someone . . . [more]

Messiah. That is the name that last month, a Tennessee judge deemed was inappropriate for a seven-month old baby, holding that « it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that person is Jesus Christ ». The judge entered an order changing the boy’s name to Martin. Most legal commentators have since argued that this decision is more than likely to be reversed on appeal, primarily in light of the religious underpinnings of the judge’s decision, which raise First Amendment concerns (according to the New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union has offered to appeal . . . [more]

In the wake of the 150 illnesses at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) recently, you’d think the Cronut is a name that vendors would avoid like the staphylococcus aureus toxin plague.

From the outset the Cronut name has been closely protected by its inventors in Soho, New York. Dominique Ansel Bakery, which created the Cronut in May 2013, has provided legal notices to American bakeries selling products with the same name, and they were not pleased when Toronto’s Le Dolci Bakery and Epic Burger announced they would be selling their dish at the CNE.

But Dominique Ansel may have other . . . [more]

Matthew Butterick, whose book Typography for Lawyers we talked about back in 2008, has launched a new e-book, Butterick’s Practical Typography. Drawing heavily on his print book, this site takes you through the essentials of typography and importantly is itself a demonstration of good design and use of type in a web context.

The book is freely available, though Butterick has a number of suggestions as to how you might recompense him for his effort.

If you’re vaguely interested in how your documents appear to others — and which lawyer would not be? — but are hesitant to . . . [more]

It has been six years since I posted the article below and August 16th has come around the horn and landed on my Slaw posting day again. As described below Aug 16 is an auspicious day for a variety of reasons and because of that I felt that it was worthwhile to repost The King, the Babe and the Books, scheduled for reposting in 2019

August 16th is an auspicious day for any number of reasons, the death of the King and the death of Babe Ruth being just two. Whatever cosmic forces make August 16th such an auspicious . . . [more]

Data about individuals is very valuable. It can be used to discern trends, popular thought, individual buying habits, customer behaviour, do medical research, and many other things. But it is important that the collectors and users of that data use it in a privacy friendly manner.

One of the deflections by the NSA is that they don’t record conversations, just metadata about phone calls and other communication. Metadata means information about information, and can be just as personal and invasive as the data itself.

The Ontario Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, recently published a paper entitled A Primer on Metadata: Separating . . . [more]

The Uniform Law Conference of Canada is holding its 95th annual meeting in Victoria, BC. As noted last week, the ULCC has adopted more than 120 model or uniform acts to date. What’s the difference between the two forms?

As set out on the ULCC website, uniform acts (lois uniformes) are recommended for implementation by all relevant governments across Canada. For example, at the 2012 meeting, the ULCC adopted the Uniform Reviewable Transactions Act and the Uniform Trustee Act. In comparison, model laws (lois types) are put forward as a tool for harmonising laws . . . [more]