On January 23, 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in the case of Hryniak v. Mauldin, in which it signaled a fundamental shift in the way that summary judgment motions are to be handled in the Province of Ontario.

A scheduling decision, released last week by Justice Brown of the Commercial List in Toronto, provides the first insight as to how summary judgment motions may be changing on a practical level.

Justice Brown noted, correctly, that it is conceivable that parties may end up having to make up to three appearances in connection with motions . . . [more]

One of the ideas that surfaced in the lively discussions at the OBA’s Civil Litigation program which I co-chaired last week, was the importance of “face time” between counsel, as a means of improving communication, reducing hostility and keeping lawyers focused on the efficient and economical resolution of disputes.

The view was expressed that counsel sometimes adopt a tone in emails that they would not use in person. Someone has described this as “courage from a distance”.

At the break I was introduced to a California practitioner in the audience who informed me that the rules of procedure in that . . . [more]

I suspect we will all be talking about Heenan Blaikie for a while, on Slaw and elsewhere.

Both Mitch and Gabriel have weighed in on this some more already, so I’d like to add here to my previous post on the subject and my brief interview with Drew Hasselback in the Legal Post.

Much of the commentary has tried to figure out what went “wrong.” Hasselback’s most recent article suggests that it was not strictly financial,

Just a month ago, things were looking good. Billings had hit a near-record $35-million for the month of December. And the full-year financial

. . . [more]

Listening to Roy Heenan give his spin on the demise of his law firm, I couldn’t help but hear the strains of Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend” in my head.

It will be some time before the full back story of this debacle will be known. But in my view, Heenan Blaikie died from a combination of greed, poor management and failed leadership wrapped together in an antiquated business structure ill-suited to “more for less” client demands in a marketplace gradually filling with non-traditional competitors.

As I have said repeatedly, the Canadian legal profession is now entering the . . . [more]

The national law firm of Heenan Blaikie is expected to make a huge announcement this week. We’re not quite sure what the details of the announcement it, but it will likely involve some form of restructuring, merger or dissolution of the firm.

Although we have several Slaw contributors who are this firm I expect they are unable to comment on this publicly. Yet it’s a big enough event that it will invariably lead to further discussions about the legal market in Toronto in years to come.

The rumours started on Thursday with the departure of several partners to other Bay . . . [more]

There are lots of ways to stop being a dinosaur – there’s no need to wait for the meteorite.

Corinne Mucilli made the point in the latest CBA Futures Twitterchat on the topic of new forms of lawyer employment for the emerging legal market.

Host Jordan Furlong of Stem Legal encouraged participants to discuss whether the dominance of “lawyer jobs” is coming to a close, and to provide examples of future lawyer employment before offering up this mind-blowing opinion: “As far as I know, there’s no richer potential resource for new lawyer employment than the latent legal market. Create a . . . [more]

Why is it still so common to see a panel predominantly made up of middle-aged white male lawyers on the dais at a legal conference or CPD session? I noted this again at a legal conference I attended last week. Of course, there were exceptions – the panel of women in corporate counsel positions and the Aboriginal law panel, for example – but shouldn’t a gender balanced, diverse panel of speakers now be the rule, rather than the exception?

These questions have been roiling about my mind since last fall, when I read the numerous, thoughtful comments to my Slaw . . . [more]

Always nice to see comments from blog readers. They are the voice at the other end of the telephone line, the question from the Bench. They reassure you that you are not talking to yourself.

Even if the comment you elicit is only that you are being “tiresome”, as my post did last week, at least someone has gone to the trouble of putting fingers to key board.

My posts are not really “rants against mediation” but rants in support of the preservation of affordable judicial ajudication, as an option.

I stress the word “option”. I am not calling for . . . [more]

Spending time at a law school allowed me to see something very disturbing; law students are actively and deliberately told by law schools to expunge all social media activity.

The clear message to students is: Do Not Have Any Web-Presence Whatsoever.

Given this message, it’s no wonder that most Canadian lawyers view social media with fear and take no part in it. It also explains the shocked looks when I asked my class to create Twitter and LinkedIn accounts – then use them for class participation. Oh the horror!

Imagine if I had asked them to create blogs!

In my . . . [more]

Access to justice is a quasi-constitutional right in Quebec where the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms guarantees “a full and equal, public and fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” However, numerous stakeholders, including many in the legal community share a growing concern that access to justice is increasingly posing challenges to those who need it, and obstacles such as time, expense and representation stand in the way of securing this right for all Quebec citizens.

The legal profession is about to start shrinking. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the United States, anyway, where law firms continue to downsize associates and even partners, and where both law school application and first-year enrollment levels are lower than they’ve been since the 1970s. Canada hasn’t yet experienced such drastic outcomes, but the rising number of graduating law students who can’t find articling positions should be considered a warning alarm of similar trouble.

There’s reason to believe that the total size of the legal profession is shortly going to plateau, and perhaps even reverse. Why? Because work . . . [more]

I’m again teaching at the University of Ottawa Law School during its unique January term in which students take one course for three hours per day. We discuss how the practice of law is irreversably transforming and how they’re going into the worse articling market in history with a pilot LPP program that is being set up for failure by Benchers who delayed the LPP decision far too long.

Layer on top of that, technology that reduces the number of lawyers needed for certain tasks, the conflict between hours targets and the “do more for less” challenge, alternative legal providers, . . . [more]