Hidden by the furore over Facebook’s privacy policy changes this week, an interesting little story about Facebook relationships between judges and lawyers popped up this week.

Florida’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee came out with a guideline on whether judges can “friend” lawyers who are appearing in cases before them. According to the Committee, it isn’t permissible since it creates the impression that the “friended” lawyer is in a position to influence the judge.

Of course, most people’s facebook friend list is comprised mostly of people who you’ve barely spoken with recently, never mind having any influence over. Luckily, judges can . . . [more]

[A post for Ontario lawyers only.]

We have received various questions and comments on the enhanced coverage for counterfeit certified cheques and bank drafts that we are providing under the 2010 LAWPRO insurance program and policy. To respond to those questions and comments, we’ve prepared an extensive list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that help explain this new enhanced coverage>, and also to provide some tips and guidance on how to make the coverage requirements work in your law practice.

These FAQs should help answer your questions as some recent media coverage about this new enhanced fraud coverage was not . . . [more]

Lawyers Rights Watch Canada (LRWC), an organization that assists lawyers around the world who themselves defend human rights, has published a “Protesters’ Guide to the Law of Civil Disobedience in British Columbia – Olympic Edition” [PDF].

The forty-three-page guide is anything but a sketchy pamphlet for marchers on the front line; it’s a serious, accessible, and well-written handbook. Produced by Leo McGrady originally in 1970 in connection with protests against the Vietnam war, according to a story in the Globe and Mail, and updated a number of times since then, it aims to

. . . inform

“[T]his regrettable result is a necessary consequence of Canada’s commitment to policies of international comity and reciprocity. Any time sovereign immunity is asserted, the inevitable result is that certain domestic parties will be left without legal recourse. This is a policy choice implicit in the Act itself.”

Re Canada Labour Code, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 50 at 91, per La Forest J.

Last week, in a Montreal courtroom, Justice La Forest’s observation was put to the test. For the past three and a half years, Stephan Hashemi, the son of the late Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, has been seeking to . . . [more]

I was surprised to read in a recent piece in the Times Online that in the UK lawyers are eligible for jury duty. The author, a senior commercial solicitor, gives an interesting picture of how it feels to be a juror in a criminal trial, complaining that much of the explanation given to jurors about their duty is “pitched at a primary school audience.”

If you imagine a class of seven-year-olds being told about an operating theatre (“here are some big knives, and this is where the man called a ‘surgeon’ cuts the patient, then after that they sew him

While we have been receiving great feedback on the various articles on social media in the latest issue of LawPRO Magazine, the surprise front-runner for most popular article in this issue has had over 300 downloads in the first four days – Yvonne Diedrick’s article on the Apology Act, 2009. Perhaps not a real surprise as many Ontario lawyers I have talked to are not familiar with this new legislation.

The Apology Act came into force in Ontario on April 23, 2009. It allows the communication of expressions of sorrow or regret without worrying that the comments can . . . [more]

While some lawyers are very tuned into social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, many have yet to realize the communications potential of these tools. The newest issue of LawPRO Magazine aims to change this.

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

• Social Media: Why? An overview of how social media are changing the legal landscape;
• Social Media: What? A guide through the many social media available PLUS inteviews with five lawyers who walk the social media talk;
• Social Media: How? A primer on social media as marketing and networking tools in law practice; and
• Social media pitfalls to

I’ve joked previously that the Google crowdsource traffic feature was a free ambulance chaser application.

A British firm has developed a iPhone application specifically intended to document all the details necessary for future litigation, the iPhone Car Incident Assistant application (iCIA). The Times Online reports:

It appears ambulance chasing has gone digital after Bott & Company, a law firm in Manchester that specialises in personal injury claims, has developed an application for the iPhone that prompts people involved in an accident to record insurance and witness details, take multiple photographs, store GPS information and click through to a

The Wall Street Journal reports today:

Thomson Reuters Corp. (TRI) said Thursday it will cut 240 jobs in its legal businesses, with layoffs focused on locations in North America.

The company employs about 13,000 people worldwide in its businesses providing data to legal professionals. That represents about a quarter of Thomson Reuters’ 53,000 global workforce. In 2008, its legal divisions, which include West, FindLaw, Elite, Carswell and its legal publishing unit, represented roughly $3.5 billion in revenue.

The legal business is part of the financial data and news provider’s professional division, which sells information to professionals in health care, science . . . [more]

Almost every day lawyers send me copies of emails they have received that attempt to dupe them into acting on a matter involving a bad cheque or bank draft. Some of these messages are clearly attempts at fraud; others can look very legitimate. We have seen some one in which a lawyer is contacted and asked to refer the matter to another lawyer, presumably to fool the lawyer getting the referral.

Thankfully, most lawyers seem to recognize when they are being targeted. But we are still seeing some lawyers that are getting fooled – including one just this week on . . . [more]

Since one doesn’t often get a chance to hear Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin being interviewed candidly and directly, here is a link to a video of last night’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin entitled Setting the bar high: Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin on her role as Canada’s top judge.

Among other minor indiscretions, she appears to like the Ottawa Senators: toujours rouge.

We’ve come a long way since Felsky’s, “The Berger Affair and the Independence of the Judiciary” (1984), 42. U.T. Fac. L. Rev. 118, which showed Chief Justice Laskin so anxious to protect the . . . [more]

In late October, Master Ronna Brott of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued a highly pointed decision that encapsulates Canadian courts’ unwillingness to entertain spoliation disputes before trial and, to some extent, to tolerate the increasingly common problem of lost records and things.

In Cerkownyk v. Ontario Place, Master Brott denied a request for production of a personal computer that a plaintiff in a personal injury claim said she had thrown out because it had broken down after litigation commenced. In dismissing the motion, Master Brott admonished the defendant for proceeding with its production request despite the plaintiff’s . . . [more]