If ideas and discussion about access to justice in Canada interest you, consider setting aside your next fifteen-minute break (or 13:35 of it) to hear a good presentation. Andrew Pilliar,a PhD student at UBC Law, recently delivered a TEDx talk on “why you should care about access to justice.” Andrew addresses the widespread unaffordability of legal services—including for people who would not qualify for legal aid but whose circumstances might turn dire were we to find ourselves in need of legal help.

He directs the talk to the general public, to the profession, and also specifically to law . . . [more]

Nearly 30 legal professionals – and who knows how many lurkers – participated in Tuesday night’s Twitterchat about legal technology and access to justice.

What if it were this easy, wondered Casey Hall from Thomson Reuters Legal, to pool time to answer those in need?

That strikes straight to the heart of the access to justice conundrum: everyone has lots of ideas about what the basic problems are and what could be done to fix them, but there appears to be more eagerness to discuss the issue than to deal with it.

That there are areas of overlap in the . . . [more]

Quebec’s Charbonneau commission into corruption in the construction industry has revealed numerous failings in the province’s regulatory regime, which the government is attempting to address with new laws. For instance, professional regulatory bodies have found they have little or no power to discipline members (e.g., engineers, lawyers) who have been charged with or have confessed to corruption in relation to construction projects in Quebec. These regulatory bodies have to wait until a disciplinary board (syndic) investigates and the disciplinary committee decides the individuals should be punished

Following release of the October 17, 2013 Hearing Panel decision in the prosecution of Torys LLP lawyers Elizabeth DeMerchant and Darren Sukonick, I raised the question here of why the Law Society continued with the prosecution for as long as it did. Those views were based on information contained in the reasons of the Hearing Panel. Now that the parties have exchanged cost submissions, a fuller review of the evidence is available.

In their lengthy submission, Philip Campbell and Ian Smith, counsel for Ms. DeMerchant and Mr. Sukonick, take the position that the Law Society should pay much of the . . . [more]

For those of you who have colleagues who do any estate or trust litigation in Toronto, the estate court has essentially been merged with the commercial list effective November 18. Unfortunately, no formal communication about this has been made and it does not appear that any such communication will be forthcoming.

The court must assume that everyone who should know, will know.

There are different forms, procedures and timelines to follow now. Also, all estate matters will now be heard at 330 University (and not 393 University). Adjust your schedules.

The executive committee of the OBA’s Trusts and Estates . . . [more]

On November 18, 2013, the Toronto Motions Scheduling Unit circulated an email with details of a new scheduling policy. The contents of that message are as follows:

Please make note of the following important new information for the Motions & Scheduling Unit:

• As of November 18, 2013, any date requisitioned for a motion will be vacated if the notice of motion is not filed with payment for the motion within 10 days after the motion has been scheduled.
• As of November 18, 2013, the motions scheduling office will only permit one consent adjournment and any further adjournment requests must be

. . . [more]

The release of five class action decisions penned by Ontario Superior Court Justice Belobaba earlier this month has garnered significant attention in the press and in the profession, and has reignited a debate about cost shifting in class actions. In virtually identical language in Brown v. Canada (Attorney General), Sankar v. Bell Mobility, Crisante v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Dugal v. Manulife and Rosen v. BMO Nesbitt Burns, Justice Belobaba excoriated class action lawyers for over-lawyering certification motions, unnecessarily lengthening the proceedings and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and disbursements. The result, he bemoans, . . . [more]

1. The Conceptual Foundation for the Use of Electronic Records

The concepts and arguments developed below have been facilitated by what I have learned from experts in electronic records management. The following three analogies should be the foundation concepts for all that is written and said about the discovery and admissibility of electronic records:

1. An electronic record (an e-record) is merely an electronic impression upon an electronic storage device, which is but a part of an electronic records management system (an ERMS). An e-record in its ERMS, is like a drop of water in a pool of water. Like . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada has just now announced that Ryerson University and the University of Ottawa will provide the Society’s “Law Practice Program” of training for graduate JDs who choose not to, or are unable to, article. Ottawa will provide it in French and Ryerson in English. Unlike the University of Ottawa, Ryerson University has no law school.

As well, Ontario’s newest law school at Lakehead University will offer yet another alternative to articling, within its current JD program:

Additionally, the Law Society has approved another innovative option for fulfilling the experiential training component of its licensing requirements:

. . . [more]

“It’s hard to take law and technology seriously when they still have a typewriter at the courthouse – and a pen remains the judge’s weapon of choice.”

That statement from Ottawa lawyer Bryan Delaney neatly sums up the paradox faced when talk turns to incorporating new technology into legal services – some may be riding technology’s cutting edge, but other parts of the profession are still tootling around in granddad’s jalopy.

Tuesday night’s CBA Legal Futures Twitterchat, hosted by My Legal Briefcase founder Monica Goyal, featured participants representing a full range of practitioners, from traditional to tech-based. There seemed to . . . [more]

Legal Futures this week posted on the results of the third annual survey of what clients want from their legal service provider, conducted by legal technology service provider Peppermint Technology in the United Kingdom.

The post included two points that caught my eye. First, the survey found that clients are concerned about whether their legal advisor is able to provide online accessibility:

“There is now a significant body of businesspeople for whom online access has become a necessity of their working life,” the report said. “If their legal advisers are not perceived to be up to speed with this development,

. . . [more]

Richard Susskind’s popular book “The End of Lawyers” highlights a future where disruptive technological change and increased commoditization of legal services fundamentally changes the practice of law. Susskind and others have written on the power of automation, of computers not just changing the way we practice law, but possibly bypassing lawyers completely.

As algorithms take over an increasing amount of the investment market, and surgeons rely more on the precision of robots, what is to stop computers from taking over the practice of law?

There are examples of this sort of automation already occurring in Canada, with companies like Diligence . . . [more]