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The recent decision of Justice Fuerst in R v. Lippa has the controversy over the standing of paralegals raging again in Ontario. The decision relates to whether judicial officers have the discretion over which legal professionals will sit in the courtroom, and the order of cases which will be called.

In deciding that paralegals can be treated differently within the court system, Justice Fuerst made some interesting comments. She states at para. 18,

…s. 29 of the Law Society Act provides that every person who is licensed to practise law in Ontario as a barrister and solicitor is an

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Law librarians, law practitioners, and others interested in thoughts on the future of law practice will be interested in a provocative new piece by Jordan Furlong: The Future is Now: Eight Emerging Roles for Law Librarians. It appears in the July 2013 issue of Thomson Reuters’s Practice Innovations.

Jordan offers thoughts on new potential opportunities for law librarians and knowledge management professionals—often themselves librarians by training—in new law firm models that he foresees developing in response to multi-factored legal market disruptions. He suggests,

Starting now, law librarians and KM personnel have the opportunity to integrate themselves into the

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I got new lenses in my glasses this week. They’re called progressive, and I’m therefore trying my best to look at this sign of aging as a positive step forward.

As a first-time wearer of progressive lenses, I received a few helpful tips at the fitting:

• Point with your nose – in other words, look with your whole face, not just your eyes or your view will be distorted
• Keep your head vertically aligned or you’ll lose focus.
• Avoid the sidelong glance – you’ll be looking outside the field of focus
• When you look down, lower your chin so you

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Many lawyers entered the profession because of a desire to do good, to help people, to support the rule of law. That’s their motivation.

Once in the workplace, though, their primary incentive is the need to make a living. That space between motive and incentive can create some cognitive dissonance for those lawyers who can’t take on the cases they’d like to tackle, particularly if it’s a question of the would-be client’s inability to pay; or the fear that the return would not justify the investment of the lawyer’s time.

Richard Susskind, in a paper prepared for the CBA’s Legal . . . [more]

Around for more than thirty years and often mistakenly* called “listservs,” email lists were for a long time the most productive way for groups of people to argue and exchange ideas on the internet. We’ve touched on them on Slaw a number of times, particularly in the writings of Lyonette Louis-Jacques, the “queen” of law lists, her most recent contribution on the subject being A Few Good (Email) Lists. 

As Lyo says in that piece, we might imagine that this tired old format is “pretty much dead.” But in fact, she came up with a dozen or so email . . . [more]

The Ontario Bar Association’s Working Group on Lawyers and Real Estate has established a sub-committee to consider the work undertaken in the purchase of a condominium.

The Subcommittee is working on various documents to assist real estate lawyers and their purchasers in a resale condominium transaction and intend to consult with and obtain a broad range of comments and suggestions from Ontario lawyers.

They have released for review the first document, a Master Chart of items to be addressed. The Master Chart is meant to bring to purchasers’ mind the items of concern and whether or not their lawyer will . . . [more]

Are there rules in Canada about, or practical examples of, judges or tribunal adjudicators being ‘friends’ on Facebook or otherwise connected by social media with counsel or parties to a dispute before them? What should be done?

The American Bar Association has an ethics opinion that is summed up in this high-level principle:

A judge may participate in electronic social networking, but as with all social relationships and contacts, a judge must comply with relevant provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct and avoid any conduct that would undermine the judge’s independence, integrity, or impartiality, or create an appearance of

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Recently my friend and colleague (and fellow Slaw-yer) Joan Rataic-Lang and I spent five six weeks walking the historic pilgrimage route, the Camino Frances, which for us started in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France, and carried us through the Pyrenees and across northern Spain–a total of 780 km. We learned many personal lessons along the way, but surprisingly we also learned many things that apply to work. I thought it time to start sharing some of what I learned.

Most days we got up at 6 am and started our walk at 7 am. Ideally we would have some yoghurt . . . [more]

Though many of us lament the problem of incivility in the legal profession, there are some who easily concede it is a natural part of the adversarial nature of law. They may go even further, citing the competitive exclusion principle in evolutionary biology as an explanation for why such behaviour is actually a norm for society, generally.

Newer research by Martin A. Nowak of Harvard University may put those assumptions into question, and may even suggest that treating each other with civility and cooperating with one another is actually our “natural” instinct. For decades some theorists have explained this as . . . [more]

This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its fourth significant decision on conflicts of interest, the scope of duties of loyalty, and the appropriate division of responsibility between courts and law societies as regulators of professional conduct. It rejected arguments for liberalizing the so-called bright-line rule, but clarified its operation.

The case reopened the “bright-line rule” and the so-called “professional litigant exception, ” formulated by former Justice Ian Binnie in R. v. Neil, and re-affirmed in Strother v. 3464920 Canada Inc. It provides:

… a lawyer may not represent one client whose interests are directly adverse

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The Quebec Bar Association (the Barreau du Québec) is seeking the legal right to automatically suspend lawyers facing serious criminal charges in connection with the exercise of their profession. The barreau expects to draft a Bill in conjunction with Quebec’s Office of Professions for the government to introduce in the legislature in 2014. The move is a response to the events of May 9, 2013, which saw three lawyers arrested and charged by the anti-corruption unit. These lawyers are under investigation for professional misconduct by the Syndic of the Quebec Bar Association (the bar’s disciplinary board).

Effective July 1, 2013 and for a ten-year period ending June 30, 2023, the Retail Sales Tax in Manitoba increases from 7% to 8%.

The change was announced in the 2013 Provincial Budget and requires amendment to The Retail Sales Tax Act. Those amendments were introduced April 17, 2013 as part of Bill 20, The Manitoba Building and Renewal Funding and Fiscal Management Act. The Bill, which has proven controversial for the majority government, has passed Second Reading and is now in Committee stage.

The Transitional Rules relating to services provided by billable hour, such as legal and . . . [more]