On my recent trip to London, England, it was arranged for me to be part of a panel discussion at Middle Temple Hall, one of the oldest legal buildings in London. Indeed, the room in which I spoke (Parliament Chamber) hosted the very first performance of Twelfth Night in 1602. By way of background, Middle Temple is one of four Inns of Court in London that are able to call men and women to the Bar.

So there I was, at the beating old heart of the common law, criticizing the current model of legal services delivery; suggesting that it . . . [more]

Close on the heels of the e-filing changes in B.C., Ontario has released a new Practice Direction effective November 2, 2012 for the filing of electronic documents in civil appeals and judicial reviews in Divisional Court.

The initial release of the Practice Direction is available through the Ontario Bar Association (OBA). Although signed on October 3, 2012, it is still not listed on the Practice Direction website.

 

  . . . [more]

The Articling Task Force reported this morning.

The Executive Summary reads: . . . [more]

The B.C. Court of Appeal formally launched its e-Filing program today. The Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Provincial Court of British Columbia have offered e-filing since June 2007, bringing today’s move up to all three levels of court in the province.

Chief Justice Lance Finch stated in the Press Release:

Court of Appeal e-filing expands access to the court for litigants outside B.C.’s major urban centres by allowing parties to file documents without attending at the court. When a document is e-filed, it also becomes instantaneously available to litigants and the public through the electronic registry, Court . . . [more]

“…being in accordance with the actual state or conditions; conforming to reality or fact…real; genuine; authentic; being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something.”

I was in court last week and obtained an order that transferred real property from the registered owner to my client as an equitable remedy based on a constructive trust. There was some urgency: the property was uninsured and there was a perceived danger of other pending judgments against the legal owner which might be registered against the property.

Recognizing this, the judge wrote out a judgment by hand (about half a page of . . . [more]

Juice Rap News delivers detailed, imaginative commentary on the issue of warrantless internet surveillance in rap. It is quite hilarious, trenchant, and intelligible (and it features George Orwell). It comes from Australia.

The single solution The Juice offers (use Tor), may be augmented by the recently assembled free online text CryptoParty Handbook. According to BoingBoing, a Crypto Party is like a tupperware party, but “for people who want to teach their neighbors how to use cryptography to protect themselves from snoopers, especially broad government surveillance.”

However, the project is open source, and considering its subject, is . . . [more]

If I had any doubt that the UK was the absolute undisputed centre of legal innovation, the past 5 days I’ve spent in London have certainly laid that to rest.

Earlier this week I came across Nigel Spencer, Director of Learning and Development – EME for Reed Smith. Nigel is constantly re-thinking the trainee model (for Canadians read: articling model) and other professional development opportunities for the firm. Fortunately, he has the freedom and support of firm management to do some truly exciting things. Thanks to Maeve Jackson for the introduction!

In particular, he has a strong desire to ensure . . . [more]

Work to reform the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct of Quebec lawyers is underway. A preliminary draft is currently being distributed to members of the Quebec Bar Association for comments by October 27, 2012.

UK online newspapers and blogs are buzzing with the proposal outlined by George Osborne, a British Conservative politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Tory conference yesterday: in exchange for shares given by their employer, newly hired employees would have to give up certain employment rights (see here for The Guardian article). Under this program, employees would be able to waive certain rights with regard to unfair dismissal, redundancy, flexible work time and receive rights of ownership. This employment-ownership scheme would see a large deregulation of the labour market and encourage start-up companies that are concerned with all the . . . [more]

In my last post I talked about a case in which Justice Brown noted that the Ontario Court system “lacks modern administrative infrastructure including, for example, proper electronic case management and document filing technologies.”

This week a friend of mine directed me to this interesting link about the state of the internet which got me to thinking, just how technologically archaic is our legal system?

Although (dare I say) most lawyers communicate by e-mail, you can only serve court documents via e-mail on counsel (you can’t serve self-represented parties) and this requires counsel to send back an acceptance of service. . . . [more]

I was reading at a fairly innocuous post on Lawyers.com today, titled “The Advantages of Selling Your Own Home“, and noted the DIY nature of the topic. The coverage was fair; comparing the pluses and minuses of selling your own home, and few would likely find it controversial. I can see how many realtors would even tolerate it, as it describes a small section of the marketplace; and the numbers don’t lie — few people clearly have the time or savvy to sell their own home.

However, I would say this: if this was my site, I wouldn’t . . . [more]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of addressing the annual gathering of the Federation of Law Reform Agencies of Canada on the topic of using social media in the context of legal research. I have shared the presentation using slideshare for those who are interested. Patricia Hughes, Director of the Law Commission of Ontario shared some tweets via #FOLRAC as well.

Simon posted last year about QR Codes on lawyers’ business cards. Building on that, I put a QR Code on presentation title slides. The code links to my social media channels so that people who have questions about my . . . [more]