Law in fiction is a perennial favourite topic of mine. Usually I am drawn to how law and lawyers are treated in fiction. What drew my attention this time was a gem on advocacy in the pages of a novel.

Zadie Smith’s newest novel NW is about four characters that grew up in North West London. One of them is a black woman named Keisha Blake. Against the odds she breaks into law and becomes a successful barrister. En route she drops the name Keisha and takes up Natalie. When she is offered a much sought after prestigious job, she . . . [more]

The old saying goes that a picture is worth 1000 words, so if your amicus brief was limited to five pages at roughly 250 words a page you would have 1250 words to state your position (after previously submitting a 25 page brief -6250 words). For an in-depth legal position such as an ebook price fixing case, 1250 words is very little so if you have the ability why not harness the power of a picture being worth 1000 words and submit the equivalent of a 11250 word brief?

That is exactly what Bob Kohn did in submitting his brief . . . [more]

This week, it was (on campus interview) OCI week at Western University Law School with law firms recruiting for summer jobs in 2013. For those who don’t know, students who don’t get a summer job are less likely to get an articling position, and those who don’t get an articling job are unable to practice. Not to put too fine a point on it but, 13% of students in Ontario last year did not get articling jobs. So the pressure on students can be immense.

Some students missed my class due to this time-honoured rite of passage that was only . . . [more]

The Ontario civil justice system is struggling to provide timely, cost-effective and fair access to justice to civil litigants. According to Justice D.M. Brown, if the Judges of the Superior Court are unable to respond to the challenges and stresses confronting the civil litigation system, the public system risks losing litigants to the private-sector justice system in which an ever increasing number of private arbitration centres offer parties dispute-resolution services employing modern technological systems and well-trained arbitrators, who are often retired Superior Court Judges.

Justice Brown used the decision of George Weston Ltd. v. Domtar Inc. to once again sound . . . [more]

More than a century ago, an early torts scholar (Pollock) wrote that, when it came to causation, lawyers and judges shouldn’t go adventuring with philosophers. Many modern Canadian lawyers and judges are likely more familiar with Sopinka J.’s admonition in Snell v. Farrell against “abstract metaphysical theory” – the claim that causation is “essentially a practical question of fact which can best be answered by ordinary common sense rather than abstract metaphysical theory.” . . . [more]

Mitch Kowalski’s SLAW piece last week points to digital developments at the up-market UK clothier Burberry, as illustrative of what’s coming for legal services.

At the opposite end of the market there was another development in the UK last week. The Co-op supermarket chain announced the addition of a family law branch to the legal services it offers, which will evidently include fixed tariff family law and face to face advice, from over 1,000 locations.

One of the Coop’s major competitors in legal services, is Tesco supermarket.

Qualilty Solicitors with over 400 locations in a huge advertising campaign (developed by . . . [more]

Soon – perhaps within the coming days or weeks— the Prime Minister will name a new Supreme Court Justice to replace retired Justice Marie Deschamps. As set out in the Supreme Court Act, this judge must come from Quebec because section 6 of that act provides that “[a]t least three of the judges shall be appointed from among the judges of the Court of Appeal or of the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec or from among the advocates of that Province.” However, it is not completely clear who qualifies as “a Quebec judge” for the Supreme . . . [more]

This is certainly one of the more ambitious public legal education initiatives in Canada.

The third season of the television series “Le Droit de Savoir” (The right to know) began on Quebec cable TV on September 18th on the Canal savoir channel (with repeats on the Télé-Québec public educational network in the summer of 2013).

The French-language series is a co-production of the Quebec Bar Association. Lawyers already write the deals for TV and film projects. So, why not just jump into producing the material itself?

Episodes in the coming season will feature reports on topics such as aboriginal law, . . . [more]

A few things struck me this week. First, Jordan Furlong’s great piece, “Back when we used lawyers.” Then the opening of Burberry’s new flagship store in London, England (thanks to my colleague Antony Smith at LawSync for pointing it out to me and suggesting a digital connection to law).

Jordan’s premise is, as the title suggests, that change is constant and that in the lifetime of our parents (and even some of us) how things were done and by whom, when theywere kids, has dramatically changed. What is “normal” for legal services now or in the past will . . . [more]

Read this endorsement released today by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Para. [2] sent me searching.

The background to [2] is here.

Read the first 6 paras., and para. 24, in the 13th case in the chronological listing. It’s 2008 CanLII 27483. I’ve chosen to not link to it.

Perhaps this case – and similar others which some of us have been on the wrong side of – is some answer to the question posed here.

When you see the list, and read the case, you might get an idea why I’ve framed this posting the way I . . . [more]

We are delighted to join SLAW as your two feminist legal practitioners. We wear multiple hats with pride: we are small business owners, small practitioners, staunch feminists, young lawyers, and queer women. We stand in solidarity with sex workers, keen and questioning law students, community activists, brave women who survive trauma and are stronger for it, harm reductionists, transfolk, people of colour, contrarians, and people who speak frankly about the deficiencies in the composition and conventions of our legal system. We like all of these people’s voices to be heard, more so than what is traditionally allowed in the practice . . . [more]

Back in April practicePRO released a map that showed where emails to our fraud reporting database (fraudinfo@lawpro.ca) were originating from. The aim was to show how widespread the problem of email scams was. Despite being an Ontario-based insurer, almost half of our emails had come from elsewhere in Canada, the US and overseas.

We recently updated the map, and it shows that the pace of email fraud attempts hasn’t slowed. In five months we’ve had nearly 1,000 more emails, posted 57 new warnings on AvoidaClaim.com and heard from lawyers in 29 additional countries.

Strangely, South Dakota continues to be the . . . [more]