Nina Willis has been evicted from 6 homes in the past 7 years. She is probably the perfect example of what Justice Matlow was thinking when he noted the:

growing practice by unscrupulous residential tenants to manipulate the law improperly, and often dishonestly, to enable them to remain in their rented premises for long periods of time without having to pay rent to their landlords.

Justice Matlow called for reform of Ontario’s residential tenancy laws. In the case of Nina Willis, Ontario’s residential tenancy laws were not able to protect the landlords she abused over the past 7 years. However, . . . [more]

A very witty Master of the Alberta Supreme Court once wrote:

[51] Any legal system which has a judicial appeals process inherently creates a pecking order for the judiciary regarding where judicial decisions stand on the legal ladder.

[52] I am bound by decisions of Queen’s Bench judges, by decisions of the Alberta Court of Appeal and by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. Very simply, Masters in Chambers of a superior trial court occupy the bottom rung of the superior courts judicial ladder.

[53] I do not overrule decisions of a judge of this court. The judicial pecking

I was recently prepping for a podcast with twitterite, @CharonQC, who unfortunately had to postpone it due to family reasons. So, why let some good thinking go to waste?

One of the matters we were going to discuss was that the legal profession has lost its way. Not in the sense that lawyers are struggling with the conundrum of whether they are a business or a profession. Rather, it is my view that one of the reasons that lawyers have not adapted to better and more efficient styles of legal service delivery is because by using these new styles, they . . . [more]

The National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters this week made two reports available to the public.

The reports are:

• Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group that identifies initiatives that reduce delays, minimize costs and have the potential to improve access to court services.
• Report of the Access to Legal Services Working Group Report that presents recommendations that address the need to create increased flexibility in the way that legal services are provided.

The National Action Committee is a broad-based committee established by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley . . . [more]

The resistance by lawyers over the adoption of cloud computing is a particular grievance for technology evangelists. Not that concerns over confidentiality and security are unwarranted, it’s just that most they often just stem from fear of the unknown.

For those lawyers who still believe the most secure place to store their client information is in their heads, there’s an inexpensive technological device being developed through the University of California and the University of Oxford in Geneva which allows users to hack directly into someone’s brain.

Of course lawyers are far more ready to embrace emerging technology when the risk . . . [more]

Vancouver lawyer Geoffrey Cowper today released his final report into reforms to improve the British Columbia criminal justice system:

“In his report, A Criminal Justice System for the 21st Century, Geoffrey Cowper, QC, chair of the Justice Reform Initiative, offers recommendations to government and the judiciary on ways to achieve overall timeliness, improve court and judicial administration and improve the experiences of victims and the community.”

“Included in the review and also released today is a report from the Legal Services Society examining legal aid funding and a review of B.C.’s charge assessment process submitted by Gary McCuaig, QC.”

I missed the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference, which wraps up today in Washington D.C. So my thoughts are turning not only to envy, but also to some of my own KM thoughts mixed with those emanating from conference tweets.

Too often Canadian law firms see KM as nothing more than a repository of documents and clauses: Matthew Parson’s so-called “information landfill.” And because KM is seen as nothing more than a landfill site, firms see KM as nothing more than a software solution to assist lawyers sift through the debris.

What a terrible waste!

But, what if . . . [more]

Recently I published here a case comment on a Quebec tribunal decision involving the admissibility of social media evidence.

One particular element of the argument surprised me, and I would be interested in your views.

In the case, an employee brought a complaint before a labour tribunal against her employer, claimed that the employer had created, or allowed to continue, an atmosphere of harassment. As evidence, she brought printouts of comments made by her work colleagues on the Facebook page of another colleague who was also (for a while) a Facebook friend of the complainant.

The employer objected to this . . . [more]

♬ It’s been a long time comin’, my dear
It’s been a long time comin’, but now it’s here
And now it’s here..♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by Bruce Springsteen.

My friend Bob Ambrogi noted it first. The American Bar Association amended the commentary to Model Rule 1.1 dealing with competence:

Rule 1.1 Competence

A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.

The amended commentary is as follows:

Maintaining Competence

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of

An article in the Montreal Gazette (see here) summarized well the situation of women in private practice in Quebec, citing interesting statistics:

• women make up 65 percent of law school graduates
• women make up nearly half of the members of the Barreau du Québec
• women make up 30 percent of lawyers in private practice
• women make up 20 percent of partners in private practice

It certainly isn’t surprising that work-life balance or accessibility to partnership are cited as reasons for leaving private practice. An ongoing project by the Barreau du Québec – “Projet Justicia” – seeks to  . . . [more]

Residential tenancies are governed in Ontario by the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (the “RTA”). Whether you are pro-landlord or pro-tenant it is hard to argue with the fact that the RTA heavily favours the rights of tenants over the rights of landlords as property owners and service providers. In Ontario, it is illegal for a landlord to, among other things, require (or even obtain on consent) a damage deposit, require the tenant provide post-dated cheques, or prohibit a tenant from owning a pet. If a tenant vandalizes a rental property and up and leaves in the middle of the . . . [more]

The following article from the August 2012 issue of LAWPRO Magazine introduces LAWPRO’s new domestic contract matter toolkit. The toolkit can be downloaded in full or in part at www.practicepro.ca/checklists

Between 2007 and 2011, 830 family law claims were reported to LAWPRO. These claims are costly. Resolving them will cost LAWPRO approximately $21 million. Some of these claims arose due to real (or alleged) problems with domestic contract matters. That is the bad news.

Domestic contracts are complex documents that deal with complicated issues involving emotional clients. The dangers are real and there are many places that errors can . . . [more]