Oscar Wilde apparently advised, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can possibly do the day after.”

Procrastination is the evil that some say would be encouraged if Rule 48.14 of the Ontario Rules of Procedure were changed to lengthen the two year period after which court machinery will come belching and hissing to life, swiping actions not listed for trial off the conveyor belt into the waiting pail beneath marked “Status Hearings”.

Is this a sensible use of judicial and administrative resources? All those plaintiffs’ lawyers swearing affidavits about how they changed their address and never got the Status . . . [more]

This past Wednesday the Opening of the Courts ceremony occurred in Toronto, marking the start of the judicial season.

I covered the ceremony last year here on Slaw. True to their promises the protesters were present again this year.

Family Law Still a Problem

Their focus this year, as in last year, was primarily family law. Not much has changed though since last year, except that law enforcement asked the protesters to move to the sidewalk instead of using their megaphone right outside the doors.

The speeches by the judiciary also touched on family law this year. . . . [more]

Just when I had given up on major law firms doing something that makes them more efficient and innovative, international law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP relocates 250 of its staff from around the globe (if they choose to move) to Lexington, Kentucky into a former IBM building on the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream Research Campus business park.

The firm decided to move its finance, accounting, human resources, information technology, knowledge services, marketing, operations and risk management staff into one location to save costs, improve coordination and become much more efficient.

Certainly the $6.5 million in tax incentives from state and . . . [more]

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