For a variety of reasons, lawsuits tend to drag on for a very long period of time. It is the plaintiff’s obligation to move the lawsuit forward. When acting for a defendant in a case that has dragged on (through no fault of the defendant), I am often asked whether we can ask the Court to have the lawsuit dismissed for delay. I tell my clients that they can bring a motion to dismiss the action for delay (provided one of the enumerated procedural defaults have occurred), but that winning such motions are extremely difficult. The governing principle taken by . . . [more]

The new issue of LAWPRO Magazine includes an article entitled Diversify without dabbling: before expanding your practice, expand your competence!. It looks at how how lawyers who are considering expanding the scope of their practice can do so safely and avoid a malpractice claim (dabbling outside one’s comfort zone is often a cause of claims). Watch for the full version of this article at www.lawpro.ca/magazine.

Here are five tips from the article on how to expand your practice skills safely.

1. Expand purposefully
If you decide to expand your scope of practice, make sure that the decision to . . . [more]

It’s an ongoing debate in the law firms that actually care. How do you measure your law firm diversity? Is it based on actual lawyers, looking at an associate/partnership ratio, or do you look at diversity and inclusion policies and procedures?

The former approach has become a standard now among American firms, where young recruits routinely scan diversity statistics when considering employers. Many young lawyers and law students review diversity figures even if they are not “diverse” themselves, because they prefer working in a supportive and open environment.

Canadian firms have not been so forthcoming primarily because the base numbers . . . [more]

The Quebec Bar Association has launched the Votre Justice (Your Justice) website to raise access to justice issues during the provincial election campaign. Quebecers will be electing Members of the National Assembly on September 4th, 2012.

The Association has identified four issues.

For each one, the website describes the current situation, outlines the Association’s position, suggests questions for debate, and (when available) summarizes the proposals of the 5 main parties (Parti libéral du Québec, Parti québécois, Québec solidaire, Option nationale, and Coalition Avenir Québec).

The issues are:

• underinvestment in the justice system
• changes to the tax system to increase accessibility

Next month I begin teaching a course on innovation in legal services at Western University Law School. I’m excited about teaching this new course, but I’m even more interested in the mood and thoughts of today’s law students. How do they perceive the legal marketplace given that 13% of Ontario law school graduates did not find articling positions this year? More importantly what do they think of the profession itself?

Do they feel the same sense of uncertainty about the future that many lawyers feel today? Or do they see themselves on the cusp of a new era with boundless . . . [more]

ABA Decision Not to Accredit Foreign Law Schools Means Canadian Law Schools and Students are Winners. . . For Now

Last week the ABA`s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar decided not to get into the business of accrediting foreign law schools. The vote was unanimous. However, sounding somewhat like the Federation of Law Societies of Canada in its report on accrediting the Common Law Degree, the Governing Council of the section acknowledged that it needs to establish sandards and procedures for licensing foreign lawyers who want to practice law in the United States.

ABA accreditation . . . [more]

Earlier this week, Tech Vibes reported that as worldwide Twitter subscribership crossed the half-billion mark, Canadian accounts were shown to account for 2% of that total, placing Canada at 8^th spot among all countries in total Twitter subscriber numbers. Canadians, of course, were also among the early adopters of Facebook and routinely top the rankings of ComScore and similar reports for such things as time spent online, so our collective Twitter presence is not actually all that surprising.

The surprise comes courtesy of some recently completed but not-yet-released research conducted by CanLII. Over a 6 week period in . . . [more]

The July 2012 issue of Connected is available online.

The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media such as Twitter and Facebook on court proceedings, the ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to these technologies.

It is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

Most of the stories are about the United States, but there is occasionally material about non-US matters. One of this month’s items is about a mistrial declared in a New Brunswick murder case because . . . [more]

As we legal writers drag ourselves through the dog days of summer, we sometimes hit lulls in finding topics of interest. Lucky for me the United Kingdom continues to provide fodder for those exhorting North Americans to change the way legal services are delivered. And I count myself fortunate to have been able to connect with a number of players who are truly shaking up the legal services industry across the Atlantic.

While the spotlight on innovation is focussed primarily on the private sector, one municipal in-house legal team is starting to cause a sensation.

Geoff Wild has written a . . . [more]

On January 1, 2010, a number of substantial amendments were made to Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure. Among the most notable changes were those made to Rule 20, Ontario’s Rule dealing with summary judgment motions.

Prior to the Rule change, judges hearing summary judgment motions were not allowed to assess credibility, weigh evidence, or draw inferences of fact. The result was that summary judgment motions were generally only brought in very straight forward cases where, at least in the opinion of one party, there was no genuine issue for trial.

Starting on January 1, 2010, motion judges were given . . . [more]

Here’s a small matter, tiny in fact:

I’m collating some material from various Canadian law firm websites, and as part of the project I need to record the firm name along with the material I’m referencing. I imagine I’m not alone in doing this sort of thing: whether it’s a phone number, a lawyer’s name, or something the firm’s proud of and has published, it’s pretty common to grab it with select-copy-paste, and sensible too to select-copy-paste the firm name into the note as well. Yes, I could type McCarthy Tétrault, but I’m as stingy with my keystrokes as the . . . [more]

As readers are aware, I have been very vocal about the scourge of the billable hour.

Recently a lawyer asked me, if I don’t bill by the hour, then how do I charge for my services? It then struck me that the real reason lawyers bill by the hour is because they don’t know how else to charge for legal services. To a person in any other line of business this would be a bizarre question.

But for lawyers, the art of pricing for legal services has been lost to time.

There are now fewer and fewer lawyers who realize . . . [more]