In the very entertaining decision of Ugovsek v. City of Toronto et al which was released last week, Master Haberman provided a lesson on how, and how not, to resolve a lawsuit.

The plaintiff, Ugovsek, slipped and fell on a piece of land in 2008. Having difficulty determining who was responsible for the piece of land in question, Ugovsek named the City of Toronto and others as defendants. By 2011 Ugovsek had determined that the non-City defendants (which I will refer to simply as the defendants) bore no responsibility and proposed to release the defendants from the lawsuit without costs. . . . [more]

I was fortunate to have been invited to teach a session in the Canadian Association of Law Library’s New Law Librarians Institute 2012 earlier this month. The focus of the one-week program is substantive law, but my session was of a more practical nature, entitled “Knowledge Management in the Legal Setting.”

This talk was given last year by Ted Tjaden. Since he was kind enough to share his paper from that talk with all of us (which I found immensely helpful), I thought it good to follow his example and do the same with mine. Click the image or link . . . [more]

An article soon to be published in the Virginia Law Review caught the eye of the Boston Globe, from where it came to my attention. In “Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding” Alli Orr Larsen criticizes US Supreme Court judges for doing internet research on their own in order to supply legislative facts they feel are needed to resolve a case. I must say I hadn’t appreciated the degree to which, facilitated by the ease of access to data on the internet, the justices do this supplementary fact finding on their own.

The issue isn’t new, of course . . . [more]

Much is written and said about how it is undemocratic for unelected judges to make decisions that have an impact on public policy.

An interesting article last week in the UK Human Rights Blog makes the point that it is not so much the unelected bench that results in a democratic deficit, as the lack of meaningful public access to court decisions.

The authors point out that although judges may be somewhat out of touch, in the eyes of the public they are objective and fair.

The problem, they say, is that the courts are failing to use technology to . . . [more]

General Counsel have a great opportunity to change how legal services are delivered – if they choose to do so. While some have made strides to change things up so that they may assume a more strategic and value-added role within their companies (which in my view is the best role for GCs and their teams), many choose to remain reactive fire-fighters, policing an increasing number of outside law firms. In fact many advertisements for in-house counsel now stipulate that experience managing outside law firms is a vital quality for employment. Surely companies should be hiring in-house counsel to bring . . . [more]

[This is the text of a LAWPRO Alert sent to real estate lawyers in Ontario June 13, 2012.]

Do any of these names ring a bell: Kin Hang Cheung, Haru Hayate or Hideki Kazuhiro?

OR – is someone from overseas asking you to act on a real estate matter? Is a real estate agent you know sending you new business from an offshore client?

Be wary: Real estate lawyers like you (as well as real estate agents) are being targeted all over the continent by a new fraud scam.

To date we’ve heard from lawyers in Toronto (purchase of a . . . [more]

There has been a bit of discussion on a couple of Canadian lists lately of the appropriateness of commissioning an affidavit (or declaration or affirmation) by video link or by Skype (which is just another form of video, at least for the purposes of this question, is it not?).

Ontario law, and most other Canadian common law at least, requires that the person making the affidavit must be “in the presence of” the person commissioning it (notary, lawyer, commissioner for taking affidavits). See Commissioner for Taking Affidavits Act (Ontario) s. 9.

Question: Is one sufficiently “in the presence” of . . . [more]

There is so much talk these days about the business of law: rainmaking, marketing, business development, etc. All of this in pursuit of landing “clients”. Truth be told, it is actually quite easy to land a client. Many lawyers find to their surprise months or even years later that some casual encounter is actually deemed to constitute a “solicitor-client relationship” or at least the makings of one.

This has huge ramifications for a lawyer in terms of the law of conflicts of interest, the ethical duty of confidentiality and the client’s substantive right of solicitor-client privilege. It can also be . . . [more]

There was a time when the career path of a lawyer was straighter than an arrow.

You went to law school, articled with a firm that hired you as an associate. You worked hard, made partner, at some point took part in management, then retired.

Or perhaps you shifted your practice to one other firm, but essentially the road in front of you was well-worn and clear.

Yes, I’m talking about life before 1990.

Now the road is strewn with rocks and pebbles, and juts around landslides.

The career path of lawyers is less linear.

As a result, an interesting . . . [more]

At the outset of a file I ask my clients for all of the documents they have that are relevant to the lawsuit. Usually they respond by asking me exactly what I want. At this point I explain to them that they are obligated under the Rules of Civil Procedure to disclose any document that they may have (or formerly had) in their power, possession or control that is relevant to the lawsuit. “Whether it helps you, or hurts you, if it is relevant we need to disclose it.” is something I have said on many occasions and it’s true… . . . [more]

The following article appears in the May/June 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. It is available at www.lawpro.ca/magazinearchives.

LAWPRO is seeing far too many real estate claims where the lawyers handling the deals are making or not catching fairly basic errors. Often these mistakes result from errors made by clerks – all or most of which the lawyer could’ve and should’ve caught.

Common mistakes include:

• Not catching errors in legal descriptions
• Missing executions
• Not doing searches
• Not bringing rights or way or easements to the attention of the client

We also see claims involving ILA. Sometimes there was no recognition . . . [more]

Others have talked about their contributions to lawTechCamp 2012 held in Toronto in May. I am sharing the slide decks from the presentation I did with fellow consultant Stephanie Barnes and the six minute demo I did the same day.

The first talk here is an introduction to Law Firm Knowledge Management. Included are some images developed by Stephanie, and some we have developed together, as well as content from other sources. . . . [more]