Do you have a particular portion of an e-mail or an entire e-mail that you end up sending repeatedly? It could be something as simple as a reporting e-mail or an e-mail where you discuss your fees. It could also be a just a single paragraph that you use often or even just a sentence.

Let me introduce you to “Quick Parts”. Let’s say that I always use the same text for my annual return reports to my client and I didn’t want to keep typing that out over and over again.

You can go into the last e-mail that . . . [more]

Ever accidentally wrote over a template or deleted a document out of a folder that you didn’t want to delete? Ever wanted to check what documents were in a folder on a previous date? Allow me to introduce you to the “Previous Versions” function in Windows Explorer.

The Scenario

You’re working in a folder with a bunch of disclosure documents in it. You’re working on reviewing them and deleting documents that you don’t need at the same time. In doing so, you delete a very important document that you didn’t intend to delete. This document was a PDF that was . . . [more]

Are you someone who uses e-mail filters to try and keep some semblance of organization in your inbox? Ever filtered too well and ended up missing an important e-mail because it skipped the inbox and got stuck in a sub-folder?

This tip will help you to filter your e-mails with confidence knowing that you will never miss an unread e-mail again. Let me introduce you to the “Unread” folder. This is a folder that you can create that can crawl all of your e-mail folders for unread e-mail messages and pull them into one common folder for you to view . . . [more]

Ever been drafting an agreement which makes references to other sections or paragraphs in the agreement, added or removed a section, then realized that all of your paragraph references are now incorrect and you’ve got a big mess on your hands?

Cross-referencing is the solution to this problem. Cross-referencing is a Microsoft Word feature that saves you from this very problem. The catch? Your document must have some sort of headings from the style guide or automatic numbering from which the cross-referencing menu can reference.

Cross-referencing works by inserting a link to the paragraph which you are referencing, allowing it . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

Not too long ago, it was the stuff of science fiction and action films-the locked door that opened by a retinal scan. The keypad required a fingerprint as additional security. Well, what was at issue in 2023 CanLII 5478 (BC LA) isn’t too far removed from those one-time fantasies. Here, an employer implemented a biometric finger scan system for employees to use, and it had a good reason that had nothing to do with security. Would vastly improved recordkeeping and human resources services suffice as justification? Some employees got fired for . . . [more]

Today’s Tips Tuesday is a little trick that I use to save myself time when I need to reference a statute quickly. I use CanLII for the majority of my legal research and for all of my statute referencing. Instead of navigating to CanLII’s home page each time and searching the statute, I use bookmarks instead.

In my browser’s toolbar, I created a Legislation folder and have bookmarked all of the statutes that I might need to reference in my practice. For me this list includes:

• Alberta King’s Printer
• Alberta Rules of Court
• Civil Enforcement Act
• Condominium Property Act
• Employment

Today’s Tips Tuesday features a tip regarding one of the most under-rated features in Microsoft Word: Read Aloud.

Located under the “Review” tab in the ribbon, Read Aloud does exactly what it sounds like: it will read your document back to you, aloud so that you can hear the grammatical or wording errors you may have made when drafting. 

If you’re like me you like to torture yourself by going back and re-reading through a draft of a document or an e-mail that you just sent, and without fail this is when you catch a typos. It’s embarrassing and . . . [more]

Given the backlog in our courts and administrative tribunals in Ontario, it is likely that artificial intelligence will begin to be used for routine, procedural matters to reduce delays. In the book Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Richard Susskind writes that our courts are moving towards radical change rather than more of the same. Susskind predicts that artificial intelligence will be used to adjudicate and contain claims, and that the 2020s will be a period of redeployment of lawyers and judges. By 2030, our courts will be transformed by technologies, many of which are yet to be . . . [more]

Leading up to ABA TECHSHOW 2023 this March 1st thru 4th, our Slaw friend and occasional writer Colin Lachance has alerted me to these five Canadian legal tech startups who have made the Top-40 for this year’s Startup Alley.

• CiteRight is an essential litigation tool that simplifies legal research and writing by allowing users to save cases, generate automatic citations and produce court documents.
• Jurisage AI accelerates legal research through instant access to case law insights.
• Fidu helps legal teams ditch the billable hour for good in exchange for flat fee and subscription legal services by systematizing and scaling

Prof Sean Rehaag recently published, “Luck of the Draw III: Using AI to Examine Decision-Making in Federal Court Stays of Removal”. This research entered my feed as it pertains to immigration and refugee law. Indeed, the research demonstrates interesting trends related to Federal Court decisions and Stay Motions. For example, Winnipeg has the lowest grant rates across Canada at only 16.2%. For immigration practitioners, I will briefly discuss the conclusions of this paper and my own analysis. Prof Rehaag focused this paper on statistics and his methodology. The paper offers scant analysis of the underlying numbers. The paper is invaluable . . . [more]

In the article, “Trial by Internet: A Randomized Field Experiment on Wikipedia’s Influence on Judges’ Legal Reasoning”, the authors Neil Thompson et al conducted a study to see if Wikipedia plays a part in judgment writing. The authors found that “the information and legal analysis offered on Wikipedia led judges to cite the relevant legal cases more often and to talk about them in ways comparable to how the Wikipedia authors had framed them”.

The study was conducted by creating 154 Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court cases. “The process of creation was done in three waves. After . . . [more]

Getting a motion date can be a herculean effort in Ontario. Currently the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has a patchwork of processes for scheduling. Different courthouses have different ways of scheduling court dates. Even finding out which dates are available can be frustrating.

It is problematic and an access to justice issue. Getting a date for a motion should be easy. Knowing how to obtain a date should be even easier. There is some guidance online, for example:

• Toronto’s process – https://www.ontariocourts.ca/scj/practice/practice-directions/toronto/civil-t/
• Central East process – https://www.ontariocourts.ca/scj/practice/practice-directions/central-east/civil-ce/ / https://www.ontariocourts.ca/scj/notices-and-orders-covid-19/ce-civil-proceedings/

The Central East Region has a Calendly process: https://calendly.com/ce-civil. This . . . [more]