At practicePRO we’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of fraud attempts against lawyers involving bad cheques. Mainly these are done by email (though sometimes its a phone call, letter, or even a visit in person) and no doubt all lawyers reading this will be familiar by now with the scenarios: an attempt to collect on a collaborative family law settlement, a commercial debt owing, or an employee injury settlement. The aim is always the same: to get a lawyer to run a counterfeit cheque through their trust account.

It sometimes seems like a hopeless task to put a . . . [more]

The “Great Encyclopedias” of Legal Research – Part II

This is the second of a series of posts that were prepared as the sequel to a request by Professor Daniel Poulin to explain the character and purpose of “Halsburys” and the “C.E.D.” to his seminar on legal information at the University of Montreal. The views expressed are the personal opinion of the author.

THE HALSBURYS MODEL IN CANADA

There are three encyclopedic black letter statements of the law that follow the Halsburys model in Canada. Two of them are well established in the market – the Canadian Encyclopedia Digest (Western . . . [more]

The Section of State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association (ABA) hosted a panel on cyberbullying at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

The panelists included James Hanks of Ahlers & Cooney, Grant Bowers, Legal Counsel for the Toronto District School Board, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist from New York with expertise in mental health, and Kathy Macdonald, from the Calgary police.

The panel discussed how changes in technology have created new ways for students to bully each other, creating new legal challenges for schools and communities. Regulating cyberbullying raises significant constitutional questions, especially in the U.S., . . . [more]

Well only as an intervenor.

According to a Press Release out this week, CanLII and the Federation to Defend Free Access to Law at the Supreme Court

CanLII and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada have been granted leave to intervene at the Supreme Court of Canada in SOCAN v. Bell et al., a copyright case to be heard later this year in which the Court will be asked to provide guidance on the meaning of “research” as a fair dealing user right under the Copyright Act.

While the facts of the SOCAN case relate to online . . . [more]

Okay, I admit, it is the dog days of August, so to speak. But it is a sunny Friday afternoon here in Halifax and that is a rare occurrence indeed lately and it does strange things to one’s mood. This news item caught my attention and stirred the things inside me that make me Canadian; it seems that there is internal strife brewing at our national institution Tim Horton’s. It is not good for the heart to see such strife within the family. But a lawsuit has been launched deriving from a decision made in the hierarchy of the company . . . [more]

The ABA Journal reported today that Rocket Lawyer has raised $18.5 Million Dollars from a group of investors that includes Google Ventures.

These are notes from a talk by the Honorable Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. trial judge of the Washington DC Superior Court, followed by a panel discussion at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Saturday. Panelists included Judge Dixon; the Honorable Bernice B. Donald, Western District of Tennessee; Cynthia Gray, Esq. of Chicago, Illinois who counsels judges; Marla N. Greenstein of Anchorage, Alaska, who is involved in judicial conduct regulation; and G. Michael Witte who is Indiana Disciplinary Commission Executive Secretary and a former judge. The session was moderated by the Honorable Annette Scieszinski, Albia, . . . [more]

India, either the world’s most or second most populous country, in any case boasting damn near 20% of the planet’s people. A country worth paying attention to for this and a host of other reasons. And that’s the beauty of it: we can pay attention to what’s happening in India in a way that we cannot with its “semblable, son frère,” China, because in India English is a widespread lingua franca. There are reputable newspapers in English. Indian novelists sometimes write in English. Laws, judgments and the proceedings of Parliament are all available in English.

But today . . . [more]

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles that contributors at Slaw are reading and that you might find interesting. These tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

This week we’ve begun adding videos into the mix, and a featured item as well.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

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Over the past year, I have written a series of articles on the theme of (re)building a law library. Obviously, I attach great value to the concept of library as place: my previous column was on that very topic. For me, the expression “virtual library” is somewhat of a misnomer, for a library cannot be virtual if it exists in space and that space has a function. I much prefer the expression “digital library” to describe the non-physical aspect of the library collection, not the library itself, though the two are related and must be integrated in a . . . [more]

The British newspaper The Guardian has compiled data on who is being arrested for the recent riots in the United Kingdom.

It makes for a fascinating story:

In an indication of the tough justice being meted out to people accused of offences related to this week’s riots, a Guardian analysis of more than 120 cases before magistrates courts so far has found the majority of defendants being remanded in custody – even when they have pleaded guilty to relatively minor offences.

As hundreds of cases fly through specially-convened night sittings of magistrates courts, the Guardian is embarking on a project

. . . [more]

Those of us Canadians who live in Toronto or Vancouver know not to be smug about England’s riots; we’ve been there recently, albeit on a smaller scale, thankfully. We might, however, be in a good position to reflect on the question of why people riot, or, to put it impersonally, because a mob does seem to deprive its members of effective personhood, what makes a riot. On a personal note, I can attest to this mob mentality, having been in a riot in my youth — one, I might add, that had absolutely no good pretext and was formed entirely . . . [more]