Last August I reviewed basic principles of authentication, in general and as applied to electronic documents. In that context I mentioned The Hague Convention of 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, known as the Legalization Convention or the Apostille Convention. Since Canada is considering acceding to this Convention, this column will review some of the issues involved in that process and in particular the technological frontiers of authentication that The Hague Conference on Private International Law is exploring with respect to electronic apostilles.

Legalization

What is at stake in this discussion is the authentication of public . . . [more]

There is a chilling tale in the UK press this week about the trial of a man accused of abducting and murdering a child.

What is as gruesome as the fact of the murder, is the personal cost borne by the family members of the victim who gave evidence. It is a corollary of the adversarial system.

The path of the cross examinations was to show the victim’s mother was guilty of neglect, and that perhaps favouritism of the victim’s sister precipitated her death. The father’s use of pornography were put in evidence. Portions of the victim’s diary was read . . . [more]

practicePRO has worked hard over the years to make lawyers aware of the wealth of practice management and claims prevention information available on the practicePRO site. Those efforts have resulted in practicepro.ca becoming a regular destination for many lawyers, particularly solo and small firm lawyers who may not have access to all the resources of a larger firm.

Lately there is one segment of lawyers that LAWPRO and practicePRO have made an extra effort to reach out to: new lawyers and those about to be called to the bar. Its been our experience that when lawyers were students, they really . . . [more]

Omar Ha-Redeye gave an excellent write-up of some of the ideas explored at last weekend’s lawTechcamp in (and after) the sessions, but I want to make note of the event itself.

About 100 people from the law and tech industries attended the free half-day event, held at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. The event was organized by Monica Goyal, owner and CEO of My Legal Briefcase, Sapna Mahboobani, principal of Sapna Law Professional Corporation, and lawyer/writer Mitch Kowalski.

lawTechcamp took an informal approach, taking cues for topics from ideas submitted by registrants. . . . [more]

In Webb v. Birkett, 2011 ABCA 13, the Alberta Court of Appeal held that the defendant solicitor Birkett was negligent in representing the plaintiff Webb in a collaborative family law settlement.

The Alberta Court of Appeal held that CFL practitioners must meet the same standard of care required of other family law practitioners — including taking appropriate steps to get the financial information needed to properly advise the client. A lawyer must obtain sufficient reliable information to be able to ascertain what the client would likely receive, or be required to pay, for spousal support, child support and matrimonial . . . [more]

Prior to the existence of the Internet there was a long standing debate respecting the volume of cases that were being published by legal publishers. Some lawyers and judges claimed that too many cases were being published because most cases apply well settled principles. Others claimed that the application of old principles to new facts was worthy of publication. The new facts result from an evolving and changing world. Some judges have tried to limit the publication of their decisions.

In 1979 there was no provincial case law reporter for Saskatchewan and Maritime Law Book was preparing to start a . . . [more]

Denis Rancourt has a long history of legal proceedings with the University of Ottawa (UofO), where he was once a physics professor. He was in the news again this week for being named the defendant in a libel suit by Joanne St. Lewis, a law professor at UofO, over a blog post on Rancourt’s site, UofO Watch.

Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen provided background to the case yesterday,

The contention began when St. Lewis, as the director of the university’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre, submitted an evaluation of a student-produced report alleging systemic racism at

It’s been some time since I shared some tech discoveries with you. While it rains here, I’m culling the list onto which I fling unconsidered trifles for later consideration; and four things have survived to be passed on to you.

1. After a lifetime of living dangerously, I now back up my machine routinely. In fact, I’ve turned into a belt and suspenders kind of guy about it (the English have it as “belt and braces,” which sounds better IMHO), backing up to a peripheral hard drive and also to an online backup service. I find that the latter takes a

What I plan to do in these periodical contributions to Slaw is to examine debates and committee proceedings on bills that may be of special interest to lawyers and legal scholars. What I want to do in this first discussion is to look at the nature of “omnibus bills” and to consider whether such bills tend to erode the capacity of parliamentary scrutiny and may be, to that extent, inconsistent with one or another part of our Constitution.

Many lawyers and legal scholars will be familiar with the notion that “the test of the reasonable man [person] is the man . . . [more]

Unless you are a Canadian who has been spending a lot of quality time in a cave over the past month you are no doubt aware that Winnipeg has regained an NHL team by way of Atlanta causing a bit of a chain reaction. The Atlanta Thrashers have moved to Winnipeg to become the TBAs (but might have a name today by the time you read this). The reaction being that Winnipeg had a pre-existing AHL hockey team the Manitoba Moose which has now moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

On the surface many believed that “the Moose” would be . . . [more]

I’ve confessed here before to liking stuff. If you’re a maker or a mender, you’ll probably like stuff, too. And I’ve come across something that is likely to gladden the heart of any bricoleur: sugru. It’s a pliable, adhesive, coloured substance that sets at room temperature to become a heat- and wear-resistant rubbery object. Think silly putty + epoxy and you’re close. You use it to modify — hack — those things around you that weren’t made right in the first place, or to repair those things that have developed just a little fault.

It’s often the case that . . . [more]

by Elke Churchman*

Giving back is a way of life for me. It is fulfilling and has made me a much better lawyer, a better family member and a better member of society.

It has not always been that way. I was very narrow and grasping in my focus and cut off from the world. I lived in a nightmare of my own mind. Never feeling good enough but at the same time feeling I must pretend that I was better than, an egomaniac with an inferiority complex! I never fit in and felt I had nothing of value . . . [more]