A week ago we learned that Ontario’s Attorney General is willing to consider putting video cameras in Ontario’s courtrooms, and is:

… prepared to speak with the judiciary about their interest in having the discussion at this point in time, where we would go, and canvass the views of other participants in the justice system.

This statement — hardly a rousing endorsement of video access — came as a result of his interview with Canadian Press reporter Allison Jones, who, through a freedom of information request, had obtained a copy of an evaluation done nearly three years previously of the . . . [more]

India, as an emerging knowledge worker superpower, is a country to look to for close ties to cross commonwealth legal issues, like intellectual property rights. I have been monitoring intellectual property news from around the web for some time, and I have enjoyed the well written posts from the Spicy IP blog.

I was very pleased, while checking out the LIIofIndia (announced here at Slaw), to see that a link to to the Spicy IP blog by navigating to Intellectual Property through the Subject pages at the Legal Information Institute of India. There is also a link to search Spicy . . . [more]

I recently bought a new car. If you have done this in the last little while you know it can be quite the endeavour, and the choice available today is unprecedented. There are styles — sedan, convertible, station wagon, minivan, SUV, CUV, or truck. There are sizes — microcompact, subcompact, compact, midsize, or full size. There are fuel choices — gas, diesel, electric, or hybrid. There are transmission choices — standard, automatic, multi-clutch, or CVT. I could go on but you get the idea.

What do you do? And more importantly how do you choose?

In my instance, my wife . . . [more]

Civil litigation accounts for more legal malpractice claims in Ontario than any other area of law. It is also responsible for the second highest percentage of claims costs, after real estate.

From 2000 to 2010, litigation-related claims accounted, on average, for 34 per cent of LAWPRO’s claims count (650 claims per year), and 28 per cent of our claims costs ($17.4 million per year). On average, resolving a litigation claim cost LAWPRO $38,000 over that period.

While the annual number of civil litigation claims has remained relatively consistantly in the 600-700 range over the last 10 years, the cost of . . . [more]

The London Times reported on 10 March that UK litigation lawyers are “bracing themselves” for the “revolution” of hot tubbing which will shortly be run in a pilot trial in Manchester, England.

More formally known as “concurrent evidence”, hot tubbing is a new method of presenting expert evidence at trial. Opposing experts testify in each other’s presence, as members of a panel, and are questioned in each other’s presence in front of the trier of fact.

It seems to be gathering steam in several jurisdictions, other than the US, as a method of reducing cost and delay in civil litigation. . . . [more]

Last week Twitter announced support for secure HTTP, or HTTPS, for its popular microblogging service. Twitter joins Facebook, who announced support for HTTPS earlier this year, and Google, who enabled default HTTPS access for Gmail over a year ago.

The ever-increasing support for HTTPS is a good thing for the web and its users, as it protects data from being snooped upon by hackers or other third parties. Plain, unencrypted HTTP is highly susceptible to eavesdropping attacks, especially if you are using a public Wi-Fi network. Everything transmitted over HTTP, whether the contents of an e-mail or a username/password . . . [more]

I normally try to avoid posting about items that have been discussed elsewhere but I believe this merits a Slaw post. I’m sure many of have seen what follows in other forums (it was brought to my attention by a colleague) but this causes you to think a bit differently and more of that is good on a Monday morning. Okay maybe it isn’t completely different but it takes something you know well and does it differently and makes you wonder about the future of publishing and just what an ebook is or more specifically what an ebook might be. . . . [more]

A storm broke on February 26^th when word got out that publisher HarperCollins had unilaterally decided to limit the “shelf life” of its ebooks catalogue. Overdrive, a major distributor of ebooks in the public library world, found itself caught between the publishing powerhouse and a furious library community when it was announced that library loans of ebooks would be capped at 26. After that, the book will disappear from the library’s collection automatically. If the licensing library wished to keep the title, another virtual book would have to be purchased.

I was attending Podcamp Toronto at the time, so . . . [more]

Reminders: Legal IT 5 on Apr. 4 Montreal / Women's Law Assoc. Ont. dinner w. Winkler CJ on Mar. 30 Toronto. Register now.

By the judge’s own admission, February 24, 2011 was an exciting day at the Superior Court of Justice in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. J.W. Quinn J. stated in the costs decision released March 2, 2011 in Pirbhai v. Singh,

[1] This is an exciting day (and excitement does not often make it to my end of the courtroom). It marks the final chapter (at least at the trial stage) of the now-tiresome 12-year tale of what will be, by paragraph [134] of these Reasons, the most expensive Lexus motor vehicle in the world.

The costs decision deals with legal issues . . . [more]

This is a follow up on a previous blog post on Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to regulate immigration consultants. While Bill C-35 is not yet law (passed third reading in the House of Commons and on March 10, 2011 was at report presentation and debate stage in the Senate), the Governor in Council launched a public selection process which began in August 2010, to establish a new regulatory body for immigration consultants in Canada. On March 18, 2011, the Governor in Council announced that the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council . . . [more]

The CRTC has released its timline for consultations on Usage-Based Billing (UBB). We’ve been following the story at Slaw here and here. A good source for updates on the issue is Lindsay Pinto’s blog at Open Media.ca, and of course Michael Geist is providing excellent commentary.

The whole issue is particularly interesting because of the strong reaction the proposal has provoked in Canadian consumers. If I had to guess, I’d say that UBB is irksome to Canadians mainly because of the unreasonable caps proposed, and the transparently anti-competitive character of the caps (and this on multiple fronts). . . . [more]