The Superior Court of Justice applied Grant v. Torstar in Vigna v. Levant, released on Thursday, where Giacamo Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, sued Ezra Levant for allegedly defamatory postings on his blog.

Dan Michaluk said that Grant v. Torstar was the top information and privacy case for 2009, and Matthew Nied had already described how this could affect bloggers.

Facts

The facts are set out by the court as follows, . . . [more]

An Ontario private member’s bill, the Cell Phone, Smart Phone and Wireless Technology Transparency Act, 2010, requires among other things that future performance contracts (a term defined in the Consumer Protection Act), “shall be expressed in plain language that is clear and concise.” (s. 3(1))

Are there judicially recognized standards of plain language that would allow this provision to be enforced, and that would allow someone drafting such a contract to know that he or she had met the standards? I know that there are books and articles around about plain language, but does something have . . . [more]

A growing number of recent decisions in courts across the globe have commented on the concerns raised by the explosion in social media use by jurors in trials.

Recently England’s most senior judge commented extensively on the concerns in a trial where an overzealous juror posted details of the case, closing her summary with the question, “Did he do it?”. Now I’ve felt somewhat humbled by having to make life-altering submissions before a panel of twelve of my client’s peers, but pleading my case to the entire internet? That’s an audience that could overwhelm even the savviest advocate.

The judge . . . [more]

Don't re-invent the wheel, use the expert tools to find your information, and look for the interconnectedness of the information that you use.

It was announced today that Thomson Reuters acquired Pangea3, “one of the largest legal outsourcing services company in India.”

Legal outsourcing services companies – otherwise known as “legal process outsourcing,” or LPO – are fairly new. LPOs involve law firms (and companies) hiring companies in India, the Philippines and elsewhere to carry out voluminous documentary review and other legal work, at cheaper cost. Some thought the trend was a fad, but with today’s development, it looks like LPOs are here to stay.

What will the impact be on practicing law in Canada? There will still be demand for . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries/Association Canadienne de Bibliothèques de Droit has launched upon its first distance learning initiative, with two more webinars coming up shortly.

Joan Rataic-Lang will be presenting a session on November 23 which I’m sure will resonate with many of us. Her talk, Cost-Saving Measures in the Library, promises to cover not only how to select the cuts and economies, but to lead change and communicate effectively the messages to your stakeholders. For those of you who may not know Joan, she’s a witty and engaging speaker, and I think you’ll enjoy the session.

December 7 . . . [more]

We haven’t seen an update on Carl Malamud’s Law.gov project in quite a while. There is much to report. To start, here’s a reminder of what the project is about:

Law.Gov is an idea, an idea that the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data. To make this idea a reality, a series of workshops were held throughout the country, resulting in a consensus on 10 core principles.

In June the project completed its consultation phase, which included . . . [more]

Lawyers aren’t allowed to hit people in order to win cases (at least not since peine forte et dure was abolished in the UK in 1772 — a mere 238 years ago!). I used to remind my students of this when encouraging them to pay more careful attention to their writing, their true tool of persuasion. That, and their thinking, of course. Which brings me to brains and the perpetually surprising fact that they can be so easily fooled.

We’ve all seen optical illusions, where this looks longer than that although they’re really both the same length. If you’d like . . . [more]

There have been a couple of blogposts recently that are worth noting – the first one marks the impending breaking of the $1 billion mark for e-books – posted on James McQuivey’s blog – and a related post a few days earlier on Law Librarian Blog about the release of 40,000 e-books by Springer without any DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions.

Our library is like many others – we have purchased e-books to provide the best range of resources to our academics and students. These are in addition to the paper, because we are lucky and for the UK at . . . [more]

There’s an interesting online book just out that explains all those things about browsers and the web that the average person doesn’t know they don’t know. But Slaw readers — who mostly know what they don’t know, right? — should take a look at “20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web” anyway; they might learn a thing or two, and more important they’ll see what can be accomplished simply with HTML5, the new, coming standard — and no plugins. And who knows, you might just find yourself one day having to explain cookies or DNS to . . . [more]

My good friend Reid Trautz just published his always popular annual gift holiday guide for lawyers. And regardless of whether you are giving loved ones hints for yourself or are looking for gift ideas for your favorite lawyer spouse, partner or friend, Reid’s annual gift guide can help make sure you don’t find yet another scales of justice tie under the tree this year.

Reid always has an interesting list of serious and not so serious gifts. The obvious ones are there – yes an iPad is on the list. And there are some great suggestions that are not so . . . [more]

I confess: I love law reform commission reports. I find they are wonderful sources for legal research. Many of the reports provide historical background on an issue and you can often find comparative information about how other jurisdictions have responded.

In the past few days, by pure coincidence, I have come across a wealth of new reports by law commissions in New Zealand, Ireland and Australia:

• New Zealand Law Reform Commission Introductory Issues Paper on Law of Trusts : this is primarily a background paper. It traces the development of the trust from its origins in medieval England through to

. . . [more]