This year, Quebec’s highest court had to decide if common-law couples residing in Quebec were victims of discrimination based on section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. Quebec’s Civil Code does not afford common-law partners access to alimony, the sharing of family property and the protection of the family residence, among other rights that married or civil union couples enjoy (see sections 585, 401–430, 432, 433, 448–484 of the Code).

The Quebec Civil Code, which governs relations between private persons, treats common-law spouses as two independent individuals, regardless of the length of their union. It . . . [more]

So, what are the other firms doing? 

How many times have your heard that? It seems in this industry we are only concerned with what everyone else is doing – looking back rather than ahead.

Let’s look at an example that was shared with me recently. In a meeting discussing an important, and potentially problematic client issue, it became apparent that the lawyers in the meeting were focused solely on what other firms were doing to deal with the same issue. 

On the plus side, the practice group understood that being proactive and providing solutions is exactly the type of . . . [more]

I had the pleasure of going to Japan for the last 8 days or so on vacation with my wife. Overall, we had a wonderful trip that included visiting friends and family, eating good food, and trying a few different “onsen” (Japanese spas). And while I had thought about posting from Japan, my schedule and Internet access did not really permit it. As such, I thought I would post a few comments now that I have returned.

1) WiFi Access: In retrospect, I should have likely brought my notepad (which has an ethernet port). My iPad was less useful . . . [more]

In my previous columns I’ve argued that lawyers who close their eyes to the use of courtroom technology may be negligent, I’ve encouraged lawyers to try courtroom technology and I’ve tried to sell the idea of using PowerPoint with little or no text. With me so far?

For the next few columns I’ll illustrate a few basics for assembling a PowerPoint for evidence presentation.

Persuasive litigation in my mind should have a strong visual component. Talking head witnesses are so 1970’s. The 2010’s call for visual engagement of the trier of fact, whether judge or jury.

That visual engagement is . . . [more]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up Three Bits of Tech. Thanks to the ever fertile world of the web, I’ve got another three for you today. They may not be the sort of stuff that sets the hearts of the big firm IT teams a-flutter (though you never know), but they might just meet a need for those of us who usually act as our own IT support. See what you think.

1. / BridgeURL

The folks who bring you short URLs now offer you the chance to bundle a number of URLs together and locate . . . [more]

Some new stories from around the world:

Honey – I forgot to renew the domain name

That’s the story out of a free public website in Massachusetts: The site provides the public with online copies of opinions from both the Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court. C. Clifford Allen head of the SJC’s Reporter of Decisions office woke up to find that his website was gone and that a notice — “massreports.com expired on 11/08/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion” – was substituted.

If they did send a (renewal) notice, it must have been caught in

The world of biotech was all shook up this week:

In venture capital, GrowthWorks was stepping on Covington’s Blue Suede Shoes by soliciting votes against Convington’s planned acquisition of the VenGrowth funds, saying it wants time to make its own offer. The CPPIB handed a Big Hunk O’ Love to NorthLeaf Capital, turning over management of its $438 million portfolio of venture capital investments including Celtic, Edgestone, Lumira/MDS, Skypoint and Ventures West.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mick Bhatia’s group at the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University found a way to make human skin cells sing “Any Way . . . [more]

When is a problem ‘your’ problem. This is a very big question for whose of us, likely everyone, who work in groups. Most organizations will have some kind of hierarchy for reporting, but does this always represent the hierarchy for communication?

For instance, today Westlaw Canada, and according to some tweets Westlaw in the US, is having some technical difficulty. [Note: This is not a criticism. Anything delivered with technology will have some downtime.] Should this information be shared, with whom, when, and by whom?

My answer to the question is: Yes, with the people who use it, immediately, . . . [more]

Is there any reason why Canadian law would not enforce value established, earned or conveyed in a virtual world, assuming the appropriate evidence were available? (Speculation on what kinds of evidence might be available is welcome, as is most speculation on this website.)

Here are a couple of articles about Facebook’s “online virtual currency”, the first largely favourable, the second mentioning some enforcement problems. (I can’t access FB from the office to see what its official view might be.)

• ThinkRisk, “If Only They Were ‘Virtual’ Losses…”
  (this one has links to other sources too)
• “Zynga on the

Unless you work at a very large law firm, odds are that you don’t have a dedicated employee(s) for writing proposals or responding to RFPs. And that’s okay – you should still go for it; there are just a few points you may wish to consider:

1. Don’t respond to everything. You can waste a lot of time and money if you respond to proposals if you don’t meet the requirements. Read the RFP document carefully and consider if you truly are a good fit. 
2. Ask for clarity. Sometimes there are mistakes or vague statements in RFP documents; you might disqualify

On November 16 at 10am PST the people at Adobe are putting on a free e-seminar to review the top new features of Acrobat X. It will include demonstrations of the top new features of Acrobat X Pro that will interest legal professionals, including:

• The new, easier-to-use interface.
• How to accurately save scanned documents directly to editable Word and Excel files.
• How to improve optical character recognition (OCR), even spot and correct OCR errors.
• The enhanced Redaction capabilities that help save time and improve productivity.
• How to automate, standardize, and share multi-step tasks for PDF production— using the new Action