On October 28, 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada granted the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission leave to appeal the decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in the Whatcott case. In this appeal, the commission will be asking the Court for guidance on where the line should be drawn between extreme speech and the right of citizens to express their beliefs freely. You can read more on the case and topic in previous Slaw posts here and here.

A date for the hearing hasn’t yet been set.

In the meantime, the Saskatchewan government say they plan to introduce amendments . . . [more]

Twitter is a major source for breaking international legal news. It is often the first place where you can find links to recent court cases, new legislation, and international documents. Many blogs have Twitterfeeds so you’re immediately alerted to new posts. Twitter can inform you about legal developments worldwide and upcoming conferences. You can use Twitter to find out about new books, and new law library acquisitions. You can also track news from foreign sources and in foreign languages. Twitter is not only a great source for law, library, and technology news, it also gives you a way to network . . . [more]

Top 10 take-aways from the 2010 ODR and Consumers Conference in Vancouver, BC, Nov 2-3, 2010.

This is the second of three posts on how information and privacy issues are shaping the future of employment law. Last week, I posted on the impending clash between information governance and personal use of corporate IT systems. This post is about internet use and the “virtualization” of workplace harms. Next week, I’ll post on labour stability, departing employees and information-related harms. Please comment.

Some days I yearn for a case about something tangible – a theft of tools, a punch thrown at a supervisor or a marijuana cigarette smoked on lunch hour. These kinds of matters seem like . . . [more]

Those who practice in the IT area have a lot of potential new law to digest. The Federal government has several bills in various stages that will affect many businesses and organizations, and all of us as consumers. These bills have been mentioned on Slaw, but I thought it was worthwhile listing them all in one place. 

Bill C-28 Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act.

This bill brings in several anti-spam measures. While this is welcome by most people, the language has the possibility to affect how typical businesses communicate. Things that we may not consider to be spam . . . [more]

A number of new titles have caught my eye as useful additions or updates to Canadian legal literature.

In no particular order:

• Bullen & Leake & Jacob’s Canadian Precedents of Pleadings + CD (Carswell): This new title is a Canadian version of the UK classic litigation precedent service, now in its 16th edition from Sweet & Maxwell. In the absence of a Canadian edition, many lawyers here would consult the UK title. However, over time, the UK title increasingly referenced UK legislation, which made the UK service less useful. I have not seen the new Canadian version yet but

. . . [more]

One of the most common mistakes that law firms make when they upgrade technology is that they don’t do their homework or pay the smartest kid in class to do it for them. We saw in one of my previous columns that it’s critical to understand the problem you’re solving, and it’s just as critical to make sure you understand how the technology you’re moving to is going to solve that problem.

The Map is Not the Territory

Part of the problem firms have in evaluating how well a particular bit of technology is going to solve their problem is . . . [more]

If you want to get a glimpse of one possible future for small to medium-sized law firms, you might take a look at the website for Britain’s QualitySolicitors. Launched this Spring, QualitySolicitors is a marketing alliance in which existing law firms become rebranded with the common logos, advertising, and approaches to potential clients. The alliance purports to identify the “best” high street firm or firms in a given area (i.e. firms for clients from the general population).

This is seen by some as a pre-emptive strike against the coming of “Tesco law practices” when the new Legal Services Act . . . [more]

I could have titled this post MORE Criminal Code amendments introduced. Between House of Commons Bills C-2 and C-52, 11 are related to the Criminal Code or its related legislation (youth justice, criminal records). November 1, 2010 saw the introduction of Bills C-51 (Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act) and C-52 (An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations). Bill C-46 from the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session 2009 was similar to Bill C-51, but died on the order paper with the end of the session.

There is an interesting Department of Justice Backgrounder on C-51. . . . [more]

I recently migrated to Sydney, Australia with my Australian-born wife and our three children. Australia’s remote location seems to allow a freedom to experiment without the pressure to conform to U.S. or European norms that one experiences in a country like Canada. Or perhaps Australia is simply, as a friend calls it, a “nation of iconoclasts”. In any event, I have observed over the years that regulatory change related to the legal profession in the common law world begins in Australia and then moves around the globe, first to the UK, and finally to North America. As a newly . . . [more]

This week in biotech was all about the early stage, and there is no earlier stage in biotech than university tech transfer offices and their progeny.

Universities’ technology transfer offices (TTOs) lie at the interface between university researchers and industry, often with the mandate to monetize the University’s innovations and technological assets. A new study looked at series of in-depth interviews with 20 senior technology transfer personnel at six Canadian universities and two research hospitals and discovered a disconnect between the social and financial goals of tech transfer. One example of a recent success in this area comes from . . . [more]

Free e-mail services from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others make getting up and running with an e-mail address a trivial effort. The unfortunate side effect of choosing to use a free email address for a law office – or any business for that matter – is that these free e-mail addresses are burdened with a negative perception: price sends a signal, and using a free e-mail service as a core part of your businesses front-office sends the wrong message.

Just a few ago, cost was a reasonable justification for solos and small firms to choose a free e-mail service. The . . . [more]