This is the second of three contributions focusing on certain peculiarities of Quebec’s civil law legal environment within North America (Part I can be found here).

While outsourcing and sophisticated professional IT services agreements typically deal with quality and performance issues through mechanisms such as service levels, penalties and credits, warranties and other related concepts, one will occasionally come across a client request to have the vendor commit to using “best efforts” to achieve a certain desired result. Vendors typically bark at this as they fear that such a commitment might be open-ended and require the deployment of resources . . . [more]

The big news from London is that Norton Rose is taking over Deneys Reitz, one of South Africa’s largest firms – and African firm of the year in 2006 – and the Canadian firm Ogilvy Renault. The expanded firm will fly under the Norton Rose flag.

The two firms will formally join the Norton Rose Group on 1 June 2011. This will raise the firm’s head count to over 2,500 lawyers spread over 38 offices.

Norton Rose Chief Executive Peter Martyr commented

This is a very exciting move…Canada and South Africa are increasingly influential economies for our clients

. . . [more]

If you are a law firm starting from scratch looking to build an intranet, what would you do? Would you emulate many of the big US and Canadian firms and implement MS Sharepoint? Or look for a different solution? So often firms look over each others’ shoulder to see what the other is doing. But with intranets one size does not fit all.

I am currently in Washington, DC for KM World 2010 and was fortunate to have a good discussion with Gordon Ross, Vice President of Open Road Communications Ltd., web consultants and creators of the social intranet . . . [more]

Although two of my columns have already been posted on this blog, I never really officially introduced myself to the readers. As the youngest columnist in the Slaw family, I’d very much like to share my background and the road I travelled to date on my professional journey! 

The Early Years 

My story begins in the summer of 2002 when I left my family and moved to Montreal from Haiti to begin my postsecondary studies. I immediately enrolled to College Jean-de-Brébeuf and quickly developed a particular affinity for science and the law. This affinity for both those fields would stay . . . [more]

A few days ago Google released a very interesting tool: Google Refine 2.0. For anyone who’s ever had to sort through messy data to try to turn up a meaningful treatment, and who hasn’t, this tool is a godsend. You may never need to utter another regular expression.

It offers a suite of functions that allow a person to clean up the data (detect and remove inconsistencies), to transform the data into formats suitable to the final destination (such as html), and even tools for finding and adding more data from disparate sources.

There are three 6+ minute videos . . . [more]

When I was a kid I used to make models of airplanes. I could spend hours gluing together oddly-shaped bits of grey plastic, anticipating the beautiful flying machine that would emerge from all this bricolage. (I now know that a portion of the charm may well have been the appealing… odour of the glue fumes.) Then I progressed to model train layouts, and built miniature suspension bridges and other nifty stuff. And now I don’t make models of anything, but instead have to contend with life-size (or 1:1, as it’s known in the craft world) objects that are considerably less . . . [more]

The Parliamentary Information and Research Service of the Library of Parliament has released a series of brief background papers on the Canada–European Union trade negotiations that began last year and that are aimed at achieving a “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA). There are ten papers in the series, as follows:

1. Overview of Negotiations [pdf 175kb]
2. Market Access in Agriculture [pdf 170kb]
3. Non-Agricultural Market Access [pdf 163kb]
4. Trade in Services [pdf 164kb]
5. Investment Protection [pdf 166kb]
6. Government Procurement [pdf 157kb]
7. Technical Barriers to Trade and Regulatory Cooperation [pdf 157kb]
8. Intellectual Property Protection [

. . . [more]

On September 26, 2010, the New York Times ran a front-page story concerning outsourcing public libraries to private corporations. This article chilled me to the marrow of my bones for several reasons. First, the library that triggered the article is in Santa Clarita, California. This is not a city that is drowning in deficits and grasping for straws. It is a city that is in the black. Santa Clarita’s move is made in the clear light of day, for purposes of future planning.

Second, Frank Pezzanite, the director of Library Systems and Services, the corporation which, if taken as a . . . [more]

It seems appropriate today, Remembrance Day, for a law blog to reflect for a moment on the laws of war. These seemingly prime examples of a contradiction in terms have taken a beating in recent years. The Economist, in an article entitled, “Unleashing the laws of war” published last year, gave a sad summary of fate in practice of these peculiar norms in an era of insurgencies, terrorism, ethnic violence, and superpower techno-war.

Yet much of the world continues to expand and refine the laws of war. I’m speaking now of the Hague and Geneva conventions, those legal . . . [more]

The British Columbia Labour Relations Board recently upheld the firing of two employees by a car dealership over comments they posted on Facebook about their employer. The lawyer for the employer stated that he believes this is the first Facebook firing case to be heard in Canada.

Remembrance is the cornerstone of The Royal Canadian Legion's work in Canada...

As a lawyer who has been heavily involved in my Provincial Lawyer Assistance program and with the CBA’s National Legal Professionals Assistance Conference, I have travelled all over Canada and even ventured into the United States to either speak to, or hear others present, on the topic of lawyer’s wellness. Many of these discussions focus on our collective need to achieve a healthy work-life balance. This isn’t surprising, given the consuming nature of our profession and its demands on our time, mental and emotional energy. Employing our well-trained critical eye on the intricacies of other people’s conflicts can be exhausting. . . . [more]