Today’s Tips Tuesday is a little trick that I use to save myself time when I need to reference a statute quickly. I use CanLII for the majority of my legal research and for all of my statute referencing. Instead of navigating to CanLII’s home page each time and searching the statute, I use bookmarks instead.

In my browser’s toolbar, I created a Legislation folder and have bookmarked all of the statutes that I might need to reference in my practice. For me this list includes:

• Alberta King’s Printer
• Alberta Rules of Court
• Civil Enforcement Act
• Condominium Property Act
• Employment

I’ve observed a trend. It involves the feelings of legal advocates coming into play during mediation. This is often presented as an emotional tie to the client, passion about the collaborative opportunity or being personally dedicated to finding a fair outcome. While I am not sure this is planned strategy, it suggests a ‘heart on one’s sleeve’ fashion in mediation representation.

If you want to paint a mental picture, or otherwise embrace a stereotype about the emotional type of lawyer I am referring, consider Angry Dad from The Simpsons as counsel at your mediation. A male-presenting legal advocate who would . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : L’accusé n’a pas été informé qu’il était libre de partir et il est raisonnable de croire qu’il a senti qu’il n’avait d’autre choix que de rester et de répondre aux questions des policiers; sans cette information, son libre arbitre a été usurpé, de sorte que la déclaration . . . [more]

This is the second of a two-part series regarding Associate churn. My earlier post focussed on the Associate. This one focuses on the law firm.

The other day, an international client of mine thinking about re-entering the Canadian marketplace asked me why there was so little loyalty in Canadian law firms these days. He was referring to the amount of lawyer churn in most law firms. I don’t believe this issue is limited to Canadian firms, but the question made me think back over my past 30+ years in law firms and how things have changed.

What’s the Value

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

It’s an awful lot harder to convince an arbitrator, court or tribunal about the validity of a culminating incident leading to termination if no prior problems were documented. This point was neatly illustrated in a decision of the Alberta Labour Relations Board in 2023 CanLII 1492, where a car mechanic who was fired on shaky grounds was awarded pay in lieu of notice of termination. The case provides employers with a good reminder about the uphill battles they will likely face in arguing the unsuitability of an employee without the . . . [more]

It has been nearly six months since Chief Justice Morawetz called for an overhaul to Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure. One hopes that the delay in starting the process means that change will be more fundamental than a simple rewriting of the Rules. As I wrote shortly after the Chief Justice’s speech at the opening of the courts in October 2022, tinkering with the Rules will not address the access to justice crisis that has been staring us in the face for decades.

Since the changes to the Rules in 2010, cost and delay have simply increased. The principle . . . [more]

Next month’s Bencher elections at the Law Society of Ontario likely will mark a turning point in the regulation of legal services in Canada.

As you’ve probably heard, this is the first Bencher election in Canada to feature rival factions of candidates seeking office, each with political and governance views deeply hostile to the other. I have no idea what the outcome will be; but I believe the damage to the Bencher election model has already been done. One way or another, major (and overdue) changes are coming to the governance of Canadian legal regulators.

The sight of lawyers and . . . [more]

Today’s Tips Tuesday features a tip regarding one of the most under-rated features in Microsoft Word: Read Aloud.

Located under the “Review” tab in the ribbon, Read Aloud does exactly what it sounds like: it will read your document back to you, aloud so that you can hear the grammatical or wording errors you may have made when drafting. 

If you’re like me you like to torture yourself by going back and re-reading through a draft of a document or an e-mail that you just sent, and without fail this is when you catch a typos. It’s embarrassing and . . . [more]

This may sound like a very niche question, but it was one where the answer was not immediately obvious. (The short answer, as it turns out, is “Saskatchewan, The Queen’s Bench Rules” or “Saskatchewan, The Court of Appeal Rules”.)

While the McGill Guide explains how to cite rules of court, it does not include the Saskatchewan rules in its examples. McGill suggests including the indexing information, but the Saskatchewan rules are not regulations (unlike the court rules in other jurisdictions.)

According to the extremely helpful Ann Marie Melvie, the librarian at the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan: . . . [more]

A user-centred tribunal process is a necessary condition of improved access to justice. But it is not a sufficient one. You also need the process codified in rules that ordinary people can understand.

Tribunal rules of procedure are meant to guide users through the process the tribunal has designed to resolve the disputes before it. If the tribunal has an adjudicative mandate, then the dispute often involves two parties, and the process is usually adversarial.

The conventional approach does not work for users

Although they are intended to guide users, the rules are not typically written for the parties involved . . . [more]