or, as I might title it today, “The Good, the Bad, and the American.” And it’s about nothing more contentious than language.

The Good? There are, of course, all sorts of species of “good” in writing. For us in law, one kind of a sometime good is plain language. For decades now, supporters of plain language in law have been urging lawyers to, well, learn to write so that others can understand them easily. Which isn’t easy. The U.S. government has a site replete with examples and tools and a page referring to foreign resources — none of which is . . . [more]

I have in the past hoped for good (or better) interfaces to the massive amounts of older Canadian legal materials being digitized on the Internet Archive.

While that hope still remains (since I think there is a need for it), I was pleasantly surprised this morning that by simply searching the words “ontario AND regulations AND 1979” in the “Canadian Libraries” database, the result came first and it was relatively easy to get to the particular regulation I was looking for by choosing the PDF format of the document (although the PDF file was a bit large at over . . . [more]

Many of you are likely already familiar with the alleged facts in the disturbing and complicated case of Captain Robert Semrau. For those who are not, here’s a quick refresher. 

Capt. Semrau was serving a tour of duty with the Canadian military in Afghanistan. He was assigned to a small Operational Mentor and Liason Team (OMLT) tasked with working hand-in-hand with a larger force of Afghani military assisting them in becoming a self-sufficient fighting force capable of challenging the Taliban militia on their own when Canada’s mission comes to a close. On Oct. 19, 2008 his orders were to troll . . . [more]

At lunch today, I got a look at the Westbusinesslaw.com platform which offers a sophisticated set of templates to get at corporate documentation, both Edgar and Sedar filings, but also a massive storehouse of global corporate documentation, precedents and models. It got me thinking about the power of an installed base. West had started moving from the purely legal market and document databases into financial information back in the Eighties. That trend accelerated after the Thomson acquisition and in turn the merger with Reuters.

But of course, there were installed bases on the finance side: Dow Jones, of course, which . . . [more]

CourtCanada, a private software development company, has sued Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General for breach of contract, claiming $10,000,000 in damages and a further $2,000,000 in punitive damages. CourtCanada supplies the Ministry with OSCAR, the Online System for Court Attendance Reservations, currently operating in the Estates List and the Commercial List of the Superior Court.

The plaintiff alleges that expansion of OSCAR throughout the Civil and Bankruptcy Lists was expected under the agreement and that the Ministry wrongfully cancelled that expansion. Moreover, CourtCanada alleges that the Ministry has “attempted to sabotage OSCAR in the Commercial List,” as an . . . [more]

Knowledge@Warton has a great recap of a discussion from the 2010 Supernova forum. At issue is the evolution of social networking tools, and how they compare with corporate KM efforts. It’s an interesting discussion with a diverse range of opinions. If you’re currently involved in a KM program, or a law librarian seeking new ways to add value to your firm, I would encourage you to read this piece in its entirety.

One issue in particular that caught my eye was the contrast between ‘keeping it fun’ and maintaining value. Here’s a snippet:

While there are virtues to being able

. . . [more]

Law is a vocation where every word counts; each word has a meaning. However, in almost all correspondence with lawyers, the words “without prejudice” or “confidential and legally privileged” are present. With the ever-growing use of email, it has become standard to include a confidentiality notice at the end of your message, just below the signature. Do we really know the meaning of the words we use though?

“Without prejudice” has been used by British courts for over 100 years. According to an article by Ronald D. Manes, Solicitor/Client Privilege, it originates from the solicitor-and-client privilege which was “established by . . . [more]

A lawsuit launched to enjoin foreign law firms from practising law in India is lurching ahead in Chennai. Originally begun in March, the suit names 30 international law firms and one LPO as respondents. According to Legally India, the court has just ruled that the respondents will now be served and must defend against the suit.

The individual plaintiff, a lawyer, rests his case on the Advocates Act, 1961, which governs who may practice law. According to his petition (available here in PDF via Legally India), only Indian citizens may practice law in India, though foreigners may be admitted . . . [more]

The Prime Minister has announced that the next Governor-General, who will replace HE Michaelle Jean on Oct. 1, 2010, is David Johnston.

Johnston has two LL.B. degrees, one from Cambridge (1965) and another from Queen’s (1966). He is currently the President of the University of Waterloo. In 1997, he was appointed a companion of the Order of Canada.

But one of the more interesting points of his career is when he served as the Dean of the law school at the University of Western Ontario, my alma mater, between 1974-1979. In an e-mail to our law school community the . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada today granted leave to hear the appeal of Van Breda v. Village Resorts Limited, 2010 ONCA 84, a decision I blogged on earlier here.

One hopes the Court will take the opportunity to clarify when a court should take personal jurisdiction over out-of-province defendants since, despite a clear intention to clarify or update the law by the Ontario Court of Appeal, I am not convinced they did as much.

A search here on my custom Google search of Canadian law firms, blogs and journal sites shows a fair bit of chatter over this . . . [more]

On Tuesday July 6, I heard that the United States government filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona over the immigration law, arguing that it is meant to supersede the federal government's authority under the US Constitution to regulate immigration.

Activity in the LPO space is increasing. Wipro is the latest company to provide legal process outsourcing services to Microsoft. For those who haven’t heard of Wipro, let me enlighten you. Wipro is a $5.7 billion revenue IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organization with a presence in over 50 countries. What’s an IT/BPO giant like Wipro doing in the LPO space you might ask? It’s a good question. But if I were to guess, one has to think that they see the opportunity to service the growing demand for low cost, quality legal services. Wipro are reportedly planning to . . . [more]