Yesterday an 8-1 majority of the Supreme Court of Canada held that section 517 of the Criminal Code is valid notwithstanding it infringes section 2(b) of the Charter. The decision is indexed as Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. v. Canada, 2010 SCC 21 (June 10, 2010).

Section 517 provides for a mandatory ban on the publication of “evidence taken, the information given or the representations made and the reasons, if any, given” at a bail hearing at the request of an accused person. In October, 2008, the Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed a Charter challenge to section 517 brought . . . [more]

Thanks to Kerri at the CBA for bring this May 2010 Law Society of Saskatchewan fraud alert to my attention.

It provides details (including copies of the correspondence and the collaborative family law agreement) about an attempted spousal support collection fraud that targeted a Saskatchewan lawyer in May. It really jumped out at me because the collaborative family law agreement provided by the fraudster was almost exactly identical to one used for a fraud attempt against an Ontario lawyer in April this year. The fraudster, who claimed to be Karen L Clarke in Saskatchewan, used a different name in Ontario . . . [more]

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I’ve been a sole practitioner for the last 7 years. Of the main office supply issues that continually crop up, chief among them are (1) paper, and (2) printer cartridges. Now, I’m fortunate in that I don’t practice in an area that has huge demands for document production (I’m thinking primarily of the family law/real estate law domains, whose demands for paper keep the forestry industry alive). Nevertheless, I go through a fair amount of paper and cartridges.

Like most small offices, I engaged in the “ink jet vs. laser” debate a number of years ago and, like most small . . . [more]

I am a regular user of the services and collection of the Alberta Government Library. The library organization has changed significantly over the years from embedded department libraries to a centralized model under the service branch of the government. The “significant change” trend is continuing in 2010.

There was a library group email list announcement recently that confirmed earlier rumours that three of seven branches (or sites as they are referred to) are closing as of October 1, 2010. Given that this consolidation will have a direct (likely negative) impact on my ability to gather information for my clients, . . . [more]

According to Fraud Watchers, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) has just over 1,000 authorized members, but the watchdog group estimates an additional 5,000 unauthorized “ghost” consultants operate in Canada, and likely many thousands more in other countries...

Ken Adams has a post up today over at his blog AdamsDrafting in which he explores a disagreement he has with a couple of Calgary lawyers about an aspect of how to draft a duty in a commercial agreement. At the core of the dispute are the meaning and utility of the phrase “best efforts,” and whether or not it imposes a higher obligation than “reasonable efforts.”

Jane Sidnell and Christopher Knight, of Fraser Milner Casgrain’s Calgary office opine in a newsletter [PDF] that “best efforts” is a more onerous standard, while Adams argues that notwithstanding some case law “any . . . [more]

1L – an accepted acronym in some areas for a first-year law student. Some prefer other labels with more letters.

3L – a label for a 3rd year law student, some of whom will soon be foisted on the deserving public.

2L – where many Maple Laff fans figure they’re bound for now, 0r in, now that it’s between the Laffs and the Cubbies, and the odds are the Cubbies will exit first. Is there a Mr. Applegate and a Joe Hardy in the Laff future?

Stanley’s Cup -without the apostrophe, something for which the NHL planned to move the . . . [more]

Here it is only Thursday and Google’s offering us some fool-around fun. Spreading slowly across the Googlesphere is the ability to change the background image on the iconic search page. See, for example, my partial illustration below, using the image of a blooming cactus from my garden, chosen for no better reason than that it happened to be in an accessible Picassa albumn. (Click on it to see the full glory.)

You can choose from among the glitzy photos or solid colours (try white) provided by Google, or you can upload pics of your own, which will be inserted into . . . [more]

Three simple words that just might be the single most important concept to getting, keeping and strengthening your business relationships. Often, however, living the client experience is one of those things that we talk about much more than we do.

Let’s first consider how hard it is to get a new client; wouldn’t we be better off spending some of that effort on holding onto the clients we already have? By taking the time to get to know our clients and their businesses?

All customers want to believe they are cared about and that their best interests are at the . . . [more]

Rian — the word means “path” in Irish — is the new National Portal for Ireland. The portal aggregates the contents of the digital repositories of seven Irish universities. A search for [law] turns up 312 results, ranging in dates and topics, for example, from a 2007 article “Alternative Sanctions and Social Norms in International Law: The Case of Abu Ghraib” to an article from 1872 “On the practicability of codifying English law, with a specimen code of the law of evidence.”

You can, of course, order search results by date, relevance, item type, and so on. . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada is having a teleseminar at noon today entitled “The New Guide to File Retention and File Destruction.”

I’m one of the speakers – talking about issues relating to electronic records.

One of the fundamental principles of electronic records from a records retention and destruction perspective, is that electronic records should be retained and destroyed on the same schedule as paper records.

As I was thinking about the issues, it occurred to me that if I had to hazard a guess, I suspect many law firms, and many businesses for that matter, have . . . [more]