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]
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights has agreed to hear a precedent-setting case against the United States based on environmental racism. Heavily polluting industries are often concentrated in poor areas, typically occupied by minorities. In the United States, these minorities tend to be black. The Canadian equivalents may be First Nations communities, such as the reserve just downwind of Sarnia’s Chemical Valley.
Mossville and Cancer Alley
The IACHR case relates to an African American hamlet named Mossville, Louisiana. Fourteen heavy industries lie between Mossville and its neighbour, Westlake, including an oil refinery, a coal burning power station and several . . . [more]
Sharon Davis at Hull & Hull has a new blog entry reminding lawyers that while they often remind clients of the importance of good estate succession planning, they should also give thought to succession planning for their own practices.
Will your clients be looked after in the event of your sudden death or incapacity? You’ll find some good practical tips here, including: making arrangements in advance with another lawyer, having your critical information stored in an easily accessible (to the assisting lawyer, at least) location, and having appropriate Powers of Attorney in place. You’ll also find links to guidelines and . . . [more]
On May 31st the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal issued a judgement with a number of broad statements about the proportionality principle and how it ought to be applied by courts in crafting discretionary orders under civil rules.
The underlying matter was about a motor vehicle claim and a list of broadly framed interrogatories served by a defendant immediately after the close of pleadings. The defendant argued that the interrogatories were necessary because the statement of claim requested general and special damages without any real degree of particularity. It also argued that the applicable court rules did not require . . . [more]
So the iPhone 4 is out. Its cool new features include:
Great minds think alike, or so they say. In this case, Slaw and Steve Jobs (well, Apple, really) have come up with pretty much the same thing: a way to make your web reading a whole lot easier. Apple released Safari 5 yesterday, the latest iteration of its browser (available for both Windows and Mac operating systems); among the other improvements you’ll find (such as increased speed, and the possibility of extensions) will be Reader. When the browser believes you’re reading an article — how it knows, I don’t know: a long stretch of text, presumably — it offers you . . . [more]
This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada | Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada
