What is the most important part of your job? Can you answer that question immediately, or do you struggle to articulate just one aspect that is the most important? Did you choose the part that is the most important for you or the most important for your organization as a whole, or for your clients/students/library patrons?

Last week I was challenged to reassess the tasks that make up my job. As a law librarian at an academic institution in the third year of this pandemic, my team can be susceptible to the same feelings of burnout that are plaguing workers . . . [more]

When it comes to intellectual property, the question of integrity more often comes up around the ownership of the work than on the quality of the property itself. Yet in my work on scholarly communication, I have made the case to consider how the concept of intellectual property arose, long before such an idea existed in law, out of an intense consideration of a work’s intellectual qualities or properties. It was through a long history of scholarly inquiry into such properties, dating back in the West to medieval monasticism, that we have come to take for granted that a text . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Note Up Older Legislation
Susannah Tredwell

Noting up legislation is straightforward. On CanLII you enter the name or citation of the act in the note up field; in Lexis Advance you enter the citation of the section you are interested in preceded by cit: (e.g. cit: SBC 2011 c 25 s 160) and in Westlaw Canada you enter the citation of the section you are interested . . . [more]

Early this year, Justice Little of the Federal Court released the much-awaited decision in Ocran v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 175 (CanLII). I am not aware of any study permit judicial review litigation that attracted the attention of Canadian immigration lawyers as much as Ocran. The notoriety of this judicial review litigation was based on the fact that it was a test case that the Department of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) sought to use to obtain judicial approval for its use of the controversial Chinook software in processing of immigration applications. That approval . . . [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.

RESPONSABILITÉ : Le juge de première instance n’a pas commis d’erreur lorsqu’il a rejeté le recours en dommages-intérêts d’un homme qui estimait avoir été victime d’une erreur judiciaire; ce dernier n’avait pas démontré que la poursuite avait délibérément omis de lui communiquer des renseignements importants lors d’un procès pour meurtres . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:

• Litigation Lawyer (Full-time) | Halifax, NS
  (Gerald Walsh Associates)
• Policy Counsel (Permanent, Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
  (Federation of Law Societies of Canada)
• Board Member (Full-time) | Halifax, NS
  (Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board)
• Barrister & Solicitor (Full-time) | Edmonton,

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

The Rolling Stones’ 1969 song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” nicely highlights the difference between a preference and a requirement. This distinction also plays a critical role in the outcome of a family status discrimination claim in which a municipal employee’s request for altered hours arose out of and was ultimately defeated by choices she made.

In his decision, 2022 CanLII 51865, Ontario labour arbitrator Brian Sheehan traces the evolution of family status jurisprudence, and concludes that while an employee’s self-accommodation efforts are relevant, they . . . [more]

Chris Corrigan’s recent blog post is entitled “We grow through what we go through”. It is a fascinating reminder that learning about change is not enough to result in transformative changes in how we think and behave, especially in emergent, complex and dynamic environments (think justice system for example). Instead, he says:

If I want to learn to think differently I need to put myself in situations where the constraints afford me different possibilities to act differently.

He explores this idea using his own experience of learning to play jazz. You can watch and listen to others playing . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about. La version française suit.

For this last week, the most-consulted three English-language decisions were:

1. R. v. J.J., 2022 SCC 28 (CanLII)

[3] These appeals concern the constitutionality of Bill C-51, a recent ameliorative effort by Parliament to remove the barriers that have deterred complainants from coming forward. This bill, which was enacted in 2018 (An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Department of . . . [more]

“Customer service is the new marketing, it’s what differentiates one business from another.”
– Jay Baer, Author

Every legal marketer will tell you that they have two sets of clients – internal lawyers as well as the firm’s clients. For those of us working at larger firms, at any given time, our clients can also include Human Resources, IT, Knowledge Management, Finance, and so on. Similar to lawyers with demanding clients, legal marketers cannot predict the requests that will come in on any given day. But after a few years in these roles, many tend to master how best to . . . [more]

Social host liability is an area of law that is still being established. So far the courts are reluctant to find a prima facie duty of care. Without establishing a duty of care, negligence cannot be proven and damages cannot be awarded.

In McCormick v. Plambeck, 2022 BCCA 219, the BC Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s decision. The trial judge found that the plaintiff had not established a duty of care on the social hosts. It was not reasonably foreseeable that the plaintiff who arrived on foot and left on foot, would be injured as a passenger by . . . [more]