The Condominium Authority Tribunal is experiencing a trend. There has been an increase in the number of applications filed that do not fit within its jurisdiction. The parties in these cases are often neighbours who live in a community while they continue looking for ways to resolve their dispute.

In such situations, people can often find guidance on how to escalate matters, but what happens when a situation does not warrant that time and cost?

Let’s look at a couple of examples and explore ways the parties can address their issue without resorting to escalation…

Ramadhin v. Niagara South Standard . . . [more]

Each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1 . Nootchtai v. Nahwegahbow Corbiere Genoodmagejig Barristers and Solicitors, 2025 ONSC 6071

[11] The issue before me in this proceeding is whether the Legal Team, as licensed legal professionals and members of the bar of Ontario, are entitled to a whopping $510,000,000.00 as a 5% contingent fee on the $10 billion settlement . . . [more]

While reading Susannah Tredwell’s post, Does this case really exist? from last October, I realized how much this question is at the heart of my work. As the Associate Librarian for International and Comparative Law, I joke with my students and colleagues, most people think they don’t need my expertise until they desperately need me. Despite the fact that they come to my office last minute, with multiple deadlines upon them and at the cusp of a nervous breakdown, I do tend to help them with a simple yet existential question: Does this even exist?

When it comes to legal . . . [more]

Trouble sleeping? Try having your phone read the Rules of Civil Procedure to you. You’ll drift off to a soothing stream of minutiae, like sheep jumping over a fence. Very few Big Ideas will excite you. Most rules (not to mention the subrules and the clauses and the subclauses) are about what a party or court must do in a very specific scenario. For example, my civil procedure students always perk up when I tell them about Rule 20.04(4), which explains what to do if a summary judgment motion is deemed to involve only a question of law, but . . . [more]

It’s December first and that of course means it’s time to open up Clawbies nominations! And because we are getting set to issue our 20th edition of the awards, we called in for reinforcements!

The 2011 Friends of the North Winners, Three Geeks and a Law Blog were kind enough to use their Geek in Review podcast to host Sarah, Jordan and myself to kick off this year’s awards. The conversation gave us a chance to reflect on twenty years of open legal web publishing, and the role of legal authors as beacons for truthful online conversation. . . . [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) : Le juge de première instance, qui a erré dans l’analyse du témoignage de la victime dans une affaire de leurre, ne pouvait par ailleurs fonder sa décision sur le résultat de ses recherches concernant la signification de l’expression «BZ» employée dans les messages texte sans avoir au . . . [more]

As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted.

Appeals

Class Actions: Securities; Secondary Market Disclosure
Lundin Mining Corp. v. Markowich, 2025 SCC 39 (40853)

“Material change” broadly interpreted re securities disclosure. . . . [more]

Transformative change is underway in the Canadian lawyer licensing system. Two of the country’s largest law societies have signalled the impending end of high-stakes, multiple-choice legal-knowledge exams as the primary test of lawyer licensure.

In Ontario, a September report from the Law Society of Ontario (LSO)’s Professional Development and Competence Committee proposed that the current multiple-choice barrister and solicitor exams be replaced with a “mandatory skills-based course with assessments for all licensing candidates.”

The committee identified a lengthy list of problems and challenges associated with the written exam system, including:

• Written exams fail to assess core practice skills like interviewing,

I recently met a 1L who is interested in immigration and refugee law. She cold-called my office and I agreed to meet with her. She is well travelled and she has a passion for social justice. She did extensive research into the area and she was well prepared. She asked what she can be doing during her law degree to put herself on good footing for this type of practice. Good question. My first thought was to learn active listening and develop the skills of a social worker. I’ll explain.

We have many (many!) international students and foreign workers who . . . [more]

This submission is part of a column swap with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) bimonthly member magazine, AALL Spectrum. Published six times a year, AALL Spectrum is designed to further professional development and education within the legal information industry. Slaw and the AALL Spectrum board have agreed to hand-select several columns each year as part of this exchange. 

The Data Rescue Project is an archetypal librarian story. A community of data librarians, researchers, concerned individuals, and organizations sprang into action to preserve U.S. federal government data after it began disappearing from websites at a rapid pace in . . . [more]

As has been widely reported over the past two weeks, the Law Society of Ontario is considering eliminating the existing bar exams and replacing them with “a mandatory skills-based course with assessments”.

The LSO is currently seeking feedback from lawyers and the public on its proposal to replace the existing barrister and solicitor examinations with an online course involving training and instruction as well as both interim and final assessments by trained lawyers.

Ontario’s Attorney General, Doug Downey, came out strongly against reform, tweeting:

“An objective, written and rigorous test is an important part of proving new lawyers are ready