Jane wants to ask the partner she works with about raising her salary, but she is afraid to initiate the conversation.

John works with a disorganized partner who is a last-minute delegator. John has ideas about how he can better support the partner but doesn’t know how to raise the subject.

Why is it that speaking up and making requests can be so hard to do? Why does self-advocacy raise so many fears?

The difficulty in speaking up is often about the tension between exercising personal power and tending to our relationships.

It can seem like communicating about what’s important . . . [more]

On April 16, 2021, the Province of Ontario introduced new measures under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, which would allow law enforcement to stop individuals and vehicles, asking them the reasons for leaving their home.

The government believed it necessary to stop COVID-19, as part of their broader support to a complete lockdown and stay at home order to battle a third wave of the virus.

The amendment to O. Reg 294/21 stated,

Requirement to provide information

2.1 (1) This section applies as of

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) : Dans le contexte d’un appel d’une déclaration de culpabilité sous le chef d’avoir omis d’obtempérer à l’ordre donné par un agent de la paix de fournir un échantillon d’haleine (art. 254 (5) C.Cr.), la Cour d’appel déclare que l’arrêt Petit c. R. (C.A., 2005-07-22), 2005 QCCA 687, . . . [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:

• Operations Manager – College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents (Full-time) | Remote/Canada
  (College of Patent and Trademark Agents of Canada)

What makes for an effective and efficient law society? This isn’t a question without controversy. The last several decades abound with debate about what exactly Canadian law societies should be doing and how they should be doing it. Two propositions, however, strike me as relatively uncontroversial: (1) law societies should engage in evidence-based policy making; and (2) law societies should continually evolve their approaches in response to changes in the legal services environment. In short, we need smart and relevant regulation.

The regulatory “sandbox” that will be considered by Law Society of Ontario (LSO) Benchers next week is a prime . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Guthrie’s Guide to Better Legal Writing, 2/e

Author: Neil Guthrie
ISBN: 9781552215692
Publisher: Irwin Law Inc.
Page Count: 300 pages
Publication Date: April 9, 2021
Regular Price: $60

Excerpt: 159–62 and 255–60 [cross-references and citations omitted]

TERMS FOR LAWYERS

Counsel

Counsel is an ancient term for one’s legal advisers as a body . . . [more]

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

For this last week:

1. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. v. Soost, 2010 ABCA 251 (CanLII)

[9] Under such contracts, the common terminology is sloppy, even misleading. We speak of “wrongful dismissal”, or damages for that. But there is no such thing there as wrongful dismissal (apart from federal legislation). Under such a contract, either side may validly end the contract at any time. The employee neither . . . [more]

There are important benefits that derive from understanding the impacts of lawyer-assisted civil dispute resolution. In a 2019 article published in the Alberta Law Review, authors Sarah Buhler and Michelle C. Korpan consider this issue as relates specifically to legal representation provided through legal aid and clinic settings in Canada.[1] Underlying the case that the article makes for this type of research is the recognition that this is one of many areas in which there is a considerable lack of justice research in Canada.[2] One of the reasons identified for conducting this kind of research is the effect . . . [more]

In the article” Ontario Civil Justice Reform in the Wake of COVID-19: Inspired or Institutionalized?” by Suzanne E. Chiodo, Professor Chiodo remarks that “Ontario’s justice system is already facing an overwhelming backlog, and the courts’ inability to function at full capacity—combined with the spike in litigation that is sure to follow the pandemic —could lead to a breakdown of the system.” 

Unfortunately, simply moving court processes online to Zoom will not demolish the backlog. Some of the contributing factors to the backlog include: a poorly structured system, chronic underfunding of the courts, and outdated rules from the Rules of . . . [more]

A recent decision in British Columbia supports the proposition that, in commercial arbitration at least, the successful party may expect to fully recover their reasonable legal costs and expenses. Do recent changes in the B.C. Arbitration Act reinforce that principle?

In Allard v. The University of British Columbia, 2021 BCSC 60, Madam Justice Karen Douglas says that “the “normal rule” in arbitrations is that the successful party is entitled to “indemnification costs unless there are special circumstances that would warrant some other type of costs.” [Paragraph 78]

“Indemnification costs” are a party’s actual legal costs and expenses, and contrast . . . [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

Changes
Neil Guthrie

The meanings of words change over time. A nice example is condescending, which not so long ago meant something along the lines of ‘being gracious to the underlings’ (the King James Bible, Dr Johnson and Lord Byron use it in this sense). Since the later nineteenth century, it has meant ‘patronising’ (in a bad way; that also once had a neutral or even . . . [more]