One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all appeals as well as leaves to appeal granted so you will know what the SCC will soon be dealing with (June 12 – July 10, 2020 inclusive).

Appeals

Contracts: Arbitration Clauses; Unconscionability
Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller, 2020 SCC 16 (38534)

Mr. Heller started a class proceeding against Uber in Ontario for violations of employment . . . [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 : C’est l’exercice abusif ou déraisonnable du pouvoir discrétionnaire empreint de mauvaise foi ou s’apparentant à une faute lourde, à de l’incurie ou à une insouciance grave qui peut conduire à retenir la responsabilité de l’État, par opposition à l’exercice erroné de ce pouvoir; en l’espèce, la juge de . . . [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 (newest first):

• Freelance Copyeditor (Contract) | Anywhere in Canada
  (CanLII)

Does it make sense that lawyers elected by lawyers should effectively decide the permitted scope of practice of paralegals with whom they do or would compete for work? Does it make sense that lawyers and paralegals elected by their peers should decide what legal services can only be provided by lawyers and paralegals and thereby maintain their monopoly?[1]

On the other hand, does it make sense that elected lawyers and paralegals should decide what education and training is appropriate for licensing and what professional conduct should be required for appropriate advocacy in courts and tribunals and generally? Does it . . . [more]

On July 7, 2020, the Alberta government tabled Bill 32, The proposed Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act that will support economic recovery, restore balance in the workplace and get Albertans back to work. The Bill proposes changes to the Employment Standards Code and the Labour Relations Code. Labour and Immigration Minister Jason Copping stated to the media that the proposed legislation would support economic recovery by cutting “red tape” for businesses and would reverse some changes made by the NDP when they were in government. . . . [more]

There is a class-action lawsuit by Uber drivers in Ontario against Uber alleging, among other things, violations of employment standards legislation. The main issue is whether Uber drivers are independent contractors as the Uber agreement says, or whether they are actually employees.

But before those issues could be heard, the courts had to decide whether those issues could be litigated in the courts, or whether they had to be decided through binding arbitration, as stated in the Uber agreement. The Supreme Court of Canada found the arbitration clause invalid because it was “unconscionable”, and thus the merits of the case . . . [more]

Past Ontario Bar Association president David Sterns argues that we should defund the Ontario Civil Rules Committee. In its place we should involve new voices and take an inter-disciplinary approach to building the committee. I agree.

We need to either supplement or change the Civil Rules Committee. We must look towards engaging new people. Let’s not just tinker around the edges. Let’s engage new voices. We need new perspectives. We need to hear what lay people think. We need to hear the insight of experienced practitioners and judges. We need to hear what articling students and law students think. . . . [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. R v Howell, 2020 ABQB 385 (CanLII)

[315] If the objective of the ACMPR was to provide reasonable but safe access to medical marihuana, there does not appear to be any reasonable justification for the limitation on the THC concentration in oil and extracts.

[316] In my view, that prohibition fails because it is arbitrary. While there might be some rational . . . [more]

The world continues to change greatly and, whatever the future brings and despite any wilful and devious political and corporate hyperbole that abounds on these matters, it may well be that some aspects of the past will disappear or will alter to an extent. In the case of much that has been witnessed of late, we might certainly hope so. Almost without doubt, the pandemic is likely to create beneficial modernisation and efficiencies that can be enjoyed by the use of technology that was previously little-known, avoided or unavailable. We have indeed been forced lately to question much that has . . . [more]

Laws serve several purposes. In broad terms, they reflect government policy and prescribe the behaviour required to achieve it. More specifically, they tell us what we cannot do, unless we want to risk penalty, whether criminal, civil or regulatory; they identify (and these are not all laws) the moral attributes of a society; they serve to control, by framing the parameters of permissible activity; they have the goal of changing behaviour. Generally, laws are successful when they are enforced effectively and fairly, although neither may be the case for a particular law. And they tend to work when people think . . . [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

The Firm
Neil Guthrie

A reader asked why we call a group of lawyers who practise together a firm. The term goes back a while. In Italian, firma has been used since the sixteenth century to describe a commercial enterprise or business; the word also means ‘a signature’. … . . . [more]

I recently completed Harvard’s CS50: Introduction to Computer Science, offered online though edX. Given my role as a Legal Tech and Innovation Specialist, I work with a lot of technology. Gaining a deeper understanding of computer science seemed like an enjoyable side-project. I was partially correct.

(Sample code from one of my projects)

While learning about concepts like data structures, memory, and arrays is incredibly helpful, I was not prepared for how challenging it would be to apply these concepts into workable programs. Things that programmers can do without effort took me hours: iterating across a linked list of . . . [more]