The past decade has generally seen a significant contraction in the admission of legal graduates in the U.S., largely influenced by broader economic trends. The ABA Journal reported in 2017,

For nearly 40 years starting in 1971, law schools had an average first-year class size of 246 students, peaking to 262 in 2010. Since then, that average has dropped 31 percent to an average of 182 students.

This trend reversed last year, which has been attributed in part to greater political polarization in the U.S., especially around key legal and constitutional issues. The Law School Admission Council volume comparisons over . . . [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) : L’intimé n’a pas enfreint l’ordonnance d’interdiction de se trouver dans un centre communautaire, rendue en vertu de l’article 161 (1) a) C.Cr., en se présentant à une bibliothèque municipale.

Intitulé : R. c. Boissonneault, 2019 QCCA 1074
Juridiction : Cour d’appel (C.A.), Montréal, 500-10-006476-178
Décision 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):

• Community Manager | National, Canada
  (CanLII)
• Experienced Solicitor (4 – 6 years) | Langley, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group LLP)
• Research Librarian (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Norton Rose Fulbright LLP Canada)
• Chief of Legal Operations (Full-time) |

During the first week of June this year, Canada’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology issued its Statutory Review of the Copyright Act Report, after an exhaustive and expensive Canada-wide polling of opinion. The result of a legislated five-year review of copyright, the report’s first recommendation is to strike this review mandate from the legislation. More than one witness pointed to how the conventional legislative reform process is working just fine.

That duly noted, if with a touch of irony, I’d like to focus my attention on a pair of consecutive recommendations, beginning with number 16: That the . . . [more]

The case of Dawe v. Equitable Life Insurance Company 2018 ONSC 3130, which extended the 24-month upper limit on the reasonable notice period for an older, long-term, senior manager who was unable to secure comparable employment to 30 months; and were the motion judge stated that, if asked, he would have awarded 36 months, was appealed.

You can read more on the motion judge’s decision on Slaw here.

On appeal, which decision (Dawe v. Equitable Life Insurance Company of Canada 2019 ONCA 512) was released on June 19, 2019, the appeal’s judge held that the motion judge’s approach . . . [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.

Social Justice as a Professional Duty: Effectively Meeting Law Student Demand for Social Justice by Teaching Social Justice as a Professional Competency

87 University of Cincinnati Law Review 77 (2018/19)

Spencer Rand is a Clinical Professor of Law at Beasley School of Law, Temple University. He teaches Poverty Law as a writing . . . [more]

This is the third column of a series on the Ten Laws of (Legal) Project Management. I’ll recap the ten laws at the end of this column, but for this month, let’s focus on some barriers to progress (Laws 3 and 4) and a pair of client-related suggestions (Laws 5 and 6).

By the way, the title of this article represents two different ideas. If you think of your clients as a barrier to progress, we may have a bigger problem here.

3. When You Discover You’re Digging a Hole, Stop Digging

Technically, this law is called the sunk-costs . . . [more]

The law is built on information. And with rapid advances in technology, the volume of legal information is immense and growing exponentially. It can be difficult to keep up. There are countless gigabytes of digital data on computers, phones, tablets, servers, and the Cloud, accessed anywhere and everywhere through the interface of a digital screen. Emails, text messages, and attachments are sent and replied to and forwarded hither and yon; electronic records are stored and deleted, sometimes following established protocols, often not. Technology evolves, and the hard drive of today soon becomes the floppy disk drive of tomorrow.

The law . . . [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. Shuttleworth v. Ontario (Safety, Licensing Appeals and Standards Tribunals), 2019 ONCA 518

[15] The Divisional Court accepted that an adjudicator’s discussion of a draft decision with colleagues does not in and of itself breach the rules of natural justice. It relied on Khan v. College of Physicians & Surgeons of Ontario (1992), 1992 CanLII 2784 (ON CA), 9 O.R. (3d) 641 . . . [more]

For reasons that I barely remember with clarity, I am the owner of a pitifully small number of shares in two companies that are participants in law, tax and professional publishing. I worry, however, that I, personally but unintentionally, might be doing harm to the law publishing business.

It’s not that in any way the expression of my opinions can hurt them, nor can I do so by my abilities in clever financial wizardry, nor am I able at all to affect their managements or shareholders; it is much more subtle and subliminal than that. Quite simply, my wagers on . . . [more]

Christopher Callow provided summer and winter maintenance to ten residential condominiums at Baycrest Gardens. The condos are managed by Condominium Management Group (CMG) and in particular by Tammy Zollinger, a Property Manager. A representative of each of the condo corporations formed the Joint Use Committee (JUC). CMG terminated Mr. Callow’s winter maintenance contract earlier than expected and did not offer him, contrary to his expectations, a subsequent winter contract.

Justice O’Bonsawin at trial, after a lengthy consideration of the testimony of Mr. Callow and seven witnesses for CMG, as well as the circumstances surrounding performance of the winter contract, . . . [more]

On April 6^th, 2019 the Canadian Bar Association hosted its first ever Health & Wellness Conference at the Shaw Center in Ottawa. Covering topics such as technology-based resources for mental health promotion, addressing the stigma of mental illness, reducing the risks of secondary trauma and compassion fatigue, and the state of addictions among lawyers, the Conference was an all-encompassing look into some of the most pressing issues facing our profession.

As I listened to the presentations and the informal discussions that took place throughout the day, I was repeatedly struck with the thought, or rather the question, “are . . . [more]