Back when I started in Law Firm Marketing, the IT department was God and Marketing was a vestigial part of Admin. Everything that didn’t earn fees was dumped in Marketing. We took care of golf tournaments, firm giveaways, and oh yes, holiday cards. We didn’t decide what events would be run or newsletters issued; we just did what we were told. Many of us could scarcely keep from muttering, “Did you want fries with that?” as we left a meeting.

IT, on the other hand, decided what software the firm would use, what hardware to run it on, and what . . . [more]

The Court of Justice of the European Union is hearing arguments on whether the right to be forgotten under EU law (notably based on the Spanish case from 2014 that started all this discussion) should be applied globally by search engines. Here is The Guardian’s report.

You will notice that the report closes with a mention of the Canadian Supreme Court decision (in Equustek, not named) where the court made its takedown order against Google globally. I did not think the SCC dealt well with the arguments being raised at the CJEU, namely that if France, or Canada, . . . [more]

When the Copyright Modernization Act was passed in 2012 with Bill C-11, most observers acknowledged that stronger enforcement mechanisms were needed for online piracy. However, even at that time there were concerns about the measures undertaken to address these concerns.

Most controversial were the notice-and-notice provisions that came into force on Jan. 2, 2015, which require ISPs and website hosts to convey notices of copyright infringement allegations to customers using their services.

The almost immediate effect was thousands of these notices being provided to Canadian consumers, many of them making demands for monetary settlement. The system was also subject to . . . [more]

The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, an independent organization affiliated with the University of Calgary, closed on 31 August 2018. The closure of the Institute is somewhat of a national tragedy, given that it was one of the very few organizations conducting empirical research on family law, justice processes and access to justice in Canada, and was the inevitable result of today’s singularly infelicitous funding climate.

The Institute has conducted some remarkable, innovative and often ground-breaking work over the 31 years of its existence. Highlights include some of the first work on the financial consequences of . . . [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.

TRAVAIL : Puisque la preuve qu’a retenue la juge de première instance n’établit pas que l’appelant, un courtier en assurance de dommages, a contrevenu à l’obligation de non-sollicitation prévue à son contrat de travail, elle ne pouvait le condamner à des dommages-intérêts sous ce chef.

Intitulé : Lemieux c. Aon . . . [more]

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal clarified that stress from a workplace investigation is a non-compensable workplace event. . . . [more]

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.

A Thought Experiment About the Academic ‘Billable’ Hour or Law Professors’ Work Habits

Eli Wald is the Charles W. Delaney Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. A legal ethics expert, Wald has written on topics such as diversity and inclusiveness, lawyers and cybersecurity, lawyer mobility, and . . . [more]

In 2015, the Alberta government extended coverage for disclosure of public servant salaries (aka the sunshine list) to those who make more than $125,000 per year. The new legislation was celebrated by all political parties as a victory for “transparency” and “open government”, and the right of taxpayers to know how public money is being spent. The legislative record is replete with these platitudes yet devoid of any specific policy objective.

When Ontario created their list back in 1996, the immediate goal seemed to be to shame public servants as a prelude to government cutbacks. If the longer term objective . . . [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. Tsleil-Waututh Nation v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 153

[5] Applying largely uncontested legal principles established by the Supreme Court of Canada to the factual record, a factual record that is also largely not contested, I conclude that most of the flaws asserted against the Board’s process and findings are without merit. However, the Board made one critical error. The Board . . . [more]

I once wrote an article titled “Does Civility Matter?” I don’t regret the article, but I regret the title. I regret it because it suggests that I oppose civility as an ambition or virtue of the good lawyer. I don’t. My point (developed further in a more aptly titled 2012 paper) was rather that when law societies regulate lawyer civility they either regulate something they shouldn’t (politeness) or they regulate something they should but in the wrong way (treating ethical violations generically as incivility rather than precisely as specific breaches of a lawyer’s duties). I still hold those . . . [more]

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

In The Atlantic article “The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing“, the author Victoria Clayton critiques opaque writing that infects academic journals. She writes that the prose is “riddled with professional jargon and needlessly complex syntax… even someone with a Ph.D. can’t understand a fellow Ph.D.’s work unless he or she comes from the very same discipline.” This critique could easily be applied to legal writing, including some factums and judicial decisions.

Clayton explains that the main reason for opaque writing may not be so sinister. She . . . [more]