Only “fair and reasonable” fees and disbursements can be charged by lawyers to their clients. This rule is uncontroversial, and applies across the country. Nevertheless, the following billing practices are used by some Canadian firms, and not clearly forbidden by regulation:[1]

• a retainer contract lists current hourly rates but also provides that the firm can increase those rates as much as it wants, at any point in the future without the client’s further consent
• a retainer can also allow a firm to both charge for each hour docketed, and charge the client whatever bonus the firm decides is appropriate

This past Friday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released a draft position on online reputation which includes a call for several measures that help protect Canadians, including the right to ask search engines to de-index web pages and removing information at the source.

In the accompanying press release, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien stated,

There is little more precious than our reputation. But protecting reputation is increasingly difficult in the digital age, where so much about us is systematically indexed, accessed and shared with just a few keystrokes. Online information about us can easily be distorted or

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 : Avec ce que les agents avaient comme information à la suite de leur enquête, un policier prudent et diligent se trouvant dans la même situation n’aurait pas conclu à l’existence de motifs raisonnables et probables de croire à la commission des infractions de traite de personnes, d’avantage matériel . . . [more]

Most businesses – especially law firms – must market to some degree. And they do. They have a website. They print business cards. They make sure the logo is used on tombstone ads and sponsorship programs. So law firms spend some money on marketing, and some of their lawyers even spend time on marketing – taking people to lunch, playing golf, attending a board or trade function, perhaps hosting a client seminar. Year in, year out it’s pretty much the same. They base their marketing spend on what they spent last year (perhaps with a bit of a bump). They . . . [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.

DIGITAL EVIDENCE: A PRACTITIONER’S HANDBOOK

Authors: Gerald Chan and Susan Magotiaux
Foreword: The Honorable Thomas A. Cromwell
General Editors: Justice Vincenzo Rondinelli and Brian H. Greenspan

ISBN: 978-1-77255-230-0
Publisher: Emond Publishing
Page Count: 235
Publication Date: November, 2017

Regular Price: $99
Series Subscription Price: $85

© 2017 Irwin Law. All rights reserved. . . . [more]

China is making slow but steady progress toward what western countries consider to be judicial independence (see authorities listed below). I asked a judge in Beijing (my wife assisting as interpreter) his views of the judiciary’s state of independence. He said that they have considerable independence but some cases involve other authorities.

Paralleling that, but apparently at a faster pace is the liberalization as to what is permitted in modern art. A few years ago we went to the 798 Photo Gallery of modern art in Beijing’s fashionable 798 Art Zone, located in Dashanzi, Chaoyang District of Beijing . . . [more]

January 28 is Data Privacy Day.

Privacy is becoming more challenging with new tech such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, autonomous cars, the internet of things, drones, and government agencies recording massive amounts of data in the name of security. Basic privacy concepts such as consent as we now know it may no longer be adequate to deal with some of these challenges. And the sheer number of ways our information gets used makes it almost impossible to truly understand, let alone trust, what others are doing with our information.

The IAPP is hosting Privacy After Hours events . . . [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. Cozzi v. Sidiropoulos, 2018 ONSC 309

[3] At that time, as part of the transfer of the file to his carriage, Mr. Sidiropoulos undertook to Mr. Cozzi to “protect” Mr. Cozzi’s account. Mr. Sidiropoulos claims that he understood that his undertaking was contingent upon Mr. Cozzi delivering his complete file material on a timely basis in order to permit the action . . . [more]

The New Year is a great time to re-assess old legal research tools and review new ones, so here’s a look at some of the additions to and changes in international legal information resources in the past couple of years.

New resources include the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (MPECCOL), Elgar encyclopedias on private international law and on international economic law, and Oxford International Organizations (OXIO)(freely accessible until July 2018). Also forthcoming from Oxford is the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law (MPEiPro).

HeinOnline’s foreign, comparative and international law (FCIL) content was enriched by the additions of . . . [more]

Often civil cases and criminal cases arise out of the same event. This creates an issue when the defendant of a criminal case is also a defendant in the civil case. Can the defendant then use the discovery evidence from the civil case in his criminal trial? Must the defendant bring a correlative “Wagg” motion to obtain the discovery evidence?

In Ontario, Rule 30.1 sets out the limits for using discovery evidence in one proceeding in another proceeding. Generally, a defendant cannot take discovery evidence from one case and use it another case. However, an exception is carved out to . . . [more]