The sale of Wolters Kluwer’s remaining Croner/CCH publishing assets in the UK did not, of itself, significantly affect the bigger picture of law and tax publishing there, primarily because of the residual size and scope of its activities and failure to compete immediately prior to the sale. To some romantics and self-delusionists, it may be thought to be the end of an era, with wistful memories of Croner’s heyday in the last century; to others, for its, at times, unhinged, incompetent (or perhaps worse) and at top level, obscenely and inconceivably justifiable overpaid management and self-serving nitwit advisers and . . . [more]

“Justice is what the judge ate for breakfast”. – Judge Jerome Frank

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Nobel Prize winner explains this phenomenon. In a study of parole judges, the researchers plotted the proportion of approved requests for parole against the time since the last food break. It was found that the prospect of someone being granted parole changed during the elapsed time between food breaks.

The cases before the parole judges were presented in random order. Each case took around 6 minutes to hear. After each meal, the proportion of people granted parole increased.

Kahneman explained . . . [more]

At the Can-Tech (formerly known as IT.Can) conference this week Mike Brown of Isara Corporation spoke about quantum computing and security. Within a few short years quantum computing will become commercially viable. Quantum computing works differently than the binary computing we have today. It will be able to do things that even today’s super computers can’t.

For the most part that is a good thing. The downside is that quantum computers will be able to break many current forms of encryption. So it will be necessary to update current encryption models with something different.

That may not be a simple . . . [more]

The barriers to access to justice in the arena of family law have been well-researched and frequently commented upon, both on these pages and in a myriad of academic papers and government commissioned reports. For the most part, I feel like there’s really not much left to add.

I’ve read the research. I’ve practiced in the area. I’ve spoken and assisted self-representing parties. I’ve delivered public legal education sessions on the subject. And I’ve concluded, quite some time ago, that what’s needed more than anything else in this area, is massive systemic reform. Family law processes and the laws that . . . [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. Jarvis, 2017 ONCA 778

[103] Both the trial judge and the parties describe the expectation of privacy as an expectation that the teacher would not breach their relationship of trust by surreptitiously recording them without their consent. I agree with the respondent that this articulation conflates the two concepts of privacy and surreptitious recording, which are two separate requirements . . . [more]

The past year has seen communities around the world dealing with major weather events. Here in Canada flooding in Quebec and unprecedented wildfires in BC displaced tens of thousands, while the southern U.S. and South East Asia suffered from intense storms. Forget about polar bears – these communities are the new face of climate change.

And it’s going to be costly. The Insurance Board of Canada has repeatedly warned that climate change is driving the costs of weather-related disasters ever upward, including after record breaking losses in 2016.

​”Severe weather due to climate change is already costing Canadians

A highly-anticipated decision was released by Madam Justice Pollak of the Ontario Superior Court on October 16, 2017, granting the City of Toronto an interlocutory injunction against illegal cannabis dispensaries and their landlords which prohibits the dispensaries from operating until a final hearing is conducted in December 2018.

In her 46-paragraph decision, Justice Pollak focused heavily on whether the balance of convenience fell in favour of granting the City’s requested injunction vs. allowing the dispensaries to remain open pending a final adjudication in December 2018.

Justice Pollak summarized the lengthy amount of evidence put forward by each side before stating . . . [more]

One that got away

In my time at Carswell (now Thomson Reuters) I took a very aggressive approach to product development and was never very happy when an author signed with another publisher. Even more distressing was a decision by an author to go his or her own way and self publish a title that was originally published by Carswell. I always believed that publishing with an well established major legal publisher was the key to acceptance by the legal community and the key to commercial success. I was wrong.

One request by an author for the return of publishing . . . [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.

FAILLITE ET INSOLVABILITÉ : Les fiducies présumées créées aux termes de la Loi sur les régimes complémentaires de retraite, de la Loi de 1985 sur les normes de prestation de pension et de la Pension Benefits Act de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador ne sont pas applicables à une restructuration effectuée aux termes . . . [more]

By the time I was figuring out my stance on artificial intelligence, the legal tech talk had already moved on to blockchain. So I decided to write about something even more outdated – hyperlinks.

Links are the backbone of (legal) information systems

In research information systems we use citation information heavily. In the legal field, the cited-citing connections allow us to group documents into smaller universes. This feature of legal information is being exploited by virtually all providers for use in hyperlinking, to create citators, to provide the ability to note-up documents, and to rank search results. Citations can be . . . [more]