When disaster strikes, other professions have formalized organizations to assist with the response and recovery that follows. Physicians have Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and engineers have Engineers Without Borders. As a former disaster management professional and first responder, a career in law sometimes feels geographically limiting.

Lawyers are notoriously apt to stick within borders, and to a certain extent there are constraints to the portability in law. However, my humanitarian work overseas, and the implementation of Sphere Principles, was one of my first exposures to real-world implementation of international law, and one of the roads that eventually . . . [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.

MUNICIPAL (DROIT) : La Ville de Québec ne pouvait officiellement encourager le demandeur à poursuivre son projet de construction nécessitant une dérogation mineure alors que ses représentants autorisés, de façon occulte, poursuivaient un processus décisionnel pour empêcher sa réalisation; dans ces circonstances, elle est condamnée à payer à ce dernier . . . [more]

The rise of specialization is among the biggest changes in the practice of law over the past hundred years. Most lawyers and paralegals are increasingly able to focus on a smaller number of legal niches. That is good news, for practitioners and also for clients. However, I will suggest here that generalist legal professionalism has an enduring role in fostering access to justice.

Specialization and Generalism Defined

Consider all of the different types of legal need experienced by Canadian individuals, corporations, and state entities within a year. The list would include everything from drafting a will to structuring a merger . . . [more]

On September 11, 2017, an amended version of Bill 148, Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017 was ordered for second reading and is currently being debated. Amendments to Bill 148 so far include: . . . [more]

My last two posts focussed on tips for vendor demos and vendor horror stories. I promised, though, I would be fair to the many excellent vendors in our ecosystem. In this final vendor-related post, I relay some “above and beyond” stories I’ve collected.

Coming Through with the Business Case

As our clients push us to provide better metrics on our legal services, so too have we turned this focus inwards. It’s hard to get a business case or project approved without some good numbers to back up the ask. This is where vendors can, and do, save the day.

About . . . [more]

With the rise of technology, new programs are being created to predict the outcome of legal cases. These programs are often built on algorithms.

These algorithms generate outcomes by applying the facts of previously decided cases to the facts inputted by users. This means that the quality of the prediction is only as good as the data inputted by both the user and the programmer.

However, these programs should come with a warning. In “Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era” by Professor Daniel Levitin he states:

GIGO is a famous saying coined by early computer scientists:

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. Szczerbaniwicz, [2010] 1 SCR 455, 2010 SCC 15

[2] As in most trials involving domestic disputes, the spouses in this case offered differing versions of the same event. After hearing and watching both of them, the trial judge reached his own conclusions about what actually happened and convicted the husband of assault. Those conclusions were based on the facts . . . [more]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the psychology of negotiation.

In the negotiation course I teach at University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies a few times a year, I have consistently seen that the students are quite good at understanding their own negotiation styles, strengths and weaknesses. They understand the difference between their positions and interests. They recognize the importance of empathy in building a negotiating relationship and value the active listing and other negotiating skills we practice.

Where these students – and most negotiators, I think – have trouble is understanding the motivations and interests of their . . . [more]

This article is by Nora Rock, corporate writer and policy analyst at LAWPRO.

As a child, did you step carefully over every sidewalk crack? Tap each post of the hockey net before settling into the crease? Wear your lucky socks to every law school exam?

Even those of us who scorn superstition rely on routines and rituals for our own protection: we swallow a daily multivitamin, fasten our seatbelts, return our passport to the drawer after a trip. Routines conserve mental energy, allowing us to sidestep day-to-day hazards while saving our intellectual energy for novel or challenging problems.¹

Building routines . . . [more]

The City of Toronto squared off last week in court against a chain of illegal marijuana dispensaries (“Canna Clinic”) and their owners in a bid to shut the stores down once and for all.

The City sought an interim and interlocutory injunction restraining Canna Clinic and its owners from, among other things, using the properties from which they operate to sell, store or distribute marijuana.

The City’s application was brought under section 380 of the City of Toronto Act, 2006 which allows the City to bring an application to restrain any conduct which contravenes a city by-law. In this particular . . . [more]

“Apps’” (as used herein, means the application of software to create electronic systems, programs, processes, devices, etc., in relation to legal services) are being developed in many locations. They appear to be an important part of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s (LSUC’s) response to the unaffordable legal services problem (“the problem”). It exists because the method of producing legal services dictates that there can be no economies-of-scale in the practice of law, i.e., the cost of production cannot be lowered by greater volumes of production. To gain the necessary economies of scale, support services methods . . . [more]

“I’ve never been more optimistic more excited about where we’re going with technology than I am today. This is just an absolute, I mean, we’re in the middle of a revolution and I think it’s going to completely impact how we deliver legal services. And I actually think that in this space, in the nonprofit legal aid space, we’re going to make great strides in this, and kind of lead the way in many ways.”–IV Ashton

IV Ashton is a Chicago-based attorney and founder of LegalServer, a “web-based case management platform for the legal aid community.” . . . [more]