This summer, with the support of a Donner Foundation fellowship, I developed web pages for Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO) that connect Ontario nonprofits to existing legal information on incorporation, maintenance, and governance. This article is about the process of creating those pages. My hope is that others will use the process in areas of law where legal information exists online, but is: overwhelming in quantity, difficult to find, and/or scattered.

Pitching the Project: The Pragmatic and Philosophical Justifications of Curation

Before anyone can start the project, somebody needs to be convinced it’s worthy of scarce resources. Why not . . . [more]

Litigants in Ontario are required to disclose every document in their power, control or possession that is relevant to the lawsuit at hand.

Often times one party is concerned about disclosing documents to the other that may be highly confidential from a business perspective. The “deemed undertaking” rule in Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure operates to alleviate some of that concern.

The deemed undertaking rule provides that

“all parties and their lawyers are deemed to undertake not to use evidence or information to which this Rule applies for any purposes other than those of the proceeding in which the evidence . . . [more]

Have you ever noticed the big impact a small adjustment in your thinking and perspectives can have? How a shift in attitude can lead to a change in outcomes?

My coaching practice is all about helping people get the results they want by changing their behaviours. Behaviours change when we shift our thinking and challenge our own deep beliefs.

Setting mastery goals is a simple, effective practice for your own self–coaching.

Mastery goals are long term goals that track learning and progress over time. They are all about getting better – improving.

A mastery goal starts with the statement:

My . . . [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.

PROFESSIONS : La demande en jugement déclaratoire de la Chambre des notaires du Québec et du Barreau du Québec, qui prétendaient que les compagnies d’assurances titres se livraient à un exercice illégal de la profession de notaire ou d’avocat, est rejetée.

Intitulé : Chambre des notaires du Québec c. Compagnie . . . [more]

One year ago, I called for greater diversity in judicial appointments. The federal government responded, implementing significant changes in the appointment process, and prioritizing diversity as a form of merit.

Our ad hoc group, Lawyers for Representative Diversity, representing the majority of diverse legal organizations in Canada, then approached the provincial government in Ontario. The situation in Ontario has long been different than that of the federal government, primarily because the province is the most diverse in Canada.

Earlier this month, the provincial government announced new policies around judicial appointments, including options on application forms ” to self-identify as Indigenous, . . . [more]

For the past few years, Queen’s Law has been exploring new teaching and learning tools in the classroom and beyond. “Blended” learning has been a growing component in our teaching: providing more course materials and videos online, so instructors can use more of the classroom time for discussion, problem solving and the application of the materials – and less time in a traditional top-down lecture format. And, while that approach is not new, it has led to other educational initiatives at Queen’s.

We are currently participating in a pilot project to explore Echo 360, a remarkable program developed by . . . [more]

The 20th edition (2017) of the Code civil du Québec annoté by Jean-Louis Baudouin & Yvon Renaud is now available on the website of the CAIJ.

CAIJ is the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique, the network of courthouse law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association.

The annotated Civil Code includes:

• links to caselaw and commentary on each section
• links to section-by-section explanations produced in 1993 by the Quebec Ministry of Justice as the new Code was making its way through the National Assembly
• links to parliamentary debates in the early 1990s
• concordances for the Civil Code of Lower Canada

The employee in this case appealed the dismissal of his wrongful dismissal action. One of the issues on appeal was whether the trial judge reversed the onus on the employee to prove just cause. . . . [more]

Lawyer competence is a relatively new concern for Canadian law societies. It was only in the 1970s, for example, that law societies really embraced the idea that they had a formal mandate to regulate the post-entry competence of lawyers. In addition to being a relatively new regulatory concern, lawyer competence is also an increasingly complex issue. Law practice has become highly specialized. Also, our understanding of lawyer competence has become more nuanced, now implicating a wide range of matters including, for example, technology, culture and wellness.

How best to handle this modern reality? Adding length and detail to rules of . . . [more]

Last week, I attended a ceremony for 80 new citizens as a guest of Friends of Filipino Immigrants in Manitoba. The room was packed with folks from 18 different countries all coming together to celebrate becoming Canadian. The atmosphere was festive, bordering on jubilant. A choir of children started the national anthem and we all joined in. Some sang in English and others in French. And the Citizenship Judge, Dwight MacAulay, reminded us of some of the key events over the past 150 years that have built this country before he bestowed the prize that each of them . . . [more]

“I’ve got nothing to hide” is a common retort from people who are blasé about privacy. Their point is that they have done nothing wrong, so they don’t care how much of their information and habits are public.

The flaw in that retort is that information about us can be used in many ways and for many things that we might not expect. And things that we may think are normal and innocuous may be offensive to others who can make life difficult because of it. For example, the US Justice department is trying to get the names of over . . . [more]