In the past few years, sexual harassment allegations against several high-profile media executives have generated significant discussion, including on social media. Last week’s New York Times story titled “Decades of Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein” is no exception. My Twitter feed was alight with comments and commentary moments after the story was published. A couple of tweets in particular grabbed my attention:

https://twitter.com/annfriedman/status/916007341312454657

https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/916006424596975617

One of the reasons that these tweets struck me is because they reminded me of something that I heard a very established senior litigator say at a lawyer social event years back when I was . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research, writing, and practice.

Research

Check the Source Law (Not the Consolidation)
Susannah Tredwell

If you’re having difficulty finding the amendments made to an act by another act, make sure you’re consulting the original act rather than the consolidation. Consolidations generally omit amendments to other acts. …

Writing

Just How Frequently Is That?
Neil Guthrie

Bi– H.W. Fowler refers in Modern English Usage to the ‘misshapen brood’ of bi– words that are . . . [more]

Great post by John Sheridan over on VoxPopuli blog: “Deeply Intertwingled Laws.”

He starts off with this comment:

“There is no other form of written texts quite like legislation, nor a form so suited to the web. In retrospect, readers of legislation had been waiting a long time for a hypertext system, such as the web, to be invented.”

Sheridan is currently the Digital Director for the National Archives of the United Kingdom and led the team that brought us legislation.gov.uk the “official home” for UK legislation from 1237 the present.

Anyone who has done any legislative history . . . [more]

As the old song goes, we all need somebody to lean on. However, we can’t always have somebody to stand with – or against – us. In administrative law matters, there are two aspects of standing. One is the ability of a decision making body to participate in or commence judicial review proceedings. The other, which is the focus of this article, is the ability of individuals or corporation to appear before a tribunal or in judicial review proceedings.

One of the fundamental tenets of natural justice and procedural fairness is the right to a hearing, whatever form that might . . . [more]

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]