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 bâtonnière du Barreau du Québec échoue en appel du jugement de la Cour supérieure ayant rejeté son recours en nullité d’une décision du Comité d’accès à la profession qui avait déclaré l’intimé admissible à l’inscription au tableau de l’Ordre

Intitulé : Synnott c. Émond, 2017 QCCA 676 . . . [more]

University of Alberta Copyright Librarian Amanda Wakaruk is asking people to sign the petition she started to get the Canadian government to fix Crown copyright.

Her text has been shared widely in the past few days on social media and on various librarian discussion lists:

“Canada is one of many countries stating a commitment to Open Government. It is also, conversely, one of a decreasing number of countries to retain a legal provision that gives the government the sole right to reproduce and distribute works produced for public consumption. For example, the vast majority of federal US government works

I’m going to take a crack at a list of things that your law practice probably tracks and measures:

• The number of hours each lawyer works
• The number of hours each lawyer bills
• The amount of money the firm receives for the work it bills
• The percentage of that money that should be allocated to the originating partner
• The amount of money the firm spends to provide its services
• The amount of overall profit the firm generates in a given period of time
• The amount of that profit distributed to each equity partner
• How that amount compares to profits distributed

After a recent review of Alberta’s employment law, the Alberta government tabled Bill 17, Fair and Family-friendly Workplaces Act on May 24, 2017 to make a number of significant amendments to the Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code. If enacted, the majority of changes will take effect January 1, 2018.

Both the Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code have not been significantly updated in almost 30 years and according to the Alberta government, the nature of work and family life have changed a lot since then. . . . [more]

[Download the accompanying spreadsheet here]

Quantifying the value of legal information is difficult: the most valuable commodity in a law firm is the knowledge in the minds of the people who work there, and in the written information firms produce and acquire that elucidates their work. In the event of a bankruptcy, it’s possible that the only assets left to settle debts is the art on the walls, because the value can’t be recovered from the people’s heads when they leave — I always look at the art in law firms. The value of this information is more . . . [more]

This article was updated June 1, 2017

On May 30, 2017, the Ontario government decided to move forward with some of the 173 recommendations from the Changing Workplace Review final report which includes broad ranging amendments to Ontario’s Employment Standards Act.

At the same time, the government also announced that they will be increasing the minimum wage effective January 1, 2018, which was not included in the report. . . . [more]

The WannaCry ransomware attack of almost 3 weeks ago may be a fading memory – but we can’t forget how important it is to protect our computer systems. This is true no matter what kind of business or organization you are.

This video does a good job of summarizing what happened.

The bottom line is that there are some basic things everyone needs to do to reduce the chances of ransomware or malware affecting us. Unfortunately not everyone does these simple things.

They include:

• Keeping software and patches up to date
• Upgrade operating systems before support ends (that means you

In an interview for a recent Law Times article[1] I expressed the view that one of the main objectives of the legal health check-up (LHC) approach is to establish outreach in order to identify people with unexpressed legal need and to provide pathways along which people can travel to obtain help with legal problems. I have written about this in previous reports[2] The intermediary – clinic partnerships and the legal health check-up questionnaire are the means of identifying unmet legal need and the working relationships between the legal clinic and community groups are the pathways to justice. The . . . [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. Brake v. PJ-M2R Restaurant Inc., 2017 ONCA 402

[119] Since the employment income that Ms. Brake earned during her statutory entitlement period is not deductible from the damages award, the trial judge ought to have determined her statutory entitlement period and identified which items of employment income were attributable to that period and which were attributable to the Balance of the . . . [more]

Companies have stories to tell, pitches to make and information to be shared. Using a “multichannel communication” program sounds pretty cool, but what is it? Is this new? And what channels are available?

To understand multichannel communication, it is important to appreciate that there are different ways of sharing information – push, passive and interactive. Email and social are great ways to push content, whereas as passive methods such as an intranet or posters require people have to seek your content. In person, either through meetings or tools such as YouTube Live, allow for interaction which generally offer the most . . . [more]

A recent decision out of Nova Scotia has ordered an employee insurance plan to cover medical marijuana expenses.

Gordon “Wayne” Skinner was an elevator mechanic who developed both physical and mental disabilities as a result of an on-the-job motor vehicle accident in August, 2010. The accident left Wayne unable to work and qualified him for permanent impairment and extended earnings replacement benefits.

For the two years following the accident Wayne attempted to treat his disabilities exclusively through narcotic and non-narcotic pain medication and anti-depressants without success.

In 2012, Wayne obtained a prescription and license to consume medical cannabis. Wayne found . . . [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.

Technology

Adding Personal Notes to Outlook Email Messages
Law Society of Saskatchewan

A question I have been asked numerous times is how to add personal notes, annotations, additional information or comments to an email that you have sent or received. There are numerous imperfect ways to add notes to email messages received or sent but no perfect method. For now, we can only pick one or two imperfect workarounds and . . . [more]