We recently had a discussion about police access to the recordings made by in-home digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and its (her?) ilk.

Now our focus turns to the actions of these devices if they do bad things themselves. This story reports that Siri, Apple’s version, routinely answered requests in Toronto for prostitutes by referring the inquired to an “eSports bar” – one where clients play electronic sports games. Apparently the word may be too close to “escorts” for Siri’s sense of discrimination. It is clear – take it as established for the present discussion – that the bar is . . . [more]

Starting this fall Harvard Law School will allow applicants to submit their scores from either the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). This is a significant departure from the last 70 years, where LSATs have been considered a rite of passage.

Even though the LSAT provides a “neutral” way to measure students from diverse schools and programs, it’s continued use must be questioned.

Many of the critiques that apply to the SAT apply to the LSAT. The SAT has been “called out of touch, instructionally irrelevant, and a contributor to the diversity gaps on college . . . [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 & Writing

4 Questions to Ask About Any Database (Part 4)
Ken Fox – Law Society of Saskatchewan Library

This is the fourth and final part of a series on questions you should ask about any electronic research source. Catch parts 1-3 of this series here, here and here. 4. How are the results ORDERED? Don’t assume relevance ranking. Our databases, for example, always order the results in reverse . . . [more]

If you care about solicitor-client privilege, travel to the US and use computing technology, then read this:

By its own admission, US border protection conducted five-times as many electronic media searches in a single year—4,764 in 2015 to 23,877 in 2016.

Yup. That’s 500% more cause for anyone travelling to the US to be concerned. Should Canadian lawyers be cautious too? Yes.

America’s digital rights sentinel, Electronic Frontier Foundation, just released its 2017 reboot to its guide for mitigating risks to digital privacy when travelling to the US. The newly minted guide (last revised in 2011) is titled “Digital . . . [more]

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

The last time you bought a house or searched for a rental apartment, how did you choose, and how did you feel about your choice afterward?

Psychologists studying the relationship between how we make choices and our life satisfaction have found that those who put the greatest effort into making choices are rewarded with less happiness.

In his book The Paradox of Choice, Dr. Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology from Pennsylvania sorts decision-makers into two broad categories. “Satisficers” settle promptly on the first option that . . . [more]

I work in the justice sector managing a collective impact initiative that facilitates collaboration with institutional, political and community stakeholders. Our goal is to develop meaningful, public-focused access to justice solutions for Ontario. The term “innovation” is one that I hear often, delivered with a sense of urgency to catch up, to be more like other sectors and to make better use of technology. This pressure – and the related jargon – can at times obscure what innovation is really about and inadvertently alienate. Of course, innovation is about change but it doesn’t have to entail a scorched earth approach . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Mack’s Criminal Law Blog  2. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog 3. StartupSource  4. Peter Sankoff  5. Clio Blog

Mack’s Criminal Law Blog
Avoiding an otiose and absurd result

Carson Bingley was driving his car, poorly. His driving was erratic. He cut off one driver and . . . [more]

Few things are as contentious in the bar in Ontario as the scope of paralegals. Created in 2007, paralegals have been practicing under a limited scope which has explicitly excluded the provision of family services.

Last week, Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo released the Family Legal Services Review report, which was part of the Expanding Legal Services Options for Families review being conducted by the Ministry of the Attorney General.

Although the report also focuses on more unbundled services and coaching by lawyers, and use of law students to provide family law, it recognizes,

The most controversial recommendations, however, will be

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.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : À la lumière de R. c. Jordan (C.S. Can., 2016-07-08), 2016 CSC 27, SOQUIJ AZ-51302609, 2016EXP-2173, J.E. 2016-1212, le tribunal retient la complexité de l’affaire et rejette la requête en arrêt des procédures dans le cas des politiciens, fonctionnaires, ingénieurs, entrepreneurs et collecteurs de fonds impliqués dans . . . [more]

CAIJ, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (the network of courthouse law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association), has signed resource sharing agreements with many major law firms in Québec that make their legal commentary freely available on the organization’s website.

This week, CAIJ announced that it will now feature texts written by lawyers from the firm of McCarthy Tétrault. This means there are 29 law firms that share material with CAIJ in English and French.

Their material will be added to a collection that already includes full-text commentary and textbooks including the Développements récents  (annual reviews of . . . [more]

Experiential learning was placed on the agenda for North American law schools when Educating Lawyers by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was published in 2007 (commonly called the Carnegie Report).

The Carnegie Report called for law schools to integrate “the three apprenticeships” of legal education into their curricula: theory, ethics, and practical skills. Over the past decade, many US law schools have taken up the challenge.

Canadian law schools have been slower to respond, but momentum is building for the integration of practical skills into the curriculum. A listing of experiential learning opportunities in Canadian law . . . [more]

In July of 2015, a family lawyer in Winnipeg suffered severe injuries when a bomb was delivered to her office and was detonated. This incident hit our legal community hard. Sessions were offered to identify suspicious packages; a Personal Safety Handbook was developed and many lawyers became hyper vigilant. While many in our legal community were horrified, incredibly empathetic and wanted to help; others reacted differently. The impact on some involved very real trauma and the true fear that this could/would happen to them. A similar reaction occurred in 2007 when a Senior Crown Attorney was subject to an attempted . . . [more]