Due Diligence is something lawyers know a thing or two about. It is engrained in them from the first day of school. Due diligence includes the reasonable steps taken by a person to satisfy a legal requirement. It is an investigation. The theory behind due diligence is that by doing research the amount and quality of information available to decision makers improves. Lawyers are very good at doing this for clients yet spend little time doing it about clients.

Lawyers spend a lot of time understanding the law – and so they should. However they tend to spend very little . . . [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. R v Natewayes, 2015 SKCA 120

[1] Tasia Natewayes was charged with manslaughter in connection with a stabbing death that occurred during the course of a home invasion. She had driven a group of men to the house where the fatal attack occurred so they could assault Cody Vandall. The trial judge acquitted Ms. Natewayes of manslaughter but convicted her of break . . . [more]

Included in Trump’s reprehensible executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” was this:

Sec. 14. Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.

The Privacy Act covers personal information held by US Federal agencies. This would apply, for example, to information collected about Canadians entering the United States.

This should be attracting the wrath of the Canadian privacy commissioner and the Canadian . . . [more]

A couple years ago, the New Yorker ran a great, comprehensive piece on “link rot”—that scourge of dead-end links and vexing “404” errors that annoys us all and ensures the Web’s enduring reputation as an “ethereal, ephemeral, unstable, and unreliable” ravel of non-sequiturs.

The article charts the curious history of the Wayback Machine—that most indispensible weapon in the fight against link rot—and mentions the “disastrous” effects for lawyers and judges who seek to erect houses of reason on the quicksand of internet sources.

It is all quite topical given the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent move to tackle the . . . [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

Read the Original Source
Susannah Tredwell

In training sessions we always advise articling students to start off their research using secondary sources. While there are instances where it is appropriate to start off research by searching case law and legislation, using secondary sources generally is far more time-efficient since it usually tells you what the relevant legislation and leading cases are. …

Practice

Set Boundaries: The Angry . . . [more]

Recently, author Nelson had the pleasure of interviewing David Beech, the CEO of the professional services firm Knights in the UK. David has led the business, originally a law firm, since 2011. His vision for Knights is to become the leading regional professional services business in the UK.

The interview took place on the Legal Talk Network podcast (The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology) with co-host Jim Calloway, available at http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/digital-edge/2017/01/will-alternative-business-structures-u-k-law-firms-cross-pond/.

By way of introducing David, he qualified as a corporate lawyer in 1990 and in the late 90’s turned to law firm management until 2004 when . . . [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. Risk Management and Crisis Response Blog  2. Library Boy 3. SOQUIJ  4. National Magazine Blog  5. All About Information

Risk Management and Crisis Response Blog
Ignored Employee Turns Key Source in Proceedings Brought Against Former Hedge Fund Bosses

Former Visium Asset Management LP trader, Jason Thorell’s cooperation . . . [more]

Creating a bank of precedents, whether for a law firm or an in-house department, is a significant challenge. In my previous posts (Part I – Getting Started and Part II – Crucial Elements), I addressed the major challenges involved in building a precedents collection. Maintaining your collection is an even more important, and daunting, task. That is the focus of this last one of the series.

Reasons for keeping your collection up-to-date. Your precedents will only be useful if those who might make use of them are confident that they are current. Once the text (of the . . . [more]

After the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2015 decision in Chevron Corp. v. Yaiguaje, where the Court affirmed the ability of our legal system to hear foreign enforcement actions, the matter has returned to the Ontario Superior Court. The original stay by Justice Brown in 2013 was set aside by the Court, but the issue of the corporate separateness what not addressed until now.

A series of summary judgments, heard together, and a separate decision to amend the statement of claim further to add Chevron Canada Capital Company (“CCCC”), were recently released, shedding light on whether the corporate veil . . . [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.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Les accusés dans l’affaire communément appelée Faubourg Contrecoeur subiront leur procès sous des accusations de fraude, d’abus de confiance, de fraude envers le gouvernement et de complot; leurs requêtes en arrêt des procédures sont rejetées.

Intitulé : Catania c. R., 2016 QCCQ 15023
Juridiction : Cour du . . . [more]

A man was injured driving a go-kart at a track in Saskatchewan. He sued the owners of the track. The owners moved to dismiss the action because the plaintiff had waived their liability on an electronic form. The plaintiff argued that it was not clear that he had signed the waiver. Held: for the owners.

Quilichini v Wilson’s Greenhouse, 2017 SKQB 10 (CanLII)

The court considered SK’s Electronic Documents and Information Act, which implements the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act. The court properly (in my view) looked at s. 18 of the Act (s. 20 of the Uniform Act) . . . [more]