The concept of a legal profession should have a strong social welfare aspect to it such that its distant goal is to make a community’s legal health as important to it as its medical health, and its lawyers as important to it as its doctors. Technology can do that. Unfortunately it is becoming a more distant and unattainable goal because our law societies are moving us in the wrong direction.

All efforts are aimed at helping the population learn to live with the problem of unaffordable legal services, but there are none to solve the problem. Law society benchers . . . [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

Grey Literature: Our Favourite Sources and Suggestions
Bronwyn Guiton & Lindsay Tripp

This article was originally published in the November 2016 edition of Wired West. At the recent 2016 Special Libraries Association conference in Philadelphia, one of the most popular sessions was Hidden Treasures: Mastering Grey Literature …

Practice

Did Your Client Really Just Instruct You to Release Funds? When Clients’ Emails Get Hacked
Ian Hu

In . . . [more]

In my previous column, Building and Maintaining a Precedents Collection – Part 1: Getting Started, I reviewed the benefits and challenges of creating such a collection and noted several threshold issues. In this column, I will address certain elements that you will need to keep in mind as you attack this problem.

Contract maturity model. Kingsley Martin, in a three-part series of blog postings on the Thomson Reuters site (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), develops the concept of a “contract maturity model,” based on Richard Susskind’s analysis in his book The End . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from seventy 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. Meurrens on Immigration  2. Labour Pains 3. Combat Sports Law  4. Global Workplace Insider  5. Canadian Privacy Law Blog

Meurrens on Immigration
Canada Lifts Visa Requirement Against Mexico; Bulgaria, Romania, Brazil Soon to Follow

On December 1, 2016, the Government of Canada lifted the requirement that Mexican nationals obtain . . . [more]

It’s with a tad bit of irony that the professions charged with fighting inequities and combating racism, both explicit and institutional, is itself one of the most regressive communities there is when it comes to these same challenges.

In part this is likely due to the independence of the legal professions, which results in a decentralized industry that is highly autonomous, but also likes to act with impunity. Most legal practices do not have access to best practices in human rights, or how to create an inclusive work environment. In fact, most of these practices are still largely exclusive to . . . [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) : Reconnu coupable sous 113 chefs d’infraction de nature sexuelle à l’égard de jeunes filles âgées de 8 à 14 ans, l’accusé, un professeur d’éducation physique au primaire qui leurrait ses victimes au moyen d’Internet et les menaçait ultérieurement de diffuser le matériel compromettant qu’elles lui faisaient parvenir, . . . [more]

According to the most recent World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, Canada ranks 12^th overall out of 113 countries included in the survey. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands rank 1^st to 5^th, respectively. Canada’s overall index score of 0.81 is tied with the UK and Australia. The US ranks 18^th overall. Ranking 12^th out of 113 puts Canada near the top of the global ranking. Canada ranks 9^th out of 24 European and North American countries and 12^th out of 36 high income countries, above the median in . . . [more]

It’s December, and you know what that means: it’s Clawbies season! That’s right, it’s time to start nominating blogs for the 11th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards.

As always, you can get all the details over at clawbies.ca, but here’s the short version of what you need to know:

• Nominate up to 3 of your favourite Canadian law blogs, podcasts, or video blogs via a blog post or Twitter (be sure to tag your nomination tweets with #clawbies2016).
• Don’t nominate your own blog (really). By nominating others, your own blog will be automatically considered!
• Nominations are open until

On November 2, 2016, the Nova Scotia government proposed accessibility legislation to promote equality of opportunity and increase the inclusion and participation of Nova Scotians who have disabilities or functional limitations in all areas of everyday life by promoting and encouraging the prevention, reduction and removal of barriers.

Moreover, the government intends to help make Nova Scotia a more accessible and inclusive place to live and work. . . . [more]

Everyone gets excited when a new client comes on board. Once they are signed, keeping them and providing excellent experience is a must. But how do you get that client to sign in the first place?

Winning new business in a competitive legal industry is not easy. There is a lot of money involved and often a lot of emotion in the decision. We know that today clients are buying value more than ever, they want total solutions and they are willing to select individuals best suited to resolve the issues at hand rather than staying with a firm they . . . [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. Royal Bank of Canada v. Trang, 2016 SCC 50

[1] This appeal raises the issue of the proper interpretation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5 (“PIPEDA”). The Royal Bank of Canada (“RBC”) is a judgment creditor of Phat Trang and Phuong Trang (“the Trangs”) and seeks a sheriff’s sale of the . . . [more]

In late October, I attended the 12^th Annual Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession conference. I have been attending this conference on and off since its inception, and this was absolutely the best so far. Which is really interesting: as Joshua Fireman, co-chair, noted “We still have things to talk about!”

One of those things, if not the biggest thing, is the continuing changing landscape of legal technology and how law firms can and should be using it. In particular, the emergence of “big data” remains a promise and a worry.

Big Data – Problems and Products

Intro . . . [more]