It is a distinct honour for me, in my capacity as Dean of Law at Thompson Rivers University (TRU Law), to provide a contribution to the Canadian Council of Law Deans series of important issues affecting legal education and the legal profession. I have chosen to select the critical challenge for today’s law students (and recent law graduates) of the ever increasing costs of legal education in Canada. I recently was talking with a law classmate of mine (UBC ’75,) who is now a distinguished justice, about tuition fees. His recollection was that we were paying approximately $450/year to pursue . . . [more]

In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., reported earlier this week on two recent comparative law reports published by the institution.

The first, Government Access to Encrypted Communications, “describes the law of 12 nations and the European Union on whether the government, pursuant to a court order or other government process, can require companies to decrypt encrypted communications or provide the government with the means to do so”.

The other one is an updated version of an earlier report entitled Foreign Intelligence Gathering Laws that examines the legislation regulating the . . . [more]

As some of you may recall from earlier in the year, we ran our first-ever Slaw reader survey. While it has taken us some time to aggregate and digest all of the submissions, we are pleased to finally release our inaugural Slaw Readers Survey Report.

At the outset of this process, our goals were pretty simple: to better understand our readership, and to lay the groundwork for future planning. And I must say, it was very exciting to watch all those submissions roll in! So many of you took the time to respond, giving us demographics, your likes . . . [more]

Big news, friends: Canada’s first food law & policy conference is happening in a little less than a month. The Future of Food Law & Policy in Canada is this November 3-4 at the Schulich School of Law in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This conference marks the first time that leaders in the legal community will come together to discuss how to strengthen and improve our food systems, to consider how stakeholders perceive and adapt to change, and to learn better practices and approaches to food law problems for clients, researchers, and government.

I have written previously on both the ups . . . [more]

I noticed it first this past summer when I attended the joint International Journal of Clinical Legal Education – Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education conference in Toronto. It was my first time attending and I had no idea what to expect.

What I found was a group of very smart, dedicated and focused academics and lawyers engaged in the field of clinical legal education. What I noticed was that the gender balance among conference attendees was weighted heavily in favour of women.

Upon returning to the office after the conference, I looked around at our summer students – 5 . . . [more]

The prevailing legislative standard in Canada for a duty to report a breach of data security (loss of data, compromise, etc) seems to be that there is a real risk of serious harm as a result of the breach.

Have Canadian courts or regulators given useful guidance on when that happens, and what kind of harm is serious and likely? I am especially interested in court rulings, since the threat of litigation can focus the data holder’s mind as much as or even more than a regulator’s order. (Have privacy regulators cracked down on reporting requirements or other useful follow-up . . . [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. Bhasin v. Hrynew, [2014] 3 SCR 494, 2014 SCC 71

[1] The key issues on this appeal come down to two straightforward questions: Does Canadian common law impose a duty on parties to perform their contractual obligations honestly? And, if so, did either of the respondents breach that duty? I would answer both questions in the affirmative. Finding that there is . . . [more]

Have you ever wondered how some people always seem to have the inside track? Or always “know someone” who can give them the inside scoop? Or can always “call a friend” to find out something or ask a favour?

That’s not just family connections or personal charm at work. It’s the power of the network, that invisible web that we all need, whether it’s new parents looking for advice, hand-me-downs and babysitters, or lawyers looking for business. You may feel that you’ve got where you are today by hard work, not by who you know. You may even feel offended . . . [more]

In May 2016, Justice Bondy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice quietly released an important decision. A decision that every civil litigator should know because the principles enunciated in this case seem to elude many lawyers. Maybe greed blinds them, maybe wishful thinking envelopes them, or maybe it never occurs to them that they are in a conflict of interest. Either way, this pervasive behaviour is bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.

Far too often, plaintiff lawyers represent an injured child and his/her parents, who are also defendants by counterclaim. This is a conflict of interest. And in . . . [more]

Legal Technology is often reported as being intrinsically linked to access to justice. Apps, AI, and digital access suggest an Uber-like ability to receive legal services at the push of a button. A recent Globe and Mail article by University of Ottawa law professor Jena McGill, for example, bore the headline “Better access to justice in Canada? There’s an app for that”. However, while there are increasing numbers of apps and technologies being developed and integrated into the legal world, it is a mistake to assume that technological developments on their own will necessarily improve access to justice for those . . . [more]

A recent decision demonstrates just how easy it is for residential tenants to game the system and live rent free.

The tenant entered into a one year lease for a residential premises in mid-town Toronto. The lease started March 1, 2015 and the monthly rent was $3,800.

By September, 2015 the tenant had started paying rent late. By January, 2016 he had stopped paying rent completely.

At a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board on June 16, 2016, the Board ordered the termination of the tenancy on consent and ordered the tenant to pay over $22,000 in arrears and . . . [more]