Gavin MacKenzie, Amy Salyzyn and I participated in August in the Ethics Debate at the Canadian Bar Association Legal Conference. Amy moderated the debate. Gavin and I were the debaters. The topic was Should lawyers have a monopoly on the provision of legal services? I argued for the proposition. Gavin argued against.

The general topic was broken up into three separate propositions, each of which was separately debated. My role was to support the first two propositions and to argue against the third.

• There is no good reason to allow anyone other than lawyers to provide legal services.
• Professional

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

One of a Kind: A Proven Path to a Profitable Law Practice
© 2016 Attorney at Work. Reprinted with permission.

Jay Harrington is an attorney and co-founder of Harrington, where he leads the agency’s Brand Strategy, Content Creation and Client Service teams to help lawyers and law firms increase market awareness and improve . . . [more]

Women lawyers, between 2006 and 2015, applied for superior court judicial appointments in Canada at roughly half the rate of men in the same time period, reports Cristin Schmitz in the September 16, 2016 issue of The Lawyers Weekly. In her article, Women Not Applying for Federal Benches, Schmitz reports the following previously unpublished statistics on who is seeking federal judicial appointments in Canada:

• 1,531 women and 3,244 men applied between January 23, 2006 and October 19, 2015
• 188 women and 396 men were appointed to federal courts during this same decade
• Judicial advisory committees recommended 1,236 of the 3,003

CASL, the Canadian anti-spam legislation, came into force on July 1, 2014. July 1, 2017 will be an important date for CASL, as a private right of action will become available. Anyone (class actions are likely) will be able to sue CASL violators. Statutory damages means that it won’t be necessary to prove actual damages.

CASL is a complex, illogical statute. Many businesses don’t comply because they don’t think emails they send could possibly be considered spam. After all, spam is about illicit drugs, diets and deals scams, right? Not according to CASL.

Nor do they understand they must keep . . . [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. Duncan, 2013 ONCJ 160

1. “You should get out of town”, the man said.

2. And so began the journey that resulted in my path intersecting with Matthew Duncan’s path. And thence to these reasons, with a slight detour through territory that might have confused Lewis Carroll.

3. I suppose that I should clarify that there was no menace . . . [more]

Over 225 persons from 18 countries attended the annual conference of the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE) held in conjunction with the conference of the International Journal for Clinical Legal Education (IJCLE) at the University of Toronto from July 10-12, 2016. This was the first time that IJCLE had held its conference in North America, and the first time ACCLE had an international aspect to its conference.

Papers and presentations came from all over the globe – Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Kenya, and the usual suspects in Canada, the UK, and the US. The program was broad, . . . [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 and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Don’t Forget the Interpretation Act
Susannah Tredwell

Although most acts have a definitions section, usually at the beginning of the act, it is logistically impossible for an act to define all the words and terms it uses. If you are trying to find the meaning of a term that isn’t defined in an act, check that jurisdiction’s Interpretation Act. …

Practice

So Long, From David . . . [more]

According to a recent video post by BTI’s Mad Clientist, Big Law is winning new work and new clients, due in part to the adoption of an aggressive mindset and the strategic allocation its business development and marketing resources. Having worked in Big Law for the last six years, this was one of two recent posts that validates my experience in Big Law amid a lot of noise about its decline (the other was a great article by Josh Kubicki of Seyfarth Shaw LLP, which appeared in the OBA’s JUST ‘Debatable’ column in June). Both articles underscore the importance . . . [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. Law & Style  2. À bon droit  3. Double Aspect  4. David Whelan  5. ABlawg

Law & Style
Meet the lawyer who became a reality-TV star

When Veronica Cham saw her family, she let out a childlike shriek of excitement — and it was all caught on camera and . . . [more]

Tech is famous for its shorter and shorter hype cycles. Robot lawyers were all over the twitters only a few months ago and now people actually yell at you for even mentioning the thing. Of course, robot lawyers should not even have surfaced in the first place because no one is remotely close to building them. Lawyers should not fear for their livelihoods.

But there is something that is much more important than robot lawyers. It’s robot clients. Or at least the proliferation of machines, automated transactions, and standardized processes where lawyers once controlled the terrain.

Let’s start with an . . . [more]

Artificial intelligence is a big deal. It will change our society, and the way we do things. Just maybe not immediately, and in law it might be even longer.

The function of artificial intelligence is directly connected to the concept of big data. The superior functioning of artificial intelligence over current processes is based in part on the superior ability of computing large amounts of information, data sets that are so large and so complex that the traditional means of processing this information simply isn’t adequate enough when compared to techniques like predictive analytics.

For this reason, much of the . . . [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) : L’article 222 (5) c) C.Cr. cible en termes suffisamment clairs la conduite objectivement dangereuse de celui qui, par ses actes (menace, crainte de violence, supercherie), porte un autre être humain à accomplir un geste qui cause sa propre mort; c’est à bon droit que le juge de . . . [more]