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

Using a Canned Search to Find Definitions
Susannah Tredwell

A frequently asked question is “what does this word mean in a legal context?” In my last SLAW tip, I talked about using legislation to find definitions, in particular interpretation acts. However, legislation cannot define every term used, so if you can’t find your term in the legislation, you may want to check if it has been judicially . . . [more]

The National Requirement Review Committee (NRCC) has launched a consultation on its draft report on the question of whether to amend the National Requirement to add a non-discrimination provision.

The Draft Report for Consultation on Non-discrimination in Legal Education includes a detailed analysis of the nature and regulatory purpose of the National Requirement, the current legal landscape, and the mandates of the law societies. The report does not include any recommendations, but it does suggest that amending the National Requirement to include a non-discrimination provision may not be appropriate.

Feedback from the consultation will be considered before the NRRC makes . . . [more]

Fellow Slaw columnist Omar Ha-Redeye recently wrote a blog entry on how artificial intelligence is making its way into the Canadian legal community more slowly that expected (by some) due to the fact that the data repositories that are behind SOQUIJ, CanLII, and other caselaw search engines are simply too limited in size to allow for true predictive capacities. In other words, there are too few decisions to generate reliable trends that can be identified through A.I. This has pushed Mr. Ha-Redeye to question how successful and useful a tool like Premonition will be on the Canadian market. . . . [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. Startup Source 2. Michael Geist 3. BC Injury Law and ICBC Claims Blog 4. AvoidAClaim 5. Blogue du CRL

Startup Source
Alberta’s New Exemptions for Startup Businesses

In a welcome development for Alberta-based startups and small businesses, the Alberta Securities Commission (the “ASC”) has adopted a new rule – . . . [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.

CONTRAT DE SERVICES : Bell Mobilité inc., condamnée en première instance au remboursement de près d’un million de dollars à des clients qui ont payé des frais de résiliation pour avoir mis fin à leur contrat à durée déterminée avant terme, n’obtient pas le rejet de l’action collective intentée contre . . . [more]

The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family has just released a new research report, An International Review of Early Neutral Evaluation Programs and Their Use in Family Law Disputes in Alberta, which includes a literature review of early neutral evaluation programs in Manitoba, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, and makes recommendations about the implementation of such a program in Alberta. The findings from the literature review are very positive and are likely applicable throughout Canada.

Generally speaking, early neutral evaluation programs are court-based programs that require the parties to a . . . [more]

Huh?

What place, you might reasonably ask, does this question have in a column on justice issues?

Bear with me. I’ll get there.

Slaw readers are more aware than the average legal professional about the roles of existing major legal information suppliers (let’s call them Dominos and Pizza Hut) and the efforts of upstarts to do law differently and offer tailored solutions to legal research needs. Though many believe (with some justification) that the pizza on offer from the “Big 2” is great, sometimes the pizza costs too much and sometimes what you need is a grilled cheese sandwich.

Here’s . . . [more]

If you’re at all interested in legal technology, you’ve probably grown tired of the recent influx of fear-mongering articles about “robot lawyers” that are going to put legal professionals out of a job. This sub-genre of legal tech reporting features a lot of buzzwords. There’s “machine learning”, “NLP (natural language processing)”, “AI (artificial intelligence)”, and “predictive analytics”, to name just a few. Regrettably, a lot of these articles discuss legal technologies only in very vague terms, or sometimes don’t bother with definitions at all. And it’s very difficult to have a nuanced conversation about legal tech when it seems like . . . [more]

Building and maintaining a precedents collection presents many challenges but the benefits of success are multiple. In my posting from last June, the architect of the Gowlings precedent collection, Graeme Coffin, outlined what the process is at his firm. But undertaking this initiative is one of the biggest challenges that any practitioner, whether practising solo or in a firm or working in-house, faces. I therefore propose to treat this topic in a series of postings so as to discuss the issues in some depth and offer some suggestions.

Benefits. The benefits of creating a good quality, comprehensive precedents collection . . . [more]

Google debuted new hardware on Tuesday – including new Pixel phones, and an Amazon Echo competitor called Google Home. A key thread to all this is their new Google Assistant replacement for Google Now. (Similar to Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana.)

But the most noteworthy part is their comment that we are switching from Mobile First to AI first. Over the past few years websites and online services have increasingly needed to be mobile friendly, so people can do what they want from whatever screen happens to be in front of them. Advances in artificial intelligence are going to put . . . [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. Law Society of Alberta v Beaver, 2016 ABCA 290

[12] On appeal before this Court, Beaver took no issue with certain factual underpinnings of the injunction, namely that apart from the agent issue, he had been practicing law in contravention of both his undertakings and the Act. However, Beaver reiterated that he was entitled to continue acting as an agent. In his . . . [more]

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need
– Rolling Stones

I teach a negotiation course several times a year at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. I am always surprised at the number of students who come into the course thinking that being a successful negotiator is all about “winning” – getting what they want.

My hope is, by the end of the course, they have learned that truly successful negotiation is about finding a way for both (all) parties to get what they . . . [more]