Last year the CBA took an important step in a direction it seems a lot of its members had wanted it to go – providing information and guidance in the area of mental health.

Since Mental Health and Wellness in the Legal Profession, developed in association with Bell Let’s Talk and the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, was launched online almost exactly a year ago more than 1,500 people have participated in the course, which was designed to help people in the legal profession understand mental health and addiction issues and to point them in the direction of available . . . [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

A Little History of “Noting Up”, or Why Noting Up Is Called “Noting Up” Anyways
Natalie Wing

WARNING: this post may contain disturbing content for those with deep anti-marking-up-of-library-book sensitivities. Back in ye olden days, law clerks and law librarians used to write in the margins of case reporters, literally “noting up” the pages with citations for subsequent appellate decisions. …

Practice

And the Numbers Show… (Part . . . [more]

In last week’s post I talked about the Legal Trends Report, a data-driven benchmarking report based on actual billing data.

This approach an industry first, and as such the Legal Trends Report uncovers a number of interesting insights that I’ll be digging into over the next few weeks.

However, I personally found one most surprising finding of the Legal Trends Report to be the vast disparity between self-reported data and “real” data derived from real-world usage. Take, for example, utilization rate, the percentage of a lawyer’s day that ends up as being billing time. The Legal Trends Report found the . . . [more]

This article is by Ian Hu, claims prevention and practicePRO counsel at LAWPRO.

When a file is transferred from one lawyer to another, one danger is when nothing happens on the file due to a clumsy transfer or missing critical information. A new file that has not been looked at can be a ticking time bomb. Deadlines like limitation periods can pass by unnoticed, and Rule 48 administrative dismissal dates can be discovered too late. The resulting malpractice claim can have lawyers pointing fingers at each other. Consider the following tips whether you’re transferring a file or on the receiving . . . [more]

The second annual Family Dispute Resolution Week (FDRweek) is set be held this coming November 21st through 25th, with the group’s key event, a 1-day conference scheduled for Monday the 21st at the Ismaili Centre in Toronto.

This year’s conference and FDRweek will include events for lawyers, family law professionals and the general public in Toronto, Oshawa, Pickering, Ajax, Newmarket, and Barrie. 

The theme for FDRweek 2016 is “Mediation and dispute resolution in a pluralistic society.” Event organizers note that, “Canada is widely recognized as being the second home for many immigrants. Many dispute resolution clients are new . . . [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. David Whelan  2. Michael Spratt 3. Canadian Legal History Blog  4. ABlawg.ca  5. Western Canada Business Litigation Blog

David Whelan
Revising a Pressbooks E-book

The Pressbooks e-book add-on for WordPress is brilliant. Whether you use their hosted service or roll your own with their open source plugin, it is . . . [more]

When Trinity Western University first suggested it should have a law school, I emphasized here all the market reasons they should not; there are enough law schools already, not enough articling positions, and too much job competition for junior lawyers.

What it was ultimately about though is that we don’t need a new law school, doing everything the old way of doing things, and adding exclusionary criteria that runs contrary to human rights principles.

Since then, we’ve had new law schools at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, and Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. The former has gained some notoriety . . . [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.

ENVIRONNEMENT : Les immeubles loués par l’Administration portuaire de Québec à IMTT-Québec étant des immeubles fédéraux et les activités de cette dernière relevant de lois fédérales, les dispositions de la Loi sur la qualité de l’environnement en matière d’autorisations provinciales sont constitutionnellement inopérantes à l’égard des activités et des installations . . . [more]

One aspect of having a great affection for law publishing is that I have a tendency to search for its characteristics and qualities elsewhere. For me, it sets a general standard for non-fiction and published information provision. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, I find myself looking for snippets of law publishing in many unlikely places and am pleased to find it frequently. My enjoyment, not long ago, of Philip Wood’s The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers, in which the author stresses the centrality of law to human survival was, in part, for such reasons. Lawyers . . . [more]

Here we go again. Quebec Justice Minister recently tabled Bill 62, An Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality and, in particular, to provide a framework for religious accommodation requests in certain bodies fostering respect for religious neutrality of the state and aimed in particular to frame requests for religious accommodations in certain organizations. This is this sitting government’s attempt to draft a charter of secularism.

This is the fourth time that the Quebec government (under different leadership) has tried to pass a bill to clarify the religious neutrality of the state and set guidelines for the granting of . . . [more]

In her remarkable new book Life Sentence (Doubleday Canada, 2016), Christie Blatchford describes the Canadian judiciary as “unelected, unaccountable, entitled, expensive to maintain and remarkably smug” (at pp. 33-34). She argues that the process for judicial appointments and judicial discipline, along with the structure and conduct of an ordinary trial, create judicial arrogance. And that arrogance, even if not universal, is both systemic and common enough to corrode and undermine the pursuit of justice. She also suggests that actors in the legal system are complicit in judicial arrogance while simultaneously having considerable arrogance of their own: lawyers and judges alike . . . [more]

There have been many articles written suggesting that lawyers should learn how to code software. This Wolfram Alpha article is a good one, although many of the articles are far more adamant that every lawyer needs to learn how to code. The rationale is that because software will have an increasing effect on how lawyers practice, and who will be competing with us to provide our services, we should learn to code.

So should we learn how to code? For most lawyers, probably not.

I knew how to code before law school, and for me it has been very useful. . . . [more]