Lawyers like to think they’re unique.

This exceptionalism can explain in part our resistance to change, and our inability to adopt best practices from other industries. Sometimes it limits our ability to recognize that our challenges are part of larger societal trends which everyone is facing.

In The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services, Richard Susskind explored alternative methods of providing legal services, while pointing to some of the many failings of the existing models of delivery. In Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future, he goes further, and describes the types of new jobs . . . [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) : Le délai de 48 heures prévu à l’article 108 de la Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents permettant au directeur provincial de renvoyer le cas d’un adolescent arrêté pour examen est un délai de rigueur.

Intitulé : LSJPA — 1560, 2015 QCCQ 14868 . . . [more]

Although its use is of questionable significance in the age of the internet, many of us mark our public writing, including our public legal education materials, with a copyright statement asserting an exclusive right to control the use and distribution of our work. This is a fairly normal thing to do, and almost universal among legal aid providers; after all, when you’ve sweat blood over something, you want to keep it for yourself and you don’t want to discover someone else claiming it as their own or using it for their own purposes.

I certainly felt that way and my . . . [more]

According to Security Magazine, the number of ransomware attacks is predicted to increase in 2016. For the second quarter of 2015, more than 4 million samples of ransomware infections were identified as compared to 1.5 million in the third quarter of 2013. That’s a pretty big increase.

Ransomware

So what is ransomware? Ransomware is a piece of malware that encrypts your data and holds it hostage until you pay a ransom. The idea is that after you pay the ransom, you receive the decryption key in order to decrypt your data and make it accessible again. The payment is made . . . [more]

In general in Canada, restaurant and bar patrons are expected to leave a tip amounting to approximately 15 percent of their total bill when dining out or drinking. However, we usually do so without asking ourselves how the money will be divided among staff members. Well, it seems in Ontario, it is a common practice for restaurants to require servers to share their tips and gratuities with their managers and the owners.

Protecting Employees’ Tips Act, 2015 (Bill 12), amended the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (the “ESA”) to provide that employers are prohibited from taking any portion of an employee’s . . . [more]

One of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice’s primary mandates is improving access to justice. How do consumer issues relate to access to justice? For consumers, access to justice is partly about holding retailers and suppliers accountable for the promises they make and for the safety of their products and services. In 2014, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) conducted the “Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada” survey with over 3000 participants across Canada. According to the CFCJ data, access to consumer justice is an issue. While formal justice mechanisms for . . . [more]

The Apple – FBI tempest got me thinking about email security. (Even though that fight was over device security, not email platform and transmission security.)

Email security has improved over the past couple of years, no doubt in part due to the Snowden – NSA revelations. Many providers of hardware, software, internet infrastructure, and online services have taken steps to implement encryption in general, and to plug the gaps in the chain where encryption was missing. Some, for example, had gaps as they passed email to other mail providers unencrypted, even if they encrypted it while they had it. Encryption . . . [more]

Major Hollywood studios are suing the makers of a fan-generated short Star Trek film for violation of intellectual property rights, including the film’s use of the Klingon language invented by the creators of Star Trek.

Does the claim about the use of Klingon make any sense? I don’t believe that the claim focuses on substantial use of passages of text from existing screenplays. The characters in the fan film are using their own texts according to the rules of the artificially-created language.

If not copyright, is there some other kind of intellectual property that might be infringed by the use . . . [more]

“The most precious things in speech are the pauses.” – Sir Ralph Richardson

No matter the job, all lawyers need to speak well. Below are some helpful pointers for public speaking:

1. breath deeply using your diaphragm and talk while breathing out;
2. use lots of air while talking;
3. do not hold your breath while talking;
4. start your sentence in a lower tone;
5. emphasize the end of the sentence (end your sentence in a low pitch);
6. emphasize the key words in your sentence;
7. pause for effect;
8. emphasize points through alliteration;
9. use inclusive language when drafting your presentation (e.g. we, us, you, I

Soon, the very procedures used to produce a National Standard of Canada (an NSC) upon which the electronic records provisions of the Evidence Acts depend, will create another way of opposing the admissibility of records. That will undermine litigation based upon records, particularly criminal prosecutions. So you’d think the federal Department of Justice would be rushing to protect the Crown’s case. Well read on, then think again.

In regard to best evidence rule issues, admissibility of electronic records requires proof of the “systems integrity” of the electronic records management systems (ERMSs) in which the records are recorded or stored; see . . . [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. Ghomeshi, 2016 ONCJ 155

[128] I have very deliberately considered the evidence relating to each of the charges separately. Each complainant in this case had a different and unique experience with Mr. Ghomeshi. However, there are certain common aspects to their cases. Each had some involvement in the arts and entertainment world, which brought them into contact with the . . . [more]

A good conference can leave little time to explore a city itself. Hence, I’ve pathetic little Chicago lore to pass on. No Field Museum meditations, no Magnificent Mile shopping tips. Chicago may not best be described as “the appurtenance to the Hilton along Michigan Ave” but honestly, after attending the 2016 ABA TECHSHOW, I am hardly in a position to describe it any better.

The only souvenirs I acquired bleeped in when I disengaged airplane mode on a layover in Minnesota… 95 Twitter notifications from lawyers and startups I engaged with at the conference. Fellow conference attendee, LSUC’s Phil Brown, . . . [more]