This weekend we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Black Law Students Association of Canada (BLSAC). The organization is one that has held special importance to me throughout law school and following, and one to which I credit much of my momentum in this field.

The conference was held this year in Toronto at the DoubleTree Hilton, immediately adjacent to the construction site of the new provincial courthouse, and historic site of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the key locations of the Underground Railroad.

The Julius Alexander Diversity Moot this year was held at the Ontario Court . . . [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.

RESPONSABILITÉ : Dans le contexte d’une vérification fiscale, la malveillance d’un représentant de l’Agence du revenu du Québec relativement aux comptes de dépenses d’une entreprise qu’il a sciemment comptabilisés en double est grossière et constitue de l’incurie, de l’insouciance ou de l’incompétence grave équivalant à de la mauvaise foi.

Intitulé . . . [more]

This post continues my discussion of remunerative practice models that improve access to justice. I spent a good bit of space in my post on unbundled services, also known as limited-scope retainers, dumping on the comprehensive service, billable-hour model of legal practise and explaining why I believe it is unaffordable and unpalatable to clients. In this post, I’m going to talk about another alternative to the billable hour, flat-rate billing.

The idea of adopting a flat-rate approach to work makes most lawyers pretty twitchy. The fundamental genius of the the billable-hour approach is that you are covered, no . . . [more]

Among regulators across Canada, and internationally, there is increasing interest in proactive regulatory initiatives that focus on better practice management to achieve improved client service and professional conduct. Traditionally, law societies have worked to ensure proper professional conduct by establishing rules and by discipline. This is primarily a reactive, complaints-driven process.

The Law Society of British Columbia, Prairie Law Societies and the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society are all considering proactive regulation. Other regulators in Ontario have implemented forms of proactive regulation, as have legal regulators in Australia and in England and Wales.

Last June, the Law Society of Upper . . . [more]

Almost two years ago, I asked here on Slaw “Is It Time For A National Retail Law Firm?”. I argued that some twenty plus years on from the dawn of the national firm model in the business law context, there was a growing opportunity – at least to my mind – for the emergence of a similarly scaled venture focused on consumer-oriented legal services: family law, personal injury, simple wills, basic contracts and other legal services required by individuals and small businesses.

I left off that earlier column as follows:

The gradual loosening of inter-jurisdictional practice rules, the twenty-year . . . [more]

With the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan Act, 2015 now in force, the Ontario government is moving ahead to establish the ORPP by January 1, 2017. The ORPP is a made-in-Ontario alternative to a Canada Pension Plan (CPP) enhancement.

The plan is needed according to the government because many Ontarians, including middle- and higher-income earners, may not be saving enough to ensure comparable standards of living in retirement.

The ORPP is mandatory for employers without a comparable workplace pension plan. Employers who already offer a comparable workplace pension plan will not be required to participate in the ORPP. All workers must . . . [more]

2016 has the potential to be an absolute game changer year for all of us in one important area our lives – stress.

Show me a person in the legal industry who does not experience stress and I will show you a retired person. (Although in all likelihood they are probably still stressed!)

I used to think that reducing stress was a vitally important goal. Now I know there is something else we need to do with it – embrace it.

Kelly McGonigal’s Ted Talk and the research detailed in her book The Upside Of Stress: Why Stress Is . . . [more]

A litigation culture has arisen in this province over the last three decades which extols creating and litigating peripheral procedural disputes, instead of moving towards the timely adjudication of disputes on their merits. That culture now lauds, as the skilled barrister, the motions specialist, not the final hearing expert.

• Justice Brown of the Ontario Court of Appeal in “A 5-Point Action Plan to Get the Civil Justice System Moving Back in the Direction of Achieving its Fundamental Goal – The Fair, Timely and Cost-Effective Determinations of Civil Cases on their Merit”

The culture of creating and litigating peripheral . . . [more]

Up to a few months ago, I didn’t know much about WWI. I did certainly know more than the characters in Friends, but, like most, I knew considerably less on this conflict than on the other world war. To be fair to me, I had a reasonable idea of the convoluted causes of the conflict from reading Margaret MacMillan’s “The War That Ended Peace” (still, that was only a couple of years ago), but not much about the actual fighting. Then I listened, over the summer, to a 20+ hour series of podcasts by Dan Carlin entitled “Blueprint . . . [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. Stuart Budd & Sons Limited v. IFS Vehicle Distributors ULC, 2016 ONCA 60

[88] I have no doubt that the motion judge was well-intentioned. I have no doubt that he put a great deal of effort into resolving the jurisdiction issue. However, my review of the three endorsements leads me to conclude that the motion judge’s actions gave rise to a . . . [more]

The friendly folks at SLAW remind us regularly when columns are due. On receiving one such reminder when I was at a family gathering, I asked everyone what I should write about next (my family happens to include five young lawyers). The youngest of them responded instantly: “Courtesy—and how little of it young lawyers have.”

This, from a first-year associate? It’s the kind of comment I expect from a grizzled veteran, accompanied by the inevitable “I dunno, kids today….” rant. When I asked her to elaborate, she noted that communications quickly become personal, as in: “If you had read my . . . [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

Advice for Associates and Students
Neil Guthrie

You feel nervous about publishing something, right? You should be, a bit – but don’t let it put you off. Some things to bear in mind: get a partner to vet your idea and your draft, for technical accuracy; defer to the senior person on points of law (unless you can show you’re right), but not always on . . . [more]