As David Bilinsky noted over at Slaw Tips today, he and Garry Wise have recruited a whole new crop of voices to contribute to their practice tips column.

We welcome these eight new writers to our companion site, which brings readers weekly tips on practice, technology, research and writing. Their experiences and perspectives, along with those of our other recently added contributors, will be a fantastic contribution to Slaw Tips. Here’s a quick look at who all is joining the practice tips roster:

Michael McCubbin
Whitecap Legal
Vancouver

Andrea Cannavina
LegalTypist Inc.
New York City

Stacey Gerrard
Lawyers’ Insurance . . . [more]

Written for First Reference by Christina Catenacci, BA, LLB, LLM, and PHD student at the University of Western Ontario

Can you think of a store, restaurant, or bar that appears to require women to wear low-cut tops, short skirts, tight dresses, or high heels when they go to work? Well, it might be wise for those employers to take another look at their dress code policy in light of the Ontario Human Rights Commission position on gender-specific dress code announced on International Women’s Day 2016 and the passing into law of occupational health and safety provisions protecting against workplace sexual . . . [more]

We had many exciting developments in the foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) e-resource landscape in recent years. The newest one was the launching of the United Nations iLibrary in February 2016. It’s described as “the first comprehensive global search, discovery, and viewing source for digital content created by the United Nations.” I’m still waiting to explore the iLibrary fully and have some many questions about it. The OECD also has an iLibrary – will the UN one serve the same purpose? How will the UN iLibrary play with the UN’s Official Document System (ODS), the UNBISnet UN catalog, and . . . [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. HS (Re), 2016 ABQB 121

[104] Her application is not made in a moment of weakness and her desire for physician-assisted death is long-standing. The evidence is that, since her diagnosis, she has explored various options around physician-assisted death. At various points in time she explored going to Switzerland, Basel and Québec. Her friend M.V. confirms this, stating that Ms. S. . . . [more]

“Emond” Rises, while Brand Names “Canada Law Book” and “Carswell” fade to black

Publishing houses rise and fall. Legal publishing houses are no exception. Changes in ownership and/or hidden weaknesses may cause a company that dominates in one decade, to be displaced in the next by another, with a better idea as to how to best meet the needs of consumers. “Canada Law Book” is one such company, and “Carswell” another. Both names will disappear in the near future as these historic brands are replaced by “Thomson Reuters” in the coming year.

Canada Law Book

In the early seventies, Canada . . . [more]

Weeding is a process in which librarians remove books from the library. (Karen Sawatzky wrote previously for SLAW on the subject.) Reasons for weeding include to remove materials from the collection that are no longer useful or that are actively dangerous. Weeding is also a good way of reclaiming shelf space, a particular concern in the era of shrinking library space.

Typical questions that librarians ask themselves when weeding a collection include:

• Is there a newer edition of this title and do we own it?
• Do we own anything more current on the subject?
• Is the information available electronically?

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

Banish Business Jargon
Neil Guthrie

This could be a long one, but I’ll restrain myself as much as possible. And I admit, not all of these are strictly writing tips. Many aspects of the working day are, well, kind of boring. In response, people in business seem to want to jazz up the English language – but the result , more often than not, is . . . [more]

From TechCrunch this morning:

Apple has shut down what appears to have been the first, fully-functional ransomware targeting Mac computers. […] This ransomware, called KeRanger, was first reported by researchers at Palo Alto Networks. They also noted that Apple has now revoked the abused certificate that was used in the attack and updated its built-in anti-malware system XProtect with a new signature to protect customers.

Apple is being credited with mounting a quick and defensive response, but the threat is now palpable. This particular threat appears to have been mitigated, but it was in active development and future attackers . . . [more]

The British magazine Managing Partner has been providing information on law firm management since 1998. Their target group is the “senior management team” and they provide resources covering strategic management, case studies, analysis, and opinions from “industry experts and senior managers at leading law firms.” Their March issue reports on the ARK Group’s Legal IT conference held in London in January 2016.

In her introduction publisher Helen Donegan concludes her summary of the event this way:

“While clients were a major focus of the discussions, the question also predictably arose over the future role of the lawyer. With technological

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. All About Information  2. Double Aspect 3. Canadian Appeals Monitor  4. Legal Feeds  5. Legal Post

All About Information
The five ways of a strong privacy officer

It has been a few years since Carswell published its Managing Personal Information text, but this morning I had cause to look . . . [more]

Forty years ago, the confidentiality rule now found in the Federation of Law Societies Model Code was first adopted in the CBA Code of Professional Conduct. The confidentiality rule makes passing reference in the commentary to privilege and makes clear that the confidentiality rule must be distinguished from solicitor-client privilege. The Model Code does not expressly require that lawyers uphold solicitor-client and litigation privilege.

I expect that Canadian lawyers would generally accept that proper professional conduct includes upholding solicitor-client and litigation privilege. After forty years, it is appropriate to question whether the Codes and Rules of Professional Conduct ought . . . [more]

During the Toronto launch of Doing Law Differently this past week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jordan Furlong and some of the NewLaw Pioneers featured in the report. Nate Russell previously summarized the report here.

The report is important because the changes in the legal profession don’t affect anyone more acutely than law students and young lawyers, who will actually live to see the changes sweep across the industry. “This report needs to be read by every student in the country,” said Fred Headen, a past President of the Canadian Bar Association and chair of the . . . [more]