Governments have been steadily increasing statutory leaves of absence entitlements to help employees deal with various personal issues without fear of losing their jobs. The Manitoba government is raising the bar by introducing groundbreaking proposed changes to the Employment Standards Code that would give victims of domestic violence the right to time off work without fear of job loss, give employees a new leave for long-term illness and injury, and extend the length of leave for compassionate care. . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Legal Blogging and the Rhetorical Genre of Public Legal Writing

Jennifer Murphy Romig, Instructor of Legal Writing, Research and Advocacy, Emory University School of Law
Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD, Vol. 12, 2015

Excerpt: Introduction, Section II, and Appendices

Introduction

Now is the time to bring scholarly attention to a new genre . . . [more]

Most often when an employer wants to connect with staff to find out how the firm is doing or where they can make improvements, they will create a survey that allows people to answer anonymously. Employee engagement programs and the surveys that go with them are usually led by the human resource department and (hopefully) an external, impartial 3^rd party. This makes sense but what can be lacking from these programs is an understanding of how to get the greatest participation through messaging and a marketing process. This is a bit off topic from the usual marketing and business . . . [more]

On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be … engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might…between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them… This is the Court of Chancery, which

An Ontario court recently ruled in 395804 Ontario Limited c.o.b. as Blacklock’s Reporter v. Canadian Vintners Association and Dan Paszkowski that circumventing a subscription paywall to access a news article violates the technological protection measure (TPM) provisions in Canada’s Copyright Act, and negates the fair dealing defence to copyright infringement available under Canadian law.

The plaintiff, Blacklock, published a subscription-based newsletter which used a paywall to restrict access to paying subscribers. The defendants (collectively the “CVA”), sought a copy of an article from the plaintiff’s website. The CVA obtained a copy of the article by obtaining another subscriber’s assistance, . . . [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. Karmel v Calgary Jewish Academy, 2015 ABQB 731

[82] There is little point in setting out the rest of the correspondence. By the end of 2012, as I have emphasized, the die was cast. By the time the special meeting of the Board was called in February 2013, it was obvious that the PEC would recommend Mr. Karmel’s removal. Since Mr. . . . [more]

The 10th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards is now officially open for business! It’s hard to believe that ten years has passed since I first scribbled down a list of my favourite law blogs (probably on the back of a Christmas napkin) and then wrote up a post explaining what those blogs meant to me.

The spirit of the Clawbies hasn’t changed much over the past decade. We still tell bloggers not to nominate their own blog, and instead, to write a nomination post identifying three or more other blogs that made an impact on their professional lives. That . . . [more]

Altman Weil recently released its annual review of law firms and the challenges they face, entitled Law Firms in Transition. There have already been a number of thoughtful comments about it, including the following:

• Stop the AI madness, by Ryan McClead at 3 Geeks
• GCs Now Do Less Law, by Ron Friedmann at Prism Legal
• 9 Takeaways from the Altman Weil Law Firms in Transition Study, on the Business of Law Blog
• Law firms in transition: Keeping up with the times, by Kim Covert at the CBA PracticeLink

The report summarizes responses from law-firm lawyers . . . [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

Gruesome Twosomes
Neil Guthrie

What do I mean by this? Pairs of words that lawyers routinely use together, but would be better not to. These pairs may once (in the late Middle Ages?) have had distinct meanings but now really don’t. And even in the Middle Ages they may not have: many of these ‘coupled synonyms’ (in Richard Wydick‘s phrase) join an English word with . . . [more]

When a commercial real estate transaction goes south, purchasers often ask their lawyers if they can advance a claim for specific performance of the contract. The answer is often “no”, due to the fact that specific performance is only granted in instances where the property is unique, such that damages would not be a satisfactory remedy for the aggrieved purchaser. “Uniqueness” may lend itself to residential property, but often not to commercial property given that commercial property is being acquired for profit and therefore there are other, similar, properties available to be acquired.

However, recent decisions, including one released . . . [more]

Apologies to other Slaw readers in advance. This post is mostly for BC lawyers interested in using CanLII to note up specific Supreme Court Family Rules. I shared these tips recently in a paper for a CLE and thought the general principle or method might be helpful to a broader audience too.

I’ll preface this post to say that 95% of the time, CanLII is a simply phenomenal tool. Deeply customizable search operators and a clean interface/search template. It’s a killer app for lawyers and others seeking to know the law. It is, however, strangely ill-suited to note up specific . . . [more]

An excellent Osgoode Professional Development program took place on 26 November- Successful Settlements: Strategies & Tactics for Civil Litigators.

To my mind it highlighted the divergence developing within the legal profession in Ontario.

Several of the speakers addressed settlement methods including mediation, second pre-trials and strategies for getting to yes. They emphasized the psychology of settlement discussions, and the therapeutic value in giving the parties the opportunity to vent their feelings on the issues. One speaker reported how she was thanked by a party who said until that point, “I spent thousands of dollars and no one had heard what . . . [more]