When speaking or writing about diversity in the legal profession, the conversation usually focuses on gender, sexual orientation or race and ethnicity. We know that the legal profession does not visibly reflect the makeup of Canada’s general population. This was in fact a conclusion of the Canadian Bar Association’s 2013 Demographic Trends report:

According to the localized statistics available, progress on increasing diversity in the legal profession is not consistent with the make-up of the general population.

We also know that multiple barriers remain for racialized members of the legal profession. The 2014 LSUC report, Challenges Facing Racialized Licensees . . . [more]

With the rise of the “vanishing” trial, lawyers must master the art of written advocacy. Part of mastering anything requires consistent feedback. Yet, lawyers operate with little to no commentary from judges on the quality of their written submissions.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman states that we acquire expertise when:

(1) There is an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable, and

(2) There is an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice. An opportunity to learn entails quick and clear feedback. For example:

Among medical specialties, anesthesiologists benefit from good feedback, because the effects of

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. Irving Paper Ltd. v Atofina Chemicals, 2015 ONSC 6662

[1] This is an alleged price fixing case that was certified five years ago. The plaintiffs move for an order amending the class definition to shorten the class period to between November 1, 1998 to December 31, 2003 and to exclude persons who purchased products containing hydrogen peroxide or products using hydrogen . . . [more]

When “dear” is an opinion on pricing held by the 80% of society who do not use a lawyer to solve a legal problem, then we have a challenge and an opportunity. Both are big, as is the gap between what clients think they can afford to pay, and what lawyers think they need to charge to be profitable.

Around 25 years ago, Apple was advised that Librarians, Journalists and Lawyers would be the biggest users of IT. Because their raw materials were digitised, and their output could be delivered in electronic form, it was thought that Librarians, Journalists and . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of New Zealand has held that digital files in a CCTV system are property and could be stolen. Thus someone who accessed the system and uploaded the files to YouTube was convicted under the NZ criminal code for accessing a computer system without colour of right to obtain property.

The Court of Appeal had held that the digital files were not property, but the accused could be convicted of accessing the system to obtain a benefit, since he tried to sell the files before uploading them (not having found a buyer).

This seems like quite a change . . . [more]

Poo-pooing Wikipedia’s citeworthiness has a rich and honoured tradition, and not just among academics. The authoritative quality of crowd-sourced wisdom is a well-flogged heel for those in legal circles too, often trotted out in judgments like some Karl Von Hess to be beaten up by proper prudent legal authority. Wikipedia was first knocked about in Canadian jurisprudence in Bajraktaraj v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 261, a decision of the Federal Court which set the tone for dealing with the pariah:

… the quality of the sources relied upon by the applicant, including an article

A few years ago I decided to test drive a question when I found myself in a social situation with people I didn’t know. Instead of asking “what do you do?” I asked “what do you do for fun?” And I did this for a time at cocktail parties, meetings, wedding showers – wherever there were new faces and friends to meet.

Some people were startled, and had to really think before they could answer. Fun? Do I actually have any fun in my life after I get through working, looking after the kids, getting in . . . [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 technology, research and practice.

Research & Writing

Get Writing!
Neil Guthrie

My first tip is simple: get writing! Or, more to the point, get blogging. Blogged content has high visibility and much higher readership than content that is distributed by e-mail. Unless you have a very targeted and well-maintained e-mail distribution list, it’s unlikely that a publication sent by e-mail will be opened (much less read) by more than 5% of its recipients. … . . . [more]

Over the summer a non-practising UK solicitor launched “CrowdJustice“. It is a funding platform through which people can combine to build support for and share costs of taking legal action for issues that effect their community.

It is run by a team of lawyers and volunteers based in London.

The Case Owner sets a deadline and funding target for the amount needed to offset the costs. Only when the target is met are the pledges collected and paid to the lawyer’s trust account.Crowd Justice charges a fee if a case is successfully funded.

Cases recently funded or currently . . . [more]

When is a resignation not a resignation? Recently, the Ontario Superior Court dealt with a case where an employee cleaned out her desk, didn’t return to work but then took the position that she hadn’t quit after all.

Finding that she didn’t quit, the Court re-iterated that an employee’s resignation must be “clear and unequivocal.” In this case, the employee had sent an e-mail informing her employer that she had packed up her desk, but would be keeping her company cell phone, and that the employer could call her the following day to discuss. This e-mail was sent following an . . . [more]

The 2015 ABA Technology Survey has been released, and Frank Strong at Business of Law blog has reviewed the 900-plus pages to see what it had to say about the state of law firm security.

Here are some of the findings that stood out:

• the number of firms reporting a security breach has remained consistent (about 15%), but at the same time 23% of firms say they ‘don’t know’
• there was a small increase in the firms reporting that security breaches “created downtime or loss of billable hours” (30%)
• only 10% to 13% of firms have cyber liability insurance coverage

Technology, mobile devices in particular, has reduced the need for lawyers to be in a specific physical location. Lawyers can do their work from home, at a client’s workplace, or while on vacation. This mobility does have its downside: a lawyer of my acquaintance claimed to have holidayed in North Korea simply because no-one would expect him to check his email there.

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2014 survey found that 91% of lawyers used smartphones (with the majority using iPhones) and 49% used tablets (with the vast majority using iPads). While these lawyers were primarily using their mobile . . . [more]