Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty 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. Legal Sourcery  2. Michael Geist 3. Administrative Law Matters  4. Michael Spratt  5. Pierre Roy & Associes

Legal Sourcery
Finding Legislative Intent (Tip of the Week)

Erica Anderson, Research Librarian at the Ontario Legislative Library, and Susan Barker, Digital Services and Reference Librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library, . . . [more]

Some of us recall those days of law school with nostalgia, if for nothing else the colourful stories which set precedent on key issues of law. “They lied to us,” we think as we look at the files we work on which pale in comparison.

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to encounter this colour in practice today. The colour in this case is pink, in the form of tights attached to a soon-to-be groom who was also wearing a feather boa and a lace shirt. He was even dragging an actual metal ball and chain weighing 32 pounds, affixed to his . . . [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) : L’ex-maire de Boisbriand et l’ex-vice-présidente du groupe Roche sont reconnus coupables de fraude et d’abus de confiance relativement au partage organisé des principaux contrats attribués par la Ville à des firmes d’ingénierie entre 2000 et 2008

Intitulé : Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales du Québec c. . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
Mechanics’ Liens – Contracts – Creditors and Debtors – Aliens

Olson (Stuart) Dominion Construction Ltd. v. Structal Heavy Steel 2015 SCC 43
Mechanics’ Liens – Statutes
Summary: A general contractor (Dominion) applied for an order that the $15,570,974.53 lien bond it had filed in order to obtain removal of a builder’s lien, filed by . . . [more]

The Indian Supreme Court is to deal with a challenge to evidence of the complainant in a rape case that was taken by Skype. The complainant is Irish and is now in Ireland, and does not want to return to India for the trial.

The accused submits that the quality of the recording is not good enough to admit the evidence.

Does anything about the use of Skype in this case, or in general, make you uncomfortable?

Can there be a firm rule about the admissibility of private (or quasi-public) systems of video evidence, or should it depend on the . . . [more]

This is the last episode in the serial publication of Measuring Life, a crime novel. As ever, it is followed here by a reference to some material on the internet that might interest or amuse you.

The whole novel may be had as a PDF file for the next few weeks. Should you read the book entire, you will see that it bears the marks of a work of fiction written in weekly instalments. No “do-overs” were possible; culs-de-sac entered in week 9, had to be backed out of in week 23; many openings were drawn never entered; and . . . [more]

The idea of collaboration has been around forever. This of course means that the idea of collaboration is included in all varieties of sales pitches including document sharing, social intranets and knowledge bases, and even conferencing solutions. In professional services, they know our primary asset is the combined experience and knowledge that we can offer as a firm – it is why we have firms and not just individuals practicing. The pitch is that collaboration will make you more efficient, which will make clients and staff happier and in turn help generate revenue.

And they are right. The more efficient . . . [more]

With the federal elections coming up on October 19th, many organizations have been producing lists of priorities, demands and positions on issues relevant to them and canvassing the major political parties to respond.

The legal community is no exception.

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has produced an Election Engagement Kit that will “put equal access to justice on candidates’ radar and publicly call for enhanced federal leadership in this area”.

The Kit includes tips for members on how to:

• Ask questions when candidates come knocking on your door.
• Attend and raise these issues at all candidates’ meetings.
• Contribute to the

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.

Troubling Feelings: Moral Anger and Clinical Legal Education

Sarah M. Buhler, Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan College of Law
(2014) 37 Dalhousie Law Journal 397

Excerpt: Abstract and Sections III & IV
[Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the original via the link above]

Abstract

Many law students experience strong and . . . [more]

A recent Quebec Court of Appeal decision will make it more onerous for employers to meet their duty to accommodate in the context of a workplace injury. The Court of Appeal found that an employer must seek suitable employment for an employee returning to work from an injury, offer reasonable accommodation to the employee to the point of undue hardship, and conduct an assessment to ensure the accommodation complies with the provisions of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. . . . [more]

Regular readers of our column may find it ironic that two individuals who have been writing about online dispute resolution (ODR) for years now would announce the death of ODR. Some would find an extra dose of irony in the fact that, in doing so, we took inspiration from the tittle of one of Richard Susskind’s most famous books, in which he heralds ODR as a saving grace for conflict resolution.

We’re obviously not claiming that using online platforms to aid in the resolution of disputes is already a thing of the past, it would go against everything we’ve . . . [more]

New technology is apparently capable of reproducing human speech very accurately – i.e. the speech of particular people.

Researchers have found automated and human verification for voice-based user authentication vulnerable, and explore how an attacker in possession of voice audio samples could compromise a victim’s security, safety and privacy.

It seems pretty clear to me that an electronic recording of a voice (as in a voice-mail message) is an electronic document within the meaning of all provincial e-commerce/transactions legislation. We (the folks who wrote the uniform law) considered the voice as a kind of biometric and saw no reason in . . . [more]