Are we actually making progress toward the outcome of increased access to justice?

Dan Lear doesn’t think so. As he noted in an ABA Legal Rebels blogpost this week, to date the evidence in the U.S. points to the ineffectiveness of access to justice initiatives. In his post Lawyers need to move beyond access to justice to close the “legal services” gap, Lear notes that this lack of progress is due in part to the fact that solutions are complex and challenging to implement.

He suggests that an important, though small step in the right direction would begin with . . . [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. Modry v Alberta Health Services, 2015 ABCA 265

[109] Whether or not the respondent surgeon is, in fact, entitled to reinstatement on account of his status as a medical staff appointment with AHS under the Hospitals Act does not end the analysis under the balance of convenience arm of the tripartite test. The evidence of harm to the respondent surgeon (in . . . [more]

Walter Palmer killed Cecil the lion. According to media reports, Cecil was lured from his sanctuary by food and then shot by Dr. Palmer with a crossbow. The shot didn’t kill the lion; Dr. Palmer and his guides tracked the lion for two days and killed him with a gun (New York Times, July 28, 2015). The response to Cecil’s death on social media was overwhelming. Palmer received death threats, his home was vandalized and his dental practice shut down.

The problems with mob justice in an Internet world have been explored elsewhere, including in relation to the . . . [more]

An eBook published by the American Society for Quality in 2010 and written by Matthew Maio came my way recently. It has the engaging title Quality Improvement Made Simple…and Fast!”. The book is all of 46 pdf pages and is a fast read. It is also an engaging primer of the Plan – Do – Study – Act model for understanding what customers (clients – internal or external) want and need and making simple and quick improvements that align with those needs.

Wondering if you should read this book? The answer is captured in the first paragraph of the . . . [more]

Should young persons be optimistic about the future?

Does history set the context for the present and the future? Is the past prologue?

Based on history, I submit that a young person should be optimistic about our future.

Some of our history that supports an optimistic outlook are :

1. improvements in the health sciences and life expectancy;
2. the growth of educational opportunities;
3. the consolidation of governments;
4. the growth of democratic government;
5. the decline in violence over the centuries;
6. the decline of wars by the major powers;
7. the expansion of global trade.

1. Health:

In Canada our life expectancy has increased . . . [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

Expert Witnesses
Shaunna Mireau

Finding an expert or seeing if an expert has been qualified as such can be a challenging legal research exercise. Here are some tips and links to help you. Tip 1: Use the Canadian Expert Witness Directory through Litigator on WestlawNext Canada….

Practice

Manage Chaos! Create a Shared Family Calendar*
David Bilinsky & Laura Calloway

Our lives as lawyers are hectic enough even before we . . . [more]

When providing independent legal advice, a checklist provides you with a handy tool to ensure that you are covering all the bases when discussing the underlying transaction and your client’s relationship to that transaction. Using this checklist, created by Phil Epstein Q.C., will allow you to be in a better position to successfully defend a negligence claim in relation to the provision of independent legal advice. . . . [more]

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. Social Media for Law Firms  2. Access to Justice in Canada 3. The Court  4. Legal Sourcery  5. Ontario Condo Law Blog

Social Media for Law Firms
How Brian Tannebaum Defines Social Media Success

According to his Twitter bio, Brian Tannebaum is a Criminal/Bar Defense Lawyer, a Certified Sommelier, . . . [more]

A few days ago, on 11 August, the co-facilitators of the process that had to produce the successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sent a letter to the President of the UN General Assembly that their mission had been accomplished. In diplomatic speak: an outcome document containing a draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) had been adopted by consensus. In the diplomatic universe this means that the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives will rubberstamp the document when they meet at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 25-27 September 2015 for the UN’s 70 . . . [more]

“Time and tide wait for no man” (Geoffrey Chaucer). Or for no lawyer [male or female]. 

Change is afoot in the legal profession, and lawyers are trying to figure out how to react to it. But the legal industry isn’t the only profession facing change.

Jonathan Reese of Colorado State University-Pueblo recently wrote about changes in the education sector on The Kernel. He describes the introduction of MOOCs and flipped classrooms as a form of “professional suicide.” The premise behind both of these is the responsibility for learning shifts to the students, who watch video lectures on . . . [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.

FAMILLE: La demanderesse, qui était de sexe masculin avant la naissance de la fille des parties et qui a depuis procédé à un changement de sexe, parvient à faire instaurer une garde partagée de cette enfant.

Intitulé : Droit de la famille — 151902, 2015 QCCS 3615
Juridiction : Cour . . . [more]

A few years ago I was doing some work for a professional association on guidelines for dealing with litigants without counsel and I was struck by the extent to which some legal professionals regard litigants without counsel as interlopers who gum up the finely tuned, well-oiled machine that is their justice system. Some of the same attitudes are evident in the research on lawyers’ and judges’ perceptions done by Nicholas Bala and Rachel Birnbaum in 2012 and by the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family in 2013. By way of illustration, respondents to a follow-up national survey of . . . [more]