As advances in technology have made the sheer volume of electronically stored information immense, there has never been a more critical time to manage e-Discovery efficiently and cost effectively.

Whether your work involves litigation, legal transactions, analytics, records management, or legal support, the Osgoode Certificate in E-Discovery, Information Governance and Privacy will give you a practical, deep dive into the e-Discovery process, including strategies to manage information governance records, and how to handle new challenges related to privacy and artificial intelligence.

Led by Program Director, Susan Wortzman of MT>3, and an Advisory Board consisting of Lisa Alleyne, Senior Legal . . . [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) : Il n’y a pas lieu d’intervenir à l’égard du jugement de première instance ayant déclaré un policier coupable d’avoir commis une agression sexuelle à l’endroit de sa collègue lors d’une patrouille; il est vrai que le juge a erré en s’appuyant sur le comportement a posteriori de . . . [more]

As a faculty member of Simon Fraser University, I recently participated in a SFU Faculty Association vote on a motion “calling upon SFU to divest from Israeli commercial interests, suspend partnerships with Israeli universities, and offer concrete support for Palestinian faculty and students.” Such motions have been common across universities around the world during the “situation in Gaza,” as the motion calls it. The inordinate loss of life and suffering of the Israel-Hamas War has led to campus disruptions that have not been seen since the Vietnam War roiled campuses more than half-a century ago (during my student days at . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

It’s a basic principle that a party needs to know the case being alleged against it to fairly respond to it. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice rendered a decision in 2024 ONSC 2948 where an employment relationship went bad, resulting in a lawsuit. The employer cried foul over the information it received in response to its demand for particulars and brought a motion asking the court to order them. The court disagreed, shedding light on the extent of information a respondent is entitled to receive before examination for discovery. . . . [more]

This column is a cautionary tale for adjudicators who use social media such as the platform formerly known as Twitter – although equally applicable to other social media platforms such as LinkedIn. In Law Society of Ontario v. Diamond, 2024 ONLSTA 8 (CanLII), the appeal panel of Ontario’s Law Society Tribunal, found that the current chair of the Tribunal should have recused himself from a conduct hearing based on comments he had made on social media prior to being assigned to the panel, related to the lawyer whose conduct was under scrutiny (Jeremy Diamond of Diamond & Diamond).

Jeremy . . . [more]

Preamble

When students at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law (“LASL” or “the school”) sent a controversial letter (“the letter” or “the October 20th letter”) to the LASL administration, a letter which became public, about the Israel-Hamas conflict, Metropolitan Toronto University (“MTU” or “the University”) filed a complaint under TMU Senate Policy 61, the Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct (“the Code”). The University appointed the former Chief Justice of Nova Scotia J. Michael MacDonald as the External Reviewer of the complaint. MacDonald released his Report (“the Report”) on May 31, 2024.

This is the second post of a three-part . . . [more]

In my last post, “The Potential for Reducing Claims with Plain Language”, I noted that poor communication is a leading cause of professional liability claims against lawyers. Convoluted client letters and emails may lead to clients making decisions on matters they don’t fully understand. A plain language approach offers the potential for reducing claims risk for lawyers and their clients in addition to making the law and legal processes more comprehensible for self-represented litigants. Fortunately, a plain language approach in legal training and an increased emphasis on plain language legal writing, including judicial decisions, is underway.

But has . . . [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) : La Cour est en désaccord avec l’une des conclusions de la Cour supérieure, soit celle selon laquelle le certificat ou le témoignage d’un analyste est nécessaire pour permettre l’application de la présomption d’exactitude prévue à l’article 320.31 (1) a) C.Cr.; la poursuite peut invoquer cette présomption en . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

The Alberta grievance arbitration decision in 2024 CanLII 38826 (AB GAA) draws a distinction between contracting out and contracting in. The grievance concerned a company’s decision to fill its Tank Farm Project Operator position at its refinery, involving issuing permits for project work, isolations, expansions and tank cleaning. The position typically was filled by a bargaining unit member to promote individual development within the unit. . . . [more]

Karnov Group, the legal and professional information business based in Sweden, looked somewhat courageous and heroic when around the end of 2021, in one swoop, it agreed to buy significant legal publishing assets both from Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer in Spain and France. Now with offices in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain and Portugal, Karnov Group employs more than 1,200 people. The Spanish-French conquest helped to turn Karnov from a Nordic entity to a leading European one and, perhaps, set the scene for expansion of Napoleonic scale; that may yet be the plan.

After a short time, however, . . . [more]

At the beginning of each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. Maxol Wealth Investments Inc. v. Arash Missaghi, et al., 2024 ONSC 3179

[1] This was a motion by the Defendants, Valiollah Onsori-Saisan and Skymark Capital Corporation (“moving parties”), to set aside a Mareva injunction originally obtained on a motion without notice (ex parte motion). In the event the . . . [more]