Earlier this week at its annual conference in Moncton, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries announced that the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History book series was the winner of the 2015 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

Over the past 35 years, the Society has published books that cover the breadth of Canadian legal history, including the history of crime and punishment, women and the law, the legal treatment of minorities and much more.

The Award is named after the late Hugh Lawford, law professor at Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario and the founder of Quicklaw. . . . [more]

I have been working for some time on a book-length manuscript (introduced here earlier) tracing the history of the idea of intellectual property before there was a legal class of intellectual property in the modern sense (which is usually said to originate with the Statute of Anne 1710). My history is focused on the particular, if not peculiar, class of intellectual property associated with learning and the learned, which is to say with works of scholarship and research.

The book itself is a good number of months and two reviews away from publication, so this is not an infomercial-blog for . . . [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. White Burgess Langille Inman v. Abbott and Haliburton Co., 2015 SCC 23

[1] Expert opinion evidence can be a key element in the search for truth, but it may also pose special dangers. To guard against them, the Court over the last 20 years or so has progressively tightened the rules of admissibility and enhanced the trial judge’s gatekeeping role. These . . . [more]

In his presentation at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference subtitled Triangulating Legal Literature, Paul McKenna offered that the idea of three is prevalent … Something that resonated with me as a process improvement professional. My first memory of the bell curve with Sigma lines being a visual in a CALL Conference slide. I was so astonished I didn’t get a picture!

Seeing the Forest for the Threes

McKenna brought up the Theoretical Perspective of Albert Borgman – Blending the social analysis and philosophy to argue that technology creates a pattern in human lives that consists of natural, cultural . . . [more]

Bifurcation, or the splitting and deferring of the resolution of issues, is common in intellectual property proceedings. If a case is bifurcated, the issue of liability is determined first, followed by the remedies, but only if necessary.

In the example of a patent case, the first part of the proceeding would focus on the validity and infringement of the patent to determine whether the defendant has infringed the patent. If there is infringement, in the second part, the amount of monetary relief is then determined.

The Rule

The Federal Courts Rules, applicable in the Federal Court where most IP cases . . . [more]

A Deputy Small Claims Court Judge who made the decision to allow a trial to continue on its second day notwithstanding that one of the parties failed to show up has been overturned by the Divisional Court.

The trial which was originally scheduled for only one day, took place over two days. The first day of trial was August 28, 2013. On that day the court heard from two witnesses. The first witness gave evidence in chief and was cross-examined by the defendants. The second witness then gave their evidence in chief. At this time it was determined that . . . [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.

Technology

How to Take a Full or Part Screenshot on a Mac or PC
Dan Pinnington

On a PC it is easy to grab an image of what is on your computer screen (aka a “screenshot”), just hit the dedicated PrintScreen key on your keyboard (sometimes abbreviated as Print Scrn, Prnt Scrn, Prt Scn, Prt Scr, Prt Sc or Pr Sc). …

Practice

Mobilegeddon: Is Your Law Firm Website Ready . . . [more]

Privacy Awareness Week runs from May 3 – 9 and is an event hosted by the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities forum (APPA) each year to “promote awareness of privacy issues and the importance of the protection of personal information.”

Do you ever long for an excuse to zip your Android phone into a Faraday bag, paint your face with irregular lines and slip into incognito mode to evade facial recognition software? Well, now is the season!

Canadian participants this time-around included the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which is promoting a few nifty resources, as well . . . [more]

I worked with a client the other day to figure out what strategy she should put into place to maximize the 60 business cards she picked up during a 2-day conference that was truly filled with people who are her target market. First and foremost it’s about building relationships, so where do we begin?

The first “touch” needs to be a very personal email, referring to the interaction at the conference. This presented a problem for my client since she couldn’t remember something specific about each of the 60 individuals she met. It’s not unusual… 60 people are too many . . . [more]

Following up on his previous posts on lawyers’ personality traits (autonomy, skepticism and urgency), Ian Hu (practicePRO and Claims Prevention Counsel at LAWPRO) discusses “sociability”, a person’s desire to meet new people and make new friends.

The average lawyer scores on the bottom 12% on measures of sociability, according to lawyer/psychologist consultant Dr. Larry Richard. This trait measures a person’s desire to meet new people and make new friends. A low score means that a lawyer is uncomfortable going in cold in social situations. He is slow to warm up to people, but happy in his existing . . . [more]

The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law will take place at the University of San Diego next month. ICAIL has been held biennially since 1987 and provides a “forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest research results and practical applications and stimulates interdisciplinary and international collaboration.”

The proceedings are published by the Association for Computing Machinary (ACM) and the abstract from the proceedings of the 14th meeting has this to say about how research in this area has emerged and the complimentary nature of AI and law:

“It is not a coincidence that

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. AvoidAClaim Blog 2. Legal Post 3. Pension & Benefits Law 4. Double Aspect 5. Canadian Appeals Monitor

AvoidAClaim Blog
Inside the Lawyer’s Mind Part 6 (Conclusion): Managing Our Traits

We have seen in this 6-part series that we, as lawyers, exhibit a number of traits that help us in . . . [more]