For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 3
A Way Around

This is the note on rethinking our approach to family justice that I never thought I’d find myself writing, and as a result I need to begin with an explanation and an apology. In this short post, I describe what I see as lawyers’ duties to promote settlement, to respect informed compromise and to refrain from litigating family law disputes without good and sufficient reason. First, however, I’ll explain the circumstances that have provoked me to write.

I’m involved in a number of the present efforts to reform family justice. In one particular group, I have received a certain amount . . . [more]

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of Canada published its revised Policy for Access to Supreme Court of Canada Court Records. It took effect March 17, 2015 and replaces the policy dated February 9, 2009.

In addition to the hearing schedules, docket information, party information, case summaries, webcasts of appeal hearings and factums on appeal, the Court will begin to post memorandums of argument on applications for leave to appeal after they are granted.

The revised policy also introduces a Registered Access process for frequent users.This is for people who require regular access to multiple court records in one . . . [more]

In late January, the Federal Courts Rules were amended to permit the maintenance of court files in electronic form. The changes to the Rules, for the first time, removed the requirement that the official court docket for a proceeding be kept in “paper”. These changes open the door to improved electronic service and filing of court documents in the Federal Court.

Justice Brown’s comments regarding the Ontario Court, seem applicable, “Consign our paper-based document management system to the scrap heap of history and equip this Court with a modern, electronic document system.”

The changes to the Federal Court Rules . . . [more]

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.

Courts, Challenges, and Cures: Legal Avenues for Patients with Rare Diseases to Challenge Health Care Coverage Decisions

Sarah Burningham | University of Saskatchewan College of Law
(2015) 1 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law 317

Excerpt: Part III

[Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the original via the link above]

III. . . . [more]

Last week, I joined some 25 others at a Winnipeg bar for Paint Nite. Many of those present were painting for the first time since elementary school. Nonetheless, two hours (and a few beers) later, we each walked out proudly holding the product of the evening’s work. I posted a picture of my creation online and soon received a lot of positive (and some incredulous) feedback on the painting.

That experience got me thinking about what we mean when we talk about creativity. How is it that a room full of individuals who don’t normally paint could each manage . . . [more]

Canadians often look at intrusive, anti-privacy surveillance in other countries, and at things like the NSA and Patriot Act in the United States and think we are above that. But it is becoming apparent that Canada is just as bad. We need to do better than this and move the pendulum back towards individual rights and freedoms, and away from a surveillance society that does very little if anything to actually protect us.

For example, it recently came to light that the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the NSA, monitors and stores emails sent to Canadian government . . . [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. Potter v. New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission, 2015 SCC 10

[1] The issue in this appeal is whether and in what circumstances a non-unionized employee who is suspended with pay may claim to have been constructively dismissed. The case involves the indefinite suspension of an employee with pay in the context of negotiations for a buyout of his contract of . . . [more]

What makes a law school great? What should a law school curriculum seek to accomplish in light of the school’s obligations to its students, its university, the pursuit of knowledge, the profession, and society as a whole? What should a law school strive to be?

Every law school has to answer these questions one way or another, and events of the last few years – the crises of American legal education and Canadian articling, and global and technological shifts in the legal services market – have given them greater urgency.

In this column I want to share my own law . . . [more]

Rumors of the book’s death have clearly been exaggerated, and another lament is not needed. Still, I’m finding the books on my desk and shelves noticeably altered by the digital age of Kindles and iPads. My books have assumed a weight, for example, when I’m packing for trip, that I can’t recall them having had before. And sometimes when I turn the page, I have to pause over the extravagance of having had that page printed, assembled, bound, and shipped for me to read but once, perhaps adding a note to its luxuriant margin. Can it be that what remains . . . [more]

It can be uncomfortable to talk about money. When handling real estate purchases and domestic contracts, however, lawyers can’t afford to accept purchase funds on a “no questions asked” basis.

Why not? Because if purchase funds come from somebody other than the prospective owner, the doctrine of resulting trust presumes that, regardless of who is on title, the owner holds the property in trust for whoever advanced the funds.

In this article from the February 2015 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, Lisa Weinstein (VP, TitlePLUS) explains how to reduce the risk of a claim related to a trust vs. gift . . . [more]

Christine M. Stouffer, Director of Library Services at Thompson Hine LLP in Cleveland, has a nice article in the February issue of the AALL Spectrum. It’s called, “Closing the Gap: Teaching ‘Practice-Ready’ Legal Skills,” and talks about the “widening gap between legal education and real-world legal practice skills” and the role that law librarians can play in narrowing that perceived gap.

Stouffer touches on the January 2014 report from the American Bar Association Task Force on the Future of Legal Education. She provides a good review of this report and I would recommend reading this . . . [more]