…One of you won’t be here next year.

Variations of that famous phrase, according to legend, are routinely directed at first year law students, though now mostly in jest. Many people have been credited as being the first to warn law students that at least 1 in 3 wouldn’t be able to handle the rigours of law school and would soon be seeking other pursuits, with records suggesting the first utterances came as early as the 1930s, if not earlier. If it were ever true for law students (Hint: I doubt it. And certainly not in living memory), it is . . . [more]

Debate about lawyers’ incivility – whether it’s on the increase, whether it’s worthy of concern, how it should be handled – is an ongoing one. The subject continues to be discussed, and we can expect to hear more about it in the coming months and years.

But high-profile cases aside, when does a lawyer’s conduct cross the line into unprofessional conduct, and what are the costs and other implications?

These questions are answered in a paper by Daniel Naymark of Lax O’Sullivan Scott Lisus LLP and LAWPRO’s litigation unit director and counsel Jennifer Ip. It was presented at the Advocates’ . . . [more]

Daniel Martin Katz and Michael J. Bommarito II are teaching a new course on machine learning this semester at the Michigan State University College of Law. The course is called ‘Legal Analytics‘ and Katz has shared an introduction to their course on Computational Legal Studies. . . . [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. Western Canada Business Litigation Blog  2. Global Workplace Insider 3. Legal Sourcery  4. Clio Blog  5. Double Aspect

Western Canada Business Litigation Blog
Promissory Notes and the Limitation Act

A promissory note is a written promise by a borrower to pay a sum of money to a lender upon . . . [more]

Since women entered the legal profession there has been a steady erosion of women moving from private practice to in-house, government and other legal positions that offer a more supportive work environment. This trend may reverse itself with the advent of New Law.

New Law refers to the new model firms that have exploded into the marketplace. Some of these firms operate as legal outsourcers contracting their lawyers to small businesses that want a lawyer on-site but cannot afford a full-time in-house lawyer or to large corporations that have in-house legal departments but need extra assistance from time to time. . . . [more]

Many years ago, when I was still early in my career as a nuclear medicine technologist, I had a co-worker named “Jackie” (not her real name), who I still think of to this day.

“Jackie” was an incredible person. She was a breast cancer survivor. She had a quirky, yet fascinating personality. And she happened to be cross-trained in both nuclear medicine and other modalities. I did everything I could to learn from Jackie, and she was always kind, patient, and understanding – basically all of the qualities we wish we encountered when we were articling, but never would because . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

Fraser Health Authority v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2014 BCCA 499

Areas of Law: 

Administrative law; Jurisdiction; Patent unreasonableness; Workers’ compensation

~It is in error for an administrative tribunal to interpret its power to reopen an appeal to cure a jurisdictional defect as extending to include a review to determine whether its own decision was patently unreasonable.~

BACKGROUND: The Appellants were all laboratory technicians who developed breast cancer . . . [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 y a lieu de retenir l’approche fondée sur le critère du fondement défendable («arguable merit») quant au critère applicable pour décider s’il y a lieu d’ordonner qu’une formation de la Cour révise la décision de la Cour supérieure portant sur une demande de remise en liberté . . . [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 – Civil Rights – Criminal Law – Police

Fecteau v. College of Psychologists (N.B.) 2014 NBCA 74
Administrative Law – Professional Occupations – Droit administratif – Droit des professions
Summary: Craft filed a complaint with the College of Psychologists of New Brunswick, against Fecteau. The Discipline Committee dismissed the complaint. Fecteau’s lawyer . . . [more]

As a complainant or two has reminded me, I’ve already bothered you about the weather — well, about winter, but same diff — and now I shall ignore this advice yet again and bother you about advice, a particular species of platitudinarianism. For a long time after 1873, when this wise judgment was issued, most of the bothering was done in person, and if you wanted to avoid it you could have . . . [more]

Back in 2012, I wrote a Slaw blog post on “Tracking Down the Brazilian Anencephalic Abortion Case, in English.” I thought I’d revisit this frequently-asked foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) legal research question and highlight key resources for English translations of case-law.

Generally, it’s difficult to find English versions of cases, but here are some standard tools for locating them by country and topic, as well as general strategies to use.

Research Strategies

Check if someone has already located an English translation of the case. Look for citations in full-text law journal and book databases, as well . . . [more]

You may remember a guest column posted a few months ago here on Slaw written by John Claydon, titled Canadian lawyers making a difference in Cambodia.

In it, John describes how a five-lawyer Toronto firm, Bennett Gastle, established Cambodian Legal Education for Women (CLEW), a charity that gives full four-year scholarships to young women from rural areas who would otherwise be unable to obtain a university education.

These young women graduate with LLBs from Cambodia’s leading law school, and though most of them will not be able to join the exclusive and expensive Bar, the grads (several dozen . . . [more]