In case we missed you on New Year’s Eve, the 9th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards (aka the ‘Clawbies’) were announced.

This year’s Fodden Award winner for the top overall Canadian blawg went to Double Aspect, the Canadian constitutional law blog of Leonid Sirota, a J.S.D. candidate at NYU School of Law. As usual, we chose winners and finalists for 3 practitioners, 3 practice blogs, 3 ‘new’ law blogs, and a series of topical and group awards.

You can visit Clawbies.ca to see the full list of this year’s winners & finalists.

Once again, there were many . . . [more]

I’m partial to daylight.

So it’s probably no wonder that around this time of year here in the Northern Hemisphere I become fascinated by the wanderings of the sun. And even though I’m way down south in Canada, as these things go — on a line¹ with Rome and northern California — I’m still light deprived, getting barely more than nine hours at the moment out of the available 24. At noon the sun only just crests a four storey building. Bah!

Now I know you can’t push the river (until it freezes) — or Sol for that matter. . . . [more]

How many times have you signed long documents which are required to complete a transaction and you did not read the terms. Such as, opening a bank account or signing loan documents. Reading and understanding such long documents is difficult and not feasible in many consumer transactions. Or while using a computer, have you recently clicked on “accepted” or “agree” in an internet transaction, again without reading the several pages of terms.

When you sign documents without reading the terms, can the terms be relied upon by a seller or provider to overcome deception or dishonesty by the seller or . . . [more]

I’d like to use my last entry of 2014 to highlight a few worthy potential recipients of your charitable spirit. Depending where you live, and to whom you contribute, you may also still have a few hours left to earn a 2014 charitable tax credit or to see your donation doubled for the recipient.

If, like me and other old and not-so-old people, you continue to rely on good old email, you likely are still seeing a steady stream of last-minute 2014 donation appeals from one charity, non-profit, or political group or another.

A recent lesson in giving reminds . . . [more]

Tomorrow begins a new year, open with possibilities for new opportunities and improvements upon the status quo. At this time of list making and reflection upon the year past, my contribution focuses on what I know best – taking the leap from a joyless legal practice to an enthusiastic and impassioned approach to work. Having implemented this kind of change in my life, from time to time I hear from dissatisfied lawyers asking for advice on how they can do the same. What follows are some of the bits of advice I have given over the years, in no particular . . . [more]

The writing of reasons for decisions is never easy. Adjudicators must strike the right balance between comprehensiveness and intelligibility. In most cases, adjudicators also have a heavy workload and perfection in reason writing is not possible. There are many readers of an adjudicator’s reasons, but the readers that I will focus on in this column are judges. There has been a sea change in the approach of courts to reasons over the past decade. That change reflects the reality of increased litigation, stagnant or declining resources and an increased focus on efficiency. This has led to a focus on a . . . [more]

I’m tired.

Tired of ABS fear-mongering.

Tired of disingenuous and protectionist arguments made by those who know very little about ABS – yet are fiercely opposed to it.

And tired of the misinformation being floated by ABS opponents.

Now I know what it was like in the McCarthy-era.

Lawyers (particularly trial lawyers) are trained to argue a position based on logic and evidence – not hyperbole and emotion.

OTLA’s recent pronouncements in the Law Times on December 29, 2014, are particularly troubling:

“We have studied ABS from the time it was first raised by the law society in the . . . [more]

A lawyer who sued her former client for $3,937.50 for unpaid legal fees has had $7,000 in costs awarded against her, and the matter has yet to reach trial.

In the lawyer’s Small Claims Court lawsuit, she was ordered to produce her entire file to the former client and make production of the documents in chronological order, such that it could be ascertained whether or not she had in fact produced the entire file.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the lawyer failed to produce the file in chronological order. A Deputy Small Claims Court Judge awarded costs against . . . [more]

The business of practicing law has become more demanding and complex since I articled in 1996. The introduction of emails, smart-phones, and text messages has increased the pressure on lawyers to always be available to clients and to respond to queries with alacrity. Long gone are the days when one would receive a letter from opposing counsel, dictate a response, go home for the evening after disconnecting from your practice and return the next day to consider your reply letter after having “slept on it”. More articling students appear to be competing for the same number of positions. Regional firms . . . [more]

Around one-half of all Syrians have been forced to flee their homes because of the unending, devastating civil war, mass human rights violations and acts of terrorism that have been their unrelenting reality for close to four years now.

The UN estimates that 7.6 million Syrians remain internally displaced within the country, unable or unwilling to escape into neighbouring countries. Another 3.8 million have fled the country as refugees, the overwhelming majority in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Turkey alone now shelters 1.6 million Syrian refugees. And the one million Syrians in Lebanon now make up approximately one-quarter of that country’s . . . [more]

In with the new, out with the old. Last week I beamed about the promise of new gifts from Google in the form of the pending End-To-End extension which will put pretty good privacy in reach of ordinary Gmail (and probably other email) users. As Tiny Tim may have said, “Encryption to us all; God bless us, every one!”

This week I draw your attention away from the shiny and new, and direct it to the digital dumpster—where all shiny toys eventually end up. Fresh to the heap: the Yahoo Directory. This marks not the passing of some fleeting fad, . . . [more]

No matter what the area of practice, the number one source of claims at LAWPRO is a breakdown in communication between the lawyer and client.

Between 2008 and 2013, nearly 4,600 communications claims – an average of 762 a year – have been reported to LAWPRO. The total cost of these claims to date is about $158 million – and likely to rise as more recent years’ claims are resolved.

In the Fall 2011 issue of LAWPRO Magazine we asked LAWPRO claims counsel with expertise in the various areas of law to provide insights into the communications mistakes they see . . . [more]