One of our neighbours was born in India. When he was young, his father would buy one pencil every few months for him to share with his brother. They did this by cutting the pencil in half. Contrast this with the over-abundance of pencils in our household with just one 9 year old.

Similiarly, there is now an amazing abundance of apps that can used by lawyers. That was not the case when I compiled the first Australasian Legal Software Directory in 1986. I had to scrounge to find tools for lawyers. Like pencils, apps don’t come with pre-packaged drawing . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one 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. Susan on the Soapbox  2. Western Canadian Business Litigation Blog  3. First Reference Talks 4. Law Society of Upper Canada Treasurer’s Blog  5. Blogue du CRL

Susan on the Soapbox
Danielle Smith Betrayed the Wildrose; Jim Prentice Betrayed the Rest of Us

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but . . . [more]

For the Generation X lawyers on this site, 2015 has special significance. This was the year that Marty McFly from Back to the Future II travelled to, specifically on October 21, 2015.

Many of us who saw this movie back in 1989 wondered how much of this fictional reality would actually come true. One prediction in particular is of interest to those of us who have ended up being lawyers,

Marty McFly: You said this had to do with my kids.

Doc: Look what happens to your son.

Marty McFly: [Reading the newspaper from 2015]

Happy New Year! For the next few posts, I thought I’d focus on lessons learned through employment law cases – essentially a list of resolutions to make and keep in 2015 – for employers and their HR departments, in particular. The first one, Shirbigi v. JM Food Services Ltd., 2014 BCSC 1927 (CanLII), comes to us from British Columbia and deals with what can happen when a boss has an affair with one of his employees and a Workplace Relationship Policy either isn’t in place or isn’t followed . The sordid details can be summarized as follows:

[8]

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]