Each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. Dickson v. Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, 2024 SCC 10 (également disponible en français ici)

Aspen Publishing, until the end of 2021, was part of Wolters Kluwer’s Legal & Regulatory information publishing business unit. Around that time, it was sold, for $88m, to Transom Capital Group, a private equity firm. A mere two years later, it has been moved on again, this time to UWorld, a US-based online learning business, which was established in 2003, by a medical doctor.

UWorld’s existing learning resources and methods are offered in certain undergraduate, graduate and professional environments, such as accounting, finance, medical, pharmacy and nursing, as well as for some aspects of US legal training. In . . . [more]

The recent CBA national conference for immigration lawyers passed as though COVID is a distant memory. Crowded rooms full of professionals who serve the Canadian immigration system and our diverse mosaic of communities, in some way or another. Past practices of social distancing or meeting remotely have gone the way of the Dodo bird. At this recent conference, I was struck by one of the huge benefits of in-person learning: presenters can be candid and forthcoming, without fear their comments are being recorded. Speakers were able to share their thoughts and opinions freely without potential negative repercussions to them personally… . . . [more]

I am very happy to be writing for SLAW again after 10 years of absence. I ended my time with SLAW in 2014 writing about general practice management issues and return in 2024 with a specific focus on risk management for artificial intelligence. My last column was posted in 2014 and bore the title “Risk Management Revisited”. In that post I briefly discussed the value of risk management for law firms and set out some basic steps that firms could take to begin the risk management process. I also observed at that time that “[u]nfortunately, in my experience, . . . [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) : Le tribunal rejette la requête en arrêt des procédures présentée par l’accusé, qui marchait sur un trottoir du centre-ville de Montréal avec un pistolet de marque Glock 19 caché dans un sac à bandoulière de type «man purse» avant d’être interpellé par les policiers; ces derniers avaient . . . [more]

“This is the largest theft in the United States, period.” Such is the judgment of author and scriptwriter Justine Bateman who has complained to the US Copyright Office that the AI industry has scraped her work, much as it has everything else, having exhausted Wikipedia and Reddit it is moving on YouTube transcripts and Google docs. This is what it takes to assemble the trillions of words needed to expand the training of ever-more-powerful Large Language Models (LLMs). As a result, Bateman’s complaint has become a common charge. Authors (notably Sarah Silverman and John Grisham), publishers (Universal Music . . . [more]

Written by Christina Catenacci, BA, LLB, LLM, PhD, Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

In February 2024, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador certified a privacy class action. The representative plaintiffs, on behalf of 260 individuals (first 240 individuals, and second 20 individuals), alleged that their privacy was violated when an employee of the defendant employer (a health authority) accessed the private information of these individuals that was outside the scope of their employment. The employer became aware of the first and second alleged breaches in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The main claim against the employer was that there . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Public Health Crisis Management and Criminal Liability of Governments: A Comparative Study of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Edited by Michael Bohlander, Gerhard Kemp & Mark Webster. New York: Bloomsbury, 2023. xii, 368 p. Includes preface, list of contributors, abbreviations, and index. ISBN 9781509946310 (hardcover) $180.95; ISBN 9781509946327 (ePUB) $162.85; ISBN 9781509946334 . . . [more]

People’s Law School recently launched a ChatGPT-4 powered Chatbot to respond to questions posed by visitors to PLS’s website. The Chatbot is named Beagle+ and it has a very cute icon.

This PLS post describes the Chatbot and provides some examples of questions and responses. I was particularly intrigued with the assertion that it provides “helpful and empathetic” responses to peoples’ legal questions. I’m skeptical about AI’s ability to communicate effective empathy. But I was surprised to read the final example in the post:

Beagle+: Before you go, I just want to remind you to take care of

There are a lot of ways to characterize any event, and a good lawyer can use language to describe a situation and also advocate for their client. I learned from experienced colleagues who were teaching students this skill. The example my colleagues used was drawn from a tragic event nearby: a police shooting of a person who had not yet harmed others but who was behaving erratically and had brandished a weapon.

My colleagues used two documents from the case. The first was written by a pro-police advocate who described the scene and the confusion and fear felt by the . . . [more]