The Law Society’s Alternative Business Structures Working Group has now posted its Alternative Business Structures Discussion Paper on the Law Society’s dedicated web page at www.lsuc.on.ca/ABS/

This Discussion Paper was released on September 24, 2014, to seek input from lawyers, paralegals, stakeholders and the public about Alternative Business Structures (ABS). The Law Society’s ABS Working Group has been reviewing extensive research on the topic and communicating about it with key representatives of the legal professions and other experts since 2012. The discussion paper provides context and background to help everyone understand ABS and describes a series of considerations and ethical . . . [more]

The biggest question I’ve been getting lately from clients and potential clients is why they need to bother with things like organizing documents or content, and why taxonomy and metadata needs to be applied. Why can’t they just drop in a search tool like Google to work its magic instead? Why bother spending time cleaning out irrelevant stuff and getting the useful material into good order?

I tell them essentially it is things like the structure, organization, and metadata such as keywords, taxonomy, author names, dates created and modified, that help the search engines do their job. The better things . . . [more]

Mediate BC has taken the bold step of proclaiming Oct 11 – 18, 2014 as Conflict Resolution Week in British Columbia.

During Conflict Resolution Week Mediate BC will be supporting its Roster mediators who are involved in various activities and events to raise public awareness of effective, timely and affordable problem-solving approaches. Check out Mediate BC’s website for examples of the activities to date. We will also be announcing the results of our 2014 Mediator Survey.

While Mediate BC’s focus is primarily mediation and other consensual dispute resolution approaches, Conflict Resolution Week encompasses a much broader spectrum of people striving . . . [more]

With each passing day, the legal profession becomes ever more diverse. That diversity brings challenges and opportunities. LAWPRO turned to diversity specialist Ritu Bhasin, Founder and President of bhasin consulting inc., for practical advice about the steps that lawyers and firms can take to welcome lawyers regardless of their personal and cultural identity characteristics, and to foster productive and creative collaboration.

What is cultural competence?
Bhasin defines cultural competence as “how we connect with people who are different from us.” Cultural competence is the ability to relate to others comfortably, respectfully and productively. Being able to effectively connect with people . . . [more]

“The legal profession should be on notice: the computers are coming.”

Ryan McClead, over on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, has just finished up a great series of posts called, “The Exponential Law Firm.”* He’s also gathered these posts into a single paper with the added subtitle, “An Exploration of the Technological in Law Practice.”

He begins by attempting to answer the question, “What do we sell?” He frames this question in terms of what lawyers and law firms think they sell and what their clients expect when they seek . . . [more]

For my vacation this summer I traveled to Amish country in Ohio where we were given a tour of an Amish furniture manufacturing business and welcomed into an Amish home for a meal. It was a thought provoking and humbling experience to see a community that has so successfully and for so long decided how it wants to live and refused to accept the idea that the way the rest of society lives is inevitable. It made me think about the ways the legal community approaches technology and how technological change can be handled.

I had never had exposure to . . . [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. Rule of Law  2. Double Aspect 3. Blogue du CRL  4. Law Society of Upper Canada Treasurer’s Blog  5. Canadian Legal History Blog

Rule of Law
Supreme Court of Canada Strikes down British Columbia’s Court Hearing Fees!

I don’t use exclamation marks often. This may be the first one . . . [more]

The Prime Minister decided this week to send Canadian aircraft to Iraq and possibly to Syria to strike ISIS targets in these countries. The attacks will be exclusively by air and will not involve land troops. The motion is expected to be debated in Parliament tomorrow.

The threats posed by ISIS is certainly unique, and is not easily solved. Nobody suggests that these airstrikes alone will eliminate the problem. Opposition groups have already rejected the plan, indicating that the case for such involvement has not been properly presented. The self-defence basis and humanitarian grounds for doing so have already been . . . [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) : Les requérants, qui ont omis d’invoquer en première instance l’inconstitutionnalité de la Loi sur la responsabilisation des contrevenants à l’égard des victimes, laquelle prévoit notamment l’imposition de suramendes compensatoires, ne pourront le faire en appel.

Intitulé : R. c. Cloud, 2014 QCCA 1680
Juridiction : Cour . . . [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:
Securities Regulation / Civil Rights / Police / Criminal Law / Courts

Walton v. Alberta Securities Commission et al. 2014 ABCA 273
Securities Regulation
Summary: The Alberta Securities Commission, in a decision reported as Re Holtby, 2013 ABASC 45, found G. Walton, B. Holtby, Burdeyney, Randy Kowalchuk and Shepert (the appellants) culpable of insider . . . [more]

The Canadian Library Association (CLA) and the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD) recently wrote a joint letter to top federal government officials to uphold the fundamental right of people who are incarcerated to read, learn, and access information:

Literacy and the prison library play an important role inside institutions as well as in reintegration planning. The prison library has the opportunity to mirror the outside world and help prepare the incarcerated person for release.

People serving their sentences have not given up the right to learn and to access information, including legal information. Inmates should therefore have access

There has been a fair bit of discussion recently about the pros and cons on online dispute resolution (ODR).

Using technology to help people resolve disputes does have many advantages. It can increase access to justice –both collaborative (mediation) and adjudicative (arbitration). It can be faster and cheaper than other options.

The availability of ODR tools is an important factor in consumer confidence for electronic commerce. People are simply more willing to buy things online if they know there is a way to resolve problems.

But there is one inherent problem with many ODR systems. You can’t look your opponent . . . [more]