In June a jury awarded my uOttawa colleague Professor Joanne St. Lewis a stunning $350,000 verdict in her defamation lawsuit against blogger and former University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt. The jury’s verdict not only vindicated St. Lewis but also the entire justice system because the defendant had impugned the integrity of most of the judges who participated in the proceedings and the integrity of the Canadian justice system.

Let me be transparent in exposing my connections to the dramatis personae and my own biases about the case. Professor St. Lewis is a colleague whom I consider a friend and . . . [more]

When Carli van Maurik shares her practice philosophy with other lawyers, she’s usually met with one of two responses: raised eyebrows or enthusiastic support.

Thankfully, most colleagues fall into the latter category.

Ms. van Maurik is a lawyer with the British Columbia business law firm Whiteboard Law. She’s based in Victoria, where she honed her legal skills at one of the city’s well known firms before branching out to follow her entrepreneurial instincts.

Most lawyers eventually narrow the focus of their practice or notice that clients could be better served by a different approach. But not many take the . . . [more]

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

For this last week:

1. Yetman v. Marzec, 2014 ONSC 4624

[9] The overarching answer to these three factors comes about by asking the question: Why did this trial, which generated the significant costs claimed, occur?

[10] The Defendant driver, Mr. Marzec, did not participate. The Statutory Third Party denies coverage to that driver, an issue that has not yet been determined. The Statutory Third Party’s . . . [more]

An Ontario pathologist who was arrested on terrorism charges was acquitted today in R. v. Sher.

Dr. Khurrum Sher, a graduate of McGill University who was working at St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital in St. Thomas, Ont., visited the home of his co-accused on July 20, 2010. During this visit, his host and another guest engaged in a protracted discussion about violent terrorist activity.

The accused was present throughout the discussion, did not appear to vigorously object to their plans, and at its conclusion appears to pledge his allegiance to them. He was friends with the host of the . . . [more]

My Dad, a big old gruff softie farmer from central Alberta hates (is terribly afraid of) mice. Squeeks like one when he sees them indoors, the sweetheart. I dislike the mouse that is attached to my computer when I have to take my hands off of the keyboard to use it to engage functions in software. This personality quirk is so well known in my firm that people will send me keyboard shortcuts, bless them.

Josette McEachern, Field Law’s Library Manager sent me this MS Excel tip today:

To insert a row Cntrl Shft =
To delete a row

Read the full article here. . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Use One or More Commas for a Short Pause When Dialing Phone Number Extensions
Dan Pinnington

If you frequently dial someone who has an extension, it can be frustrating to wait for the main phone number to connect before you can to enter the extension number, if you can even remember it. As Canadians, we frequently have to enter a number to select English or French before we can . . . [more]

SLA has had a regular series of Twitter chats on a variety of topics. The next one, on info pros and entrepreneurialism, is close to my heart, and being co-hosted by another association I belong to, AIIP (Association of Independent Information Professionals). Details below. I hope you will take part or read along.

#SLAtalk: Trailblazing! Info Pros and the Entrepreneurial Spirit
https://www.sla.org/slatalk-trailblazing-info-pros-entrepreneurial-spirit/

Passion. Positivity. Adaptability. Leadership. Ambition.

According to Entrepreneur Magazine, it is these five traits that exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit. Join @SLAhq and the Association of Independent Information Professionals (@AIIP) for an hour-long Twitter chat about

LAWPRO’s practicePRO program maintains an impressive online collection of law practice management resources, including precedents, sample retainers, business plan templates, and yes – checklists.

Our most popular checklists include:

Independent legal advice (ILA) checklist
Domestic contract matter toolkit
Commercial transaction checklist
Risk-management checklist for sitting on a non-profit board
Employee departure checklist

These tools help lawyers organize, prioritize and track the steps they have taken and the issues they have covered when dealing with a matter, whether it be a client file or an office management task. They are designed to be saved separately for each use, and filled out . . . [more]

Martine Reicherts, the Justice Commissioner for the EU, has little patience with those who express concern about the ‘right to be forgotten’ as imposed by the EU Court of Justice in May of this year (without actually using the expression itself). Here is her speech and a short but very direct summary at the outset.

As you probably know, the UK House of Lords recently issued a report describing the right as ‘misguided in principle and unworkable in practice’:

Who’s right? Will the EU hurt itself by insisting on putting internet intermediaries, especially those that do not organize content, to . . . [more]

It’s been about two months now since the American Library Association held its annual meeting, this year in Las Vegas. Unfortunately I had to miss this event, which was disappointing because there was a fantastic looking pre-conference on linked data presented by the Library Linked Data Interest Group. Theodore Gerontakos provides a wonderful summary of what happened and I direct you there to read his overview.

What I wanted to focus in on today is the opening pre-conference presentation delivered by Dan Scott: “Structured Data for Libraries: RDFa and schema.org“. Scott is a self-professed . . . [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. Thoughtful Legal Management 2. Double Aspect 3. The Stream 4. Barry Sookman 5. SOQUIJ

Thoughful Legal Management
What is on Your Bucket List?

Having just returned from my summer vacation, I came across an article on Lifehack.org that struck a resonate chord deep within me. The article is entitled: . . . [more]