There are plenty of good reasons for choosing sole practice, or for transitioning into sole practice after practising with a firm. You may have chosen to practise in a small community; you may have opened a sole practice because you couldn’t find the right fit with a firm in your chosen area of practice; or you may be a person with a naturally independent work style and a desire to be your own boss. Whatever a lawyer’s reasons, sole practice is a choice that can be profitable and personally rewarding.

Practising solo, however, presents special challenges. From a risk management . . . [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. All About Information 2. Combat Sports Law 3. Precedent 4. Michael Geist 5. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada

All About Information

BC court strikes privacy breach claim as being within OIPC’s exclusive jurisdiction

On July 14th, the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed a privacy breach claim . . . [more]

 A special political-activities audit of charities by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been under scrutiny recently. The special CRA probe, backed by $13 million and created in 2012, looks at whether charities are following laws which limit their political involvement. But critics claim not all charities are being treated equally, and the majority of the 60 charities under investigation have had a tumultuous relationship with the federal government.

The Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (NFP Act) came into effect on Oct. 17, 2011, however, corporations incorporated under Part II of the Canada Corporations Act (“CCA”) continue to be governed . . . [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.

DROITS ET LIBERTÉS : Un homme de race noire s’étant vu refuser l’accès à une boîte de nuit reçoit une indemnité de 5 000 $ pour les dommages moraux subis ainsi que 1 000 $ à titre de dommages exemplaires.

Intitulé : Commission des droits de la personne et des . . . [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:
Labour Law / Civil Rights / Criminal Law / Constitutional Law / Indians, Inuit and Métis

. . . [more]

The academic year ended a few weeks ago and as I wrote my regular farewell note to the finalists, I started to muse on the information related facts I hope they carry with them into their academic, professional and online lives post Oxford.

Here is a list I made in my head. I have added hints/links to some points that might be useful for SLAW readers. If you have other golden rules to add to this list, please do. BTW, I use the term ‘Wexis’ to denote commercial legal databases, and not to promote one over another!

1. Sometimes there just

. . . [more]

Ah— ah— ah— achoo!

That’s how we sneeze. (Or fnese, as old English once had it, back when we had “fn” as an initial consonant cluster.)

If we were Polish, however, we’d sneeze “a-psik!” and if Japanese then “hakushon!” And, curious fact, if we were deaf we’d sneeze with no sound at all, revealing that the loud part of this reflex is not reflexive at all but learned.

Reflexes. Wikipedia lists nearly forty of them. They’re helpful short circuits in our neural system, sending signals to the spinal cord, whence action signals are relayed back in what’s known . . . [more]

British legal publisher Justis is offering a free download of a document entitled Court Structures of the Common Law World(free registration required):

“Understanding how and why different courts operate can be a time-consuming, headache-inducing task.”

“It doesn’t have to be, though. We’ve done the legal legwork for you and crammed it all into an easy-to-read 59-page eBook, Court Structures of the Common Law World.”

“Download your free copy and discover:

• The judicial hierarchy of 20 jurisdictions, including the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada and Jamaica – all illustrated in handy diagrams
• The historical and political backgrounds to these case

. . . [more]

Back in March, Tim Berners-Lee — who invented the world wide web, no less — issued a call to citizens in different countries to pressure their governments to produce a bill of rights to ensure net neutrality and protect the rights of web users worldwide.

It’s a far cry from the heady days, not so long ago, of cyber-libertarians rallying around A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. But then again, we live in different times. The growing evidence of abuses committed by intelligence services (south of the border obviously, but here at home as well) are . . . [more]

On July 25, 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Quebec (Commission des normes du travail) v. Asphalte Desjardins inc., on the issue of whether an employer who receives a notice of termination from an employee can terminate the contract of employment before the notice period expires without in turn having to give notice of termination or pay in lieu of such notice.

As mentioned in a previous post, a few weeks ago, the Montreal Cyberjustice Laboratory hosted a summer program aimed at demystifying the impacts of technology on conflict resolution in and out of the courtroom. Experts in the field shared their knowledge with approximately fifty students and professionals, all of who were hoping to get ahead of the curb as technology slowly creeps its way into courthouses. As researchers, we found great interest in the numerous questions raised by the students, as they awakened us to new topics that could be explored, as well as made us realize that some . . . [more]

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that 80-90% of his computer time is spent on an iPad.

This comment lead tech journalist Mike Elgan to wonder: “Could 80 percent of the corporate workforce do 100 percent of their work on a tablet?”

His article sets out arguments for and against, but basically concludes that tablets would be sufficient for many.

For me personally, for what I need it for, while you would have to pry my tablet out of my hands, it is not adequate to replace my PC. For too many things it is just not quite good . . . [more]