Everyone is watching the mayoralty race in Toronto unfold. Anything involving Rob Ford is scrutinized and reported to great fanfare.

The latest topic involve conflict of interest allegations made against Rob Ford. The Globe and Mail reports that Ford’s family business (in which he continues to retain a financial interest) helped a client of the business lobby the city “in an unsuccessful bid to conduct a strategic review of Toronto’s $9-million in-house printing division.”

What is Rob Ford’s defence? Judging by another article, it seems to be this. “All I did was arrange a meeting between the client and . . . [more]

In a surprising decision, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed the Quebec Court of Appeal (QCA) last week in a decision regarding the provision and payment of “reasonable notice” on resignation. In the original QCA decision, the Court held that when an employee resigns and provides notice, the employer is free to forgo the notice period and let the employee leave immediately, without payment. This is different than in any of the common law provinces which would require the employer to pay out the common law “reasonable notice” or previously agreed upon contractual notice. While acknowledging that this may . . . [more]

A news article quotes Chief Justice Joseph Kennedy of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court and how impressed he was about the use of Twitter by reporters during a recent trial.

“I couldn’t get over how well it had worked,” Kennedy said in an interview, describing it as the closest thing to gavel-to-gavel coverage he has seen.

I didn’t think it was going to be as accurate as it turned out to be. I have to say that I was very impressed.

The Crown attorney Darcy MacPherson is quoted as saying he used printouts of a reporter’s tweets to augment his . . . [more]

Any good marketing and business development plan includes not only strategies for attracting new clients, but also strategies for ensuring that your current clients have an exceptional experience with your firm so that they will return to you for their future legal needs and refer other potential clients to you. But the mere fact that an existing client hasn’t gone elsewhere doesn’t mean that you’ve delivered that kind of client experience.

Take a look at a few lawyer websites, brochures or other marketing materials and you’ll see claims that lawyers are “client-focused,” and that they provide “excellent client service.” And . . . [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 the Way Back Machine to See Older Versions of Websites*
Dan Pinnington

Have you ever needed or wanted to look at a previous version of a website? This is easily done on the Way Back Machine (archive.org). It allows you to browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Just type in the web address of a site or page and . . . [more]

In a recent case, the Superior Court upheld the Master’s decision to backdate a Statement of Claim that was issued after the expiry of the limitation period.

The limitation period for the plaintiff’s claim was to expire on November 1, 2012.

On October 31^st the plaintiff’s lawyer sent the Statement of Claim along with the necessary filing fees by overnight courier from Toronto to the Ottawa Court. Enclosed was a note for the Registrar which advised that the limitation period for filing the claim was November 1^st and stating “I would really appreciate if you could call . . . [more]

It’s not hard to light up a debate over the digital legal information revolution and its impact on law. There’s plenty of kindling. What’s hard is to pick an issue and keep the blaze contained. And the sources of fuel keep adding up.

Dutch financial giant ING might have struck a new spark with a report last month on social media and how it impacts news reportage. The full title of the ING report is “An International Study into the Impact of Social Media on the Activities of PR Professionals & Journalists, News & News Dissemination.” It has . . . [more]

Lawyers working “in association” need to consider how they may be perceived by clients and the public, since those who hold themselves out as a law firm risk being treated as such by the courts and can expect to be held to the same conflict requirements as a law firm partnership.
That’s according to a recent decision by Justice Stinson, in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice [2014 ONSC 3411 (CanLII)]

The facts
The defendant brought a motion to remove the plaintiff’s lawyer from the record on the basis that the lawyer worked in association with another lawyer with whom . . . [more]

The Cyberjustice Laboratory of the Université de Montréal has been developing a courtroom management software application for one year now. Initially, the project, called ISA – a french acronym for « Interface de salle d’audience » (courtroom interface) – had the sole purpose of developing a streamlined interface facilitating the management of the Laboratory’s state-of-the-art technological courtroom software infrastructure.

However, due to the great potential of this software and to the enthusiasm of its first users, a web-based version of ISA was quickly designed. Our main objective behind its development is to extract the management functions from the courtroom’s physical . . . [more]

There’s a wonderful new book available that provides a useful overview of linked data principles and concepts that will help you understand and apply the knowledge you’ve been gathering over the past couple of years.

Seth van Hooland (Associate Professor in the Information and Communication Science Department at the Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Ruben Verborgh (Postdoctoral Researcher in Semantic Hypermedia at Ghent University) have written “Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums: How to Clean, Link and Publish your Metadata.”

This entertaining little video sums up the content nicely.

And here’s the publisher’s blurb:

“This highly practical

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. Library Boy  2. À bon droit  3. Michael Geist  4. Susan on the Soapbox  5. Canadian Legal History Blog

Library Boy

Statistics Canada Article on Police-Reported Crimes Stats for 2013

Statistics Canada has published an article on Police-reported crime statistics, 2013 that shows most categories of criminal offences have . . . [more]

As I write this, Israel is again engaged in defensive military operations in a renewed attempt to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories. This latest chapter in the vast novel of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict began with the kidnapping and murder of three young Israeli civilians by alleged Hamas terrorists. It spiralled further out of control when a gang of Israeli youth reacted to the murders by perpetrating their own barbaric vengeance against an innocent Palestinian teen who was kidnapped and burned to death. Although the suspects in the murder of the Palestinian were quickly arrested and charged by Israeli . . . [more]