In five days, Justice Clément Gascon of the Cour d’Appel will assume Justice Fish’s seat on the Supreme Court.

The announcement from the Prime Minister’s office is terse:

« Je suis ravi d’annoncer la nomination de M. le juge Clément Gascon à la Cour suprême du Canada. M. le juge Gascon, qui siège actuellement à la Cour d’appel du Québec, possède un important bagage d’expérience et de connaissances juridiques dont profitera grandement cette importante institution canadienne. Sa nomination survient au terme de vastes consultations menées auprès d’éminents membres du milieu juridique du Québec. » –

As a Bencher of the Law Society of BC, I voted against the accreditation of TWU Law. I was on the losing side of a 20-7 vote. The next day, my wife and I left for a road trip through the American South.

We started in Chicago, marveled at its architecture for a few days and then took an overnight train to Memphis. From there, we drove down the eastern bank of the Mississippi through the “cradle of the civil war” and over Cajun swamps to our final destination of New Orleans. We drove through the rural sun-baked squalor of . . . [more]

There’s an airline that flies to northern Manitoba centres that has recently reduced its scheduled flights to and from Winnipeg. While one might not necessarily expect an airline schedule change to have an impact on access to justice, it’s possible that it just may.

Flights from Winnipeg to this centre depart each morning, allowing judges on circuit and lawyers from Winnipeg to get to court on time in the northern centre. The scheduled daily return flights to Winnipeg now depart either in the late morning or well-past dinnertime.

Is there a potential effect on access to justice? There could be, . . . [more]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any education related publication in the 21^st century must at some point cover the topic of MOOCs. So let’s get it out of the way, shall we?

As a known supporter of open content and technology, as well as someone who works in education, I like to pretend that people are dying to ask me, “Sarah, are MOOCs going to save law schools?”

My answer? No. No they are not.

Okay, I guess I could flesh this answer out a bit, and not just because I should have about 800 more words . . . [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. Boucher v. Wal-Mart Canada Corp., 2014 ONCA 419

[49] Pinnock submits that no jury acting reasonably could have found him liable for this tort. I do not agree with this submission. Appellate review of a civil jury award is limited. The standard is “unreasonableness” and this standard applies to liability as well as to amount. A civil jury verdict should be . . . [more]

Are firms becoming more attuned to the benefits of legal project management (LPM)? Are clients? Judging from a workshop I attended on this topic last month in Chicago, the answer is “yes”.

But many firms – including almost every firm I’ve encountered – still struggle with the question of how to encourage organizational and individual changes required to inculcate wide-spread adoption of LPM.

The panelists who spoke at the “LPM Showcase and Workshop” lead some of the firms that have been the most successful at LPM implementation – Baker & McKenzie, Loeb & Loeb, Foley Hoag . . . [more]

Clay Shirky, way back in 2008, had a hypothesis: that it isn’t a case of too much information; it’s that we haven’t yet got the filters to help us manage that overload.

And we have to assume that the amount of information we’re already getting will continue to grow. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But, if we are to deal with that firehose aimed at our brains, we need to get smarter; because if we don’t we’re just going to get wetter.

When looking for recommendations of where to eat in a new city, for example, . . . [more]

In an unusual case, the Court of Appeal has granted the Appeal brought by the Defendants due to the fact that the inadequacy of the endorsement of the motion judge rendered the Court of Appeal unable to “conduct a meaningful review of his decision.”

The Plaintiff purchased a house from one of the Defendants. As it turns out, the house had previously been used as a marijuana grow-op. The Plaintiff alleged that the vendor failed to disclose that a grow-op had previously operated at the property and that the property had an extensive mould problem that renders it uninhabitable.

For . . . [more]

About a year ago I wrote a post inspired by Thomas R. Bruce‘s article “GitHub: It Ain’t Magic Pixie Dust.” In that post I introduced Bruce‘s observation that “people are sticking legislation into GitHub at a furious pace.” I wanted to quickly revisit this idea and see if there was still interest in this area.

I found a short presentation* that V. David Zvenyach gave at iAnnotate 2014 in April called, “Annotating the Law.” (There is a bit of a buzz in the audio which is too bad)

Zvenyach introduces the document intensive process . . . [more]

I am still thinking about the messages that came out of last week’s Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference. So much of it revolved around the role of library professionals. Some of my key take-aways from my week in Winnipeg:

• Things continue to change. Business as we knew it has been permanently disrupted. Lawyers, law firms, legal organizations and law libraries need to change or they will be left behind.
• Lawyers do not hold all the answers; library staff (who are more familiar with process) could have many of the answers, and there is an opportunity to get involved at

Many lawyers assume that simultaneously acting for members of the same family and their business or corporate entities is relatively safe from fraud and conflicts issues. After all, the parties all know each other and everyone is on good terms.

Unfortunately, this is just not the case. An analysis of LAWPRO claims files tell us that there is actually a greater likelihood of a fraud or conflicts of interest issue when clients are related to or know each other. Understanding when and why malpractice claims arise when work is done for related clients can help you avoid a claim.

When . . . [more]