Thanks to Associate Professor of Law at the University of Saskatchewan Michael Plaxton for his discussion here on Slaw.ca earlier today. He alluded to some other discussion, so I thought it would be helpful to pull together some of those pieces for everyone.

Below is the letter from Annette Demers on behalf of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD) and John Papadopoulos and Jeanne Maddix on behalf of the Canadian Council of Academic Law Library Directors which was also endorsed by Robert Thomas on behalf of the Saskatchewan Library Association. This was published on the CALL/ACBD website:

Ken

Delegation involves getting the job done through others. A governing tenet in every firm should be to push work down to the lowest capable level. You are wasting your time and the client’smoney if you or others at your firmare consistently doingtasks that lawyers with a lower hourly rate or staff can complete. Lawyers typically fail to delegate for any number of reasons, none
of which stand up to scrutiny.

• They don’t want to give up control of the matter or client: This is a bad behaviour often driven by a compensation system that rewards bad behaviours.
• They think they

The University of Saskatchewan College of Law’s library, we have recently learned, is to be “reconfigured”. We have no idea, at the moment, what this re-configuration will entail. We can be reasonably confident that no one intends to burn down the library. But it seems over-optimistic to call it “safe” either.

Here is what we (sort of) know. There is talk of moving some (many? most?) of the books either to the Murray Library or to off-campus storage facilities. Materials moved to those facilities would be available within 48 hours. Much of the space in the . . . [more]

The UK Court of Appeal last week overturned a decision staying a complex financial fraud prosecution on the ground that no suitably qualified lawyer was willing to be retained to defend the case at the reduced compensation rates being offered by the State.

The UK Ministry of Justice had previously announced its intention to cut by 30% the rate of remuneration to counsel in such cases. None of the respondents were able to find counsel to instruct.

The judge of first instance concluded, “to allow the State an adjournment to put right its failure to provide the necessary resources to . . . [more]

Think outside the box.

Think of ways to use current tools creatively.

Think big.

Think niche.

Think of ways to blow up the current paradigm.

Think of ways to make the current paradigm work better.

… Essentially, opinions about how to transition into a future-ready legal profession are like vital organs – everyone alive has at least one that works for them, but there isn’t one that works for everybody.

Since the CBA Legal Futures Initiative was launched, many ideas about the challenges facing the profession have been postulated – their causes, their effects, and appropriate responses to them. One . . . [more]

Romania joined the European Union in 2007. Accordingly, its citizens can presumably benefit from the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU compelling search engines to comply in certain circumstances with requests from individuals to “de-link” search results where their privacy interests are implicated. But what rights, if any, are possessed by a Canadian who carries out a vanity Google search of their name and discovers that a Romanian website has republished personal details from a Canadian court case that is on the internet, yet “practically obscure” through its unlinked presence on CanLII? This is . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada decision in McCormick v. Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, mentioned recently by Simon Chester, will have implications beyond just how human rights legislation applies to mandatory retirement provisions in partnership agreements. Because such provisions will be upheld, firms can be expected to include and rely on them further, and the baby boomer population of lawyers who are quickly approaching retirement age may now expect a forced retirement from partnership.

Some economists reject the “lump labour” theory, which suggests that unemployment can be, in part, attributable to the refusal of older workers to retire. However, even . . . [more]

Chaque semaine, nous vous présentons un résumé d’une décision d’un tribunal québécois qui nous est fourni par la Société québécoise d’information juridique (SOQUIJ) et ayant un intérêt pancanadien. SOQUIJ relève du ministre de la Justice du Québec, et elle analyse, organise, enrichit et diffuse le droit au Québec.

Every week we present a summary of a decision by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and selected 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.

SÛRETÉS: Il . . . [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:
Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

A bankrupt, who had made a voluntary assignment, co-owned a vehicle with his ex-spouse (50/50 ownership). The vehicle was purchased pursuant to a conditional sales contract with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC sales contract). As part of the bankruptcy, the bankrupt gave up the vehicle . . . [more]

As a marketing and communication professional, I am always trying to find ways for my firm and the professionals in my firm to stand out from the pack. At the firm level this means knowing the practices, the goals and the strategy – it is also about knowing the culture, the people and the opportunities. This doesn’t change when looking at a practice or individual other than size and scope. Sometimes we go too far in trying to be different and miss out on what is most important which is our partnership with clients.

One thing I have tried to . . . [more]

Should crafty lawyer trespass on our ground,
Caitiffs avaunt! disturbing tribe away!
Unless (white crow) an honest one be found;
He’ll better, wiser go for what we say.*

What wears black, talks a lot, occasionally hangs out at murders, and is intelligent, aggressive, and generally little-loved?

Yes, that’s right.

Seems to me there are worse things than being compared to crows, however. I have a lot of respect for these loud, shiny birds — for corvids generally: jays, ravens, rooks, crows, magpies — mostly because they do interesting things, which is to say that I think they’re “smart.” And in . . . [more]

By some weird synchronicity, the Supreme Courts in both the United Kingdom and Canada in the last 24 hours have considered the nature of partnerships and the extent to which employment law protections also applied to partners.

Yesterday’s decision in Clyde & Co LLP and another (Respondents) v Bates van Winklehof (Appellant) [2014] UKSC 32 held that a junior partner (unhelpfully called an Equity Partner) in a London firm was protected by the whistle-blowing protections of the Employment Rights Act 1996. She had been involved in a rather dubious file in Tanzania and reported to the firm’s money laundering reporting . . . [more]