You may be tired of hearing about CASL, and tired of getting the consent requests that people were sending out before July 1. The pre July 1 scramble was done because sending an email to request consent is now itself considered spam. But we may still see requests, which can be sent if the recipient fits into one of the exceptions.

In hindsight, I wish I had kept track of the number of consent requests I got, how many of those were not technically compliant with CASL, and how many were from entities I’d never heard of that were . . . [more]

The Federal Court has a primary role in hearing intellectual property proceedings in Canada (See Where Should You Launch Your Intellectual Property Case?). Changes to the composition of the Federal Court, including the number of judges and prothonotaries, have a significant effect on the enforcement of intellectual property in Canada. Several changes are being made to the role of the prothonotaries as well new appointments for judges in the Federal Court.

These changes affect the Court’s ability to manage its workload. The Federal Court has a Practice Notice indicating that where possible, the Court will endeavour to have the . . . [more]

Canada Day is one of my favourite holidays. Every three years, this not being one, my husbands extended family on his mother’s side takes advantage of the Canada Day long weekend to have a Rebellion – other families call this a reunion from what I understand. I suppose it is a bit odd to host a family rebellion on a day celebrating the coming together of our nation, but that is how we roll.

This year, the buzz about Canada Day seems to be focused on the fact that it was not a long weekend. Canada Day is a celebration . . . [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 Hidden Level App on Your iPhone to Hang Pictures
Dan Pinnington

You can never trust your eye when it comes to hanging pictures or other similar situations when things have to be level. But no need to run to the toolbox – just grab your iPhone. Open the Compass app, swipe to the left and bingo, you have a handy level that will help you hang a stubborn . . . [more]

How do you get started with Knowledge Management (KM) in the legal profession?

I get approached on a regular basis with this question by small law firms that want to have the advantages of the larger firms, by lawyers or librarians who want to become part of an existing KM team in a larger firm, or by individuals hired into firms to lead KM initiatives. There are programs specific to Knowledge Management that exist, but there is not a lot of introductory material specific to the legal industry.

I recently sat down with Garry Wise of Wise Law so he . . . [more]

Years before Edward Snowden obliterated digital innocence, showed us what the “Five Eyes” are really up to, and pulled stakes for the unlikely safe harbour of Moscow’s airport transit zone, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger released his 2009 book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. In it he urged caution for the “Digital Panopticon”, and warned against the growing trend towards mass surveillance. The Internet, as we now know, never forgets. He made the case for why it should.

Throughout human history, forgetting has been the norm and remembering the exception. Technology, as Mayer-Schönberger, a . . . [more]

Following the release of the SCC decision in Hryniak in January of this year, the widely held view was that the decision would deal a death blow to trials in Canada and would open the floodgates to summary judgment motions.

The Advocates’ Journal Summer 2014 has run an interesting piece by Jonathan Lisus which suggests that, on the contrary, Canadian courts and creative counsel are using the Hryniak to craft procedures that bring cases to trial in a more efficient and cost effective way, than has any other access to justice initiative.

After reviewing the treatment of the SCC decision . . . [more]

Where a client charged with a serious crime is a non-citizen of Canada and is hoping to obtain resident status, criminal lawyers should be aware that recent changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) raise special plea and sentencing considerations.

The Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act
On June 19, 2013, amendments to the IRPA made by Bill C-43, the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, came into force. Among other things, the amendments render inadmissible – without right of appeal – permanent residency applicants who have received a six-month custody sentence for an offence with a . . . [more]

In September, 2008, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) formally launched its “Value Challenge” initiative with a goal “to reconnect value and costs for legal services.” At the time, many in the legal media declared that this would be the beginning of the change in the way law firm’s act as a business. They predicted that we would soon see the mass implementation of alternative and fixed fee arrangements, lowering of costs and increased efficiency. We’re five years on and there has not been nearly the movement the ACC had hoped, especially in regards to Canadian firms.

And so, it . . . [more]

Eric Franzon, over on semanticweb.com, has a nice post about a series of videos on semantic web and linked data technologies.

The series is called Build a Small Knowledge Graph and there are three videos:

• Creating and Processing Linked Data

  Jarek Wilkiewicz introduces the reference architecture for support of Schema.org Actions in the context of a specific use case (a music store). The video then focuses on exposing entities using Schema.org markup with JSON-LD.

• Managing Graph Data With Cayley

  Barak Michener introduces graph processing using Cayley, an open source graph database written in Go. Cayley is fast,

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. Vincent Gautrais  2. Family LLB  3. First Reference Talks  4. Environmental Law and Litigation  5. Barry Sookman

Vincent Gautrais
Tournoi de pétanque CRDP / CICC

C’est déjà une tradition que plusieurs universités, à travers le monde, nous envient : après une pause l’an dernier, le 15 juillet prochain (12h) . . . [more]

I am not sure if the voices in my head were inherited or created for survival. I suffer from the disease of alcoholism and medical opinion suggests that the predisposition to this disease is inherited. All I know is that the voices are part of my disease and long before I took a drink and for as long as I can remember they were there.

At first the voices helped me cope with a very abusive father. However, even from a young age the voices were more detrimental than helpful. They told me “you are bad, you deserved it, you . . . [more]