As part of the CBA’s Reaching Equal Justice initiative, CBA just released 6 Legal Health Checks for members of the public. Similar to LAWPRO’s Annual Legal Health Check-up, these are intended to ensure people have the information and tools they need to recognize and avoid legal problems in the first place, and/or to prevent small problems from becoming bigger than they might have been.

There are 6 different health checks:

• 5 steps to legal wellness – speaks to the reasons why smaller legal problems can snowball into much larger and more complex problems, particularly for already vulnerable people

“If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend” is an often cited quote from Benjamin Franklin. But what does it mean? It could mean that our friends will eventually become our enemies and, thus, should not be trusted with our secrets. In contrast, it could mean that humankind has an inherent inability to keep secrets, or it could be interpreted simply as a commentary on our hardwired propensity for gossip. In any case, these interpretations have strong implications for the legal profession and, in particular, the duty of confidentiality legal professionals owe to . . . [more]

With his latest project Fargo, Dave Winer puts outliners where they belong: everywhere. Fargo runs in your web browser and stores your data in your Dropbox folder. This combination of browser and cloud puts the outliner everywhere making it a good choice for anyone looking for ubiquitous note taking and writing capabilities.

Why an outliner?

The short answer is that you can reduce most writing to an outline, a series of expandable points or topics. If you think about it for a minute it is easy to see most legal writing as an outline. Many of those course outlines . . . [more]

Alexandra Kozlov graduated from the Queen’s Faculty of Law in 2012 and articled with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeal Tribunal

We all know what law school stress looks like. Come exam time, we see its physical manifestations: the law student, hibernating in the law library, subsisting on a diet of coffee and candy, sits surrounded by mountains of books, empty cans of energy drinks and an arsenal of highlighters. We recognize the bloodshot eyes and the anxiety-ridden knuckle cracking. Stress is synonymous with law school, but it’s important to remember that stress is merely the interaction between a situation . . . [more]

On April 9, 2014, the Quebec Superior Court ruled that businesses in the province of Quebec may continue to display their trademarks on public signs outside their premises in a language other than French if no French version of the trademark has been registered.

Facts of the case

On November 13, 2011, during an enforcement campaign called “Une marque de respect de la loi” (A sign of respect for the law), the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) took the position that the trademark exception found in the Charter of the French Language (loi 101) does not . . . [more]

Many people are only starting to get used to the idea of ODR – Online Dispute Resolution. ODR uses increasingly familiar things, like online communication and information sharing, and uses the internet to combine them with dispute resolution. But what is stopping us from combining ODR with our justice systems?

In his CBA Legal Futures Initiative report, Key Trends in the Marketplace, Professor Richard Susskind invited us to contemplate whether court is a service or a place. If we commit to the view that it should be a service, then ODR would seem poised to become a key delivery . . . [more]

The most admired superheroes are usually courageous and persevere despite the odds. Interestingly, these characteristics are also readily apparent in defence lawyers. For example, when balancing their ethical duty to the client against not misleading the court, defence lawyers need to be courageous and have strength of character.[1] Thus, defence lawyers are arguably our modern day superheroes. However, defence lawyers are not recognized as superheroes because of misunderstandings that surround their ethical duties such as, “how can you defend a guilty client”?![2] Society has failed to realize that defence lawyers are like superheroes as they engage in ethical . . . [more]

The Law Society of BC recently voted in favour of approving Trinity Western University’s law school. The private Christian school, located in Langley and about an hour’s drive from Vancouver, has an anti-gay covenant that, essentially, discriminates against anyone who isn’t heterosexual. There is plenty of ink spilled and many keyboards pounded on the subject of the LSBC’s decision and the distaste for TWU’s exclusivity that’s worthy of reading. What strikes me though, is the question about the value of a TWU law degree.

When the first crop of law students begin looking for summer articles will they be met . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Science Manual for Canadian Judges
National Judicial Institute / Institut national de la magistrature / Chapter 2: Scott Findlay and Nathalie Chalifour. “Science and the Scientific Method”
Ottawa: National Judicial Institute, 2013

© National Judicial Institute 2013. All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce is granted for the purposes of research or private study. . . . [more]

April launched an exciting development for BC legal researchers and for the open law and open data movements. QP LegalEze, the BC Queen’s Printer’s deep and highly functional subscription service for current and some historical legislative information, is no more. Or, more accurately, it is by subscription no more.

All of its content and functionality now is available through BC Laws, the free site also offered by the Queen’s Printer:

BC Laws has been upgraded to provide enhanced searching and more content including historical legislation and related publications such as BC Gazette, full text Orders-in-Council, and Tables of Legislative

Nike just announced that it is exiting its FuelBand fitness tracker business.

Another article claims that “it’s only a matter of time until [Google Glass] joins devices such as the Zune, the Kin, the PlayBook, and the Xoom in tech hell.”

Despite musings that wearable tech is dead and dying, these are just growing pains.

Wearable devices are still in an early bleeding edge phase where manufacturers and users are trying to figure out what works, what users want, what users find creepy, and what users are willing to pay for.

Take Google Glass, for instance. I have no doubt . . . [more]

Although social networking tools offer lawyers many interesting new ways to interact with people in both personal and work spheres, there are some risks associated with using them. Before you venture into social networking, consider Section 5.5 of the Law Society’s Practice Management Guideline on Technology (“Technology Guideline”). It states, “Lawyers should have a reasonable understanding of the technologies used in their practice or should have access to someone who has such understanding.”

Don’t talk to or about clients or their matters

Social networking tools have complex and confusing privacy settings and most people are not entirely sure who can . . . [more]