The most recent Snowden revelation, as reported by the New York Times, has revealed that even law firms have become ensnared in the NSA’s ever-growing communications dragnet.

The top secret document, leaked by Edward Snowden, reveals that a US-based firm was targeted by the NSA over the period of time it represented Indonesia in trade talks with the US government. Controversial FISC court rulings grant the NSA permission to monitor the communications of Americans, even communications within the scope of attorney-client privilege, provided those communications are deemed to have intelligence value and are with foreigners.

Given these revelations, US-based . . . [more]

This article is by Nora Rock, corporate writer and policy analyst at LAWPRO

From both a client communication and a claims prevention perspective, reporting letters may be among the most important documents in a lawyer’s file.

Reporting letters support client communication by describing the work that has been completed and the results achieved. Good reporting letters should also communicate whether any issues remain to be resolved or tasks require completion – and whose responsibility it is to deal with these.

Should the matter result in a claim, having interim and/or final reporting letters in the file can be very helpful . . . [more]

Hardly a day goes by that I am not asked to sign a document and return it. Most of these documents come to me via email as attachments. In some cases it is a nice fillable PDF form, but often it is a Microsoft Word document with a series of underscores made to look like form fields to indicate where I am to place my signature and provide other information. To keep this “form” in Microsoft Word and fill it in I would spend a lot of time reformatting the document as one cannot actually fill in the fields, but . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Family LLB   2. Canadian Appeals Monitor   3. Slater Vecchio Connected   4. LeeAkazaki.com    5. Henry J. Chang’s Canada-US Immigration Blog

Why are we still discussing Trinity Western University (TWU) and their law school? The Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) approved TWU’s application back in December and the BC Ministry of Advanced Education gave TWU their approval in January. 

The answer is simple. The FLSC failed to uphold their mandate to act in the public interest when they disengaged from public discourse. This glaring omission became clear to me on Thursday, February 13 as I was live tweeting the first public hearing held by any law society in Canada about TWU.

The Executive Committee of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ . . . [more]

The employment law landscape is expected to change over a number of key issues through 2014. Some of these changes provincially in Ontario follow changes initiated at the Federal level.

Changes to the Employment Insurance Act under Bill C-44 to s. 12 of the Act which now provides up to 35 weeks of EI benefits for parents who have taken time off work to provide support or care for critically injured or ill children.

These provisions were mirrored in the Canada Labour Code for Federally regulated employees through a coordinating amendment under the Bill to s. 206.1.

Changes were . . . [more]

Faillite et insolvabilité :  En raison des articles 49 et 264 de la Loi sur les régimes complémentaires de retraite, les cotisations d'équilibre aux régimes de retraite, dont le versement a été suspendu par l'ordonnance initiale, font l'objet d'une fiducie réputée ayant priorité sur les droits du détenteur d'une hypothèque conventionnelle.

On one Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (Jan. 17 – Feb. 12, 2014 inclusive).

APPEALS

Criminal Law: . . . [more]

This week's summaries concern: Land titles / Conflict of laws / Industrial safety / Service of subpoena in another province / Interlocutory or interim injunctions:

You may already have been peppered with these—I’m not the person most tightly in the loop—but I thought you’d like to see what one of the big firms is doing by way of compliance with Canada’s Anti-Spam legislation. This arrived by email, allowing for an email reply. And there’s also a companion version on the Blakes website: . . . [more]

From my discussions with insiders, it appears that the carnage from the dissolution of Heenan Blaikie continues as professional administrative staff (IT, HR, marketing, support staff, etc. ) are left in limbo as to what will happen to those not moving with the mass exodus of lawyers to other law firms.

There have been allegations that the dissolution was not managed well by the firm’s executive team. From the descriptions I have heard, it very much seems like an “every man/woman for his/herself” situation with panicked lawyers desperately calling around for a job while support staff were left to watch . . . [more]

The old adage is that there are three things that matter in real estate; that being location, location and location. But a recent item here in Nova Scotia caught my attention for turning that axiom around a bit. That being the story of a man who is appealing his property tax assessment due to the availability of high speed internet access or more specifically the lack thereof. The linked story contains most of the details but I’ll try to impart the readers digest version (or perhaps we should change that axiom to “the blog version”) here. In short, his house . . . [more]