I am dealing with an older lawyer who told me that he won’t be able to review my 3 page agreement until January 6, 2014 because his staff will be gone for the holidays and he needs staff to help him with technology – in this case, with blacklining my agreement, which would be tough since I sent the agreement to him in pdf format. I suggested that he make his comments in pen on the document and then fax it back to me. He did manage to do that.

This is not the first time that I have come . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has released its decision in Attorney General of Canada, et al. v. Terri Jean Bedford, et al., the case involving prostitution that has been before Ontario courts eight times. In a 9-0 judgment delivered by the Chief Justice the Court dismissed the appeal by the Attorney-General and allowed the cross-appeal by Terri Bedford.

From the headnote:

Held: The appeals should be dismissed and the cross‑appeal allowed. Sections 210, 212(1)(j) and 213(1)(c) of the Criminal Code are declared to be inconsistent with the Charter. The declaration of invalidity should be suspended for one year.

. . . [more]

In April I wrote a column in which I posed the question “Are lawyers paying enough attention to privacy?”. Based on some high profile privacy breaches and extensive discussions with practitioners that I have met and worked with in the past, my unfortunate conclusion to the question was, no. As I mentioned in the previous post, I believe that this state of affairs largely arises from the deep history of protection of confidentiality within the legal profession and the mistaken notion that protection of confidentiality equals protection of privacy and ensures compliance with the relevant legal requirements that surround the . . . [more]

In a day’s time—at 12:11 p.m where I am, to be exact—it’ll be all downhill for the next six months, as we glide with increasing speed into the light. We’ve done it. We’ve survived the shrinking of the day for yet another year. Time now to begin the inhale, as it were.

I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned the business of burning off the day at both ends leaves me with the desire to be elsewhere, preferably closer to the equator. And though I buck myself up with the “downhill” analogy, I know that . . . [more]

On November 27, 2013, the European Court of Human Rights held a Grand Chamber hearing (which was broadcast on the Internet) in the case of S.A.S v. France (Application no 43835/11). The case concerns a French Muslim woman’s complaint that French law prohibits her from wearing a full-face veil in public. As of April 2011, French Law no. 2010-1192 prohibits concealment of one’s face in all places open to the public in France. The penalty for breaking the law is a fine of up to €150 and/or compulsory citizenship classes. Separate penalties are provided for anyone forcing a woman to conceal her face in public.

UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, a three-year-old organization, has made available online a database of those provisions in nations’ constitutions that concern gender. The Constitutional Database covers 195 countries and provides relevant passages in both the original language and English translation. It is possible to download the entire database in PDF.

The database is searchable, of course, with filters available for country, region, or type of provision (e.g. reproductive rights, marriage family rights, equality…).

[Hat tip: Blogging for Equality] . . . [more]

There is a new blog post over at In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, that discusses Christmas movies with a law-related theme.

Obviously, the post mentions Miracle on 34^th Street.

But check out the final paragraph that manages to connect the movie Gremlins to a discussion of The Restatement of Torts. . . . [more]

With around 7,500 exhibitors from over 110 countries, the Frankfurt Book Fair is the publishing industry’s biggest trade event in the world. I found myself there this past October, mostly hanging around the “Digital Innovation” track. This for two reasons: we (Lexum) are in the business of helping publishers look good on the web and there was a beer stand conveniently located not far from the stage to help fight the jetlag.

The premise of the courtship between an IT service provider and a publisher is quite straightforward. Publishers want to sell more of their books by repurposing . . . [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.

Fairness Found: How Canada Quietly Shifted from Fair Dealing to Fair Use in The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law, M. Geist Ed.
Michael Geist
Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2013

(Footnotes omitted; they are available in the version via the hyperlink above.)

ii. . . . [more]

A recent US decision held that a person’s browsing history on web dating sites – not just his profiles, which were clearly intended for public use – could be disclosed to police because the person had authorized the administrators of the sites to know what he was looking at. The case, People v Holmes, involved a high-profile defendant in a criminal case (the person who shot up the Colorado movie theatre – allegedly), but these cases should not turn on whether the person claiming a privacy right is sympathetic.

The key for the court is contained in this passage . . . [more]

(Ed. note: This is the second of two parts on providing legal services in a coaching model. The first part is available on Slaw.)

Returning to the question of whether, and how, lawyers could provide coaching in self-advocacy for SRL’s, let me first put a few pertinent findings from my 2013 SRL study upfront.

86% of the (n=259) SRLs in told me that they had sought the assistance of a lawyer – via either the private Bar, a pro bono service, or Legal Aid. 53% had originally had counsel representing them; a further 33% sought pro bono legal services . . . [more]

Join me in welcoming the debut of Journal of Open Access to Law, or JOAL. A post on the B-SCREEDS blog at the Legal Information Institute announced the launch:

I’m proud to announce the debut of the Journal of Open Access to Law, a multidisciplinary journal that will publish the work that its title suggests: research related to legal information that is made openly available on the Internet.

Simon Fodden wrote about the new peer-reviewed journal in June, posting about the call for papers for the first issue.

That issue is now available and, true to its subject, is . . . [more]