In early December of 2011 and 2012, I posted top 10 lists of the most consulted cases. Two lists were published each year – one for all cases consulted and the other for consultations of cases decided in within that year. With the tradition now firmly established, I’m very pleased to present for 2013 the top 10 most consulted cases on CanLII.

As in prior years, I leave it to the readers to determine the significance of any case appearing on either list.

Top 10 most consulted cases of 2013

1. R. v. Duncan, 2013 ONCJ 160
2. Meads v. Meads,

If you like podcasts, and who doesn’t — it’s hard to beat learning something and getting to close your eyes at the same time — you might take a listen to the McGill Podcasts, and particularly those in their Law & Society category. There are about twenty or so “pure” podcasts and the same number again of earlier videos.

The subjects range widely, including, for instance, “The Syrian conflict and the International Criminal Court: Interview with Human Rights Watch’s Richard Dicker,” “Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion, and Tax Justice with Professor Allison Christians,” “Racial Profiling . . . [more]

I am interested by recent discussions I have had with librarians at various law libraries about how they make decisions about what materials to keep, cancel, or discard. Many are looking at the holdings of other libraries and relying on them to provide access to less commonly used materials rather than maintaining them locally. This is understandable, but it is only a viable decision if the lending libraries continue to maintain their collections. Instead, this appears to be done without formal agreements among the libraries about retention of materials, consideration of whether it is within the supplying libraries’ mandates to . . . [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.

Judicial “Copying” does not affect Independence or Impartiality: Supreme Court of Canada 
Emir Crowne
(July 29, 2013). Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (Oxford), Forthcoming

(Footnotes converted to endnotes and renumbered)

. . . . The Chief Justice, in particular, must have been aware of the copyright implications[1] of her reasons . . . [more]

I just listened to an IT.Can teleconference with Barry Sookman commenting on the final anti-spam regulations. This post summarizes a few key issues that arose.

As you probably know, the CASL regulations are now final. The anti-spam portions of the act come into force on July 1 2014. This is a shorter grace period than many had expected.

Many business were waiting for these regs before figuring out how it affected them. Unfortunately the regs did not remove most of the compliance burden. Businesses need to start working towards compliance very soon.

The provisions that deal with permissions required for . . . [more]

The electronic documents part of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) generally operates on an opt-in basis. Thus, for example, s. 41:

A requirement under a provision of a federal law for a document to be in writing is satisfied by an electronic document if

(a) the federal law or the provision is listed in Schedule 2 or 3; and

(b) the regulations respecting the application of this section to the provision have been complied with.

To date, only the Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act and a small part of . . . [more]

The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is currently seeking input from lawyers on two proposed new practice standards. The draft standards, proposed by the Law Office Management Committee, relate to lawyers’ responsibilities in the areas of timekeeping and data maintenance:

TIMEKEEPING
1. A lawyer’s accounts must be fair, reasonable and lawful.

a) The assessment and reasonableness of a lawyer’s account will depend on many factors, of one which is the time and effort “required and spent”.

MAINTENANCE AND BACKUP OF ELECTRONIC DATA

Lawyers must ensure there is a system in place for the maintenance, backup, and access of all electronic data.

As I write this, annual conference season is in full swing. Lawyers, hastily arranging their speaking notes, are wondering how they got involved in the first place. Marketing departments are finding out at the last minute that the conference hosts need the firm’s logo, the lawyer needs a PowerPoint presentation, and the booth at the accompanying trade show needs staffing. Wait, what booth? Trade show? Nobody told us…. 

Yes, that’s how it usually goes down. It shouldn’t be any surprise, therefore, that both lawyers and marketers feel cynical about the value of trade shows in the marketing mix. Like . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Cheetham v. TD Life Insurance Company 2013 ONSC 4892
   

   [1] This action arose as a result of a denial of the payment of life insurance on a line of credit with TD Canada Trust. The plaintiff claims $97,500 on account of a contract of life insurance on the life of her late common-law husband John Foreman. The $97,500 is money owing on a

The end of a calendar year is a good time to reflect, assess and plan. One aspect of this reflection for me is looking at learning: what have I learned in the last year, what has adjusted based onthat learning, and what should I consider for 2014. I am a law librarian and just like every year, there are many items to add to the “things I learned this year” list. Some of that learning came from conferences and webinars offered by professional associations, some came from discussions at CBA conferences, Legal Education Society of Alberta events and . . . [more]

As you may recall, I promised to report back on my efforts to get organized and deal with all that information overload. I would like to say that I can report a near 100% success rate. My system is working pretty well, but I feel I am not there just yet. Going through this process though, I have been reminded of a couple of pretty simple lessons, and I hope you will not mind my repeating them.

You have probably heard the old adage, give a job to a busy person if you want to get it done. I don’t . . . [more]

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at a law firm somewhere in Toronto. John is reading the Huffington Post on-line. He feels stuck. Unmotivated. With no pounding deadlines this week he just can’t get around to doing the important but not urgent work on his desk.

Tina in Vancouver is also stuck. She’s so stressed out and anxious about the deadlines she has to meet that she is frozen. Her inner dialogue is about how hopeless she is, and useless, and the worst lawyer ever, and under this harsh litany of criticism she is immobilized.

Frank in Calgary has some urgent client . . . [more]