The real estate lawyer’s job is more than just conveying title, and not every matter will be straightforward. Communication errors and inadequate investigation are the biggest causes of real estate claims at LAWPRO, respectively 41 per cent and 26 per cent of claims reported between 2001 and 2011. Busy, high-volume practices often lead to situations where the lawyer is not taking the time to communicate with the clients properly.

Lawyers need to take the time to speak to clients to ensure they’ve gathered all the relevant information.

Here are five questions lawyers should be asking their clients or themselves on . . . [more]

A few months ago, my son-in-law showed me the simple-word explanation of a Saturn 5 rocket (the up-goer space car). It can be found at http://xkcd.com/1133/. More recently, there was a discussion on the ULC Listserv concerning Google’s terms of use, with an allegation that they are harder to understand than Beowulf. David Ma, who is one of my favourite IT lawyers, pointed to the Up-goer Five explanation and it got me thinking that it might be possible to use a limited number of words – namely the 1000 most common words in American English – to write a . . . [more]

In previous columns I have written about the fact that Canada’s approach to implementing its international human rights obligations is rather a shambles. I have written of the pressing need for action to address violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada. And I have highlighted the mystifying failure of the Canadian government to sign on to a UN torture prevention treaty that is more than a decade old.

Those all came together in a very significant way earlier this fall. Sadly the disappointment and shortcomings have only deepened.

2013 has brought Canada’s second turn through the UN Human Rights . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one 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. Rule of Law   2. Michael Geist   3. Doorey’s Workplace Law Blog   4. Slater Vecchio Connected    5. Off the Shelf

The Ontario Court of Appeal released a decision this month involving a dispute between physician residents and the University of Ottawa which again emphasizes the level of deference the courts are willing to offer educational institutions.

The plaintiffs in Aba-Alkhail v. University of Ottawa were physicians from Saudi Arabia who were completing their postgraduate medical residency at the University of Ottawa. All received some form of discipline or complaints which they attributed to discrimination based on their national origin. The university Senate dismissed the residents’ appeal of their dismissal from the medical program.

Complaints were brought before the human rights . . . [more]

International : La permission d'appel n'est pas accordée à des compagnies étrangères qui exercent leurs activités dans l'industrie du tabac et qui sont poursuivies en vertu de la Loi sur le recouvrement du coût des soins de santé et des dommages-intérêts liés au tabac au Québec, leur exception déclinatoire ayant été rejetée en première instance.

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

DETLOR v. BRANTFORD (CITY), 2013 ONCA 560

1. CASE SUMMARY

Areas of Law: Municipal law; Aboriginal law; Constitutional and Charter law

~Bylaws containing specific reference to identifiable individuals in their preamble, and affecting Aboriginal people, will not be held to be invalid if they are of general application and do not touch on the “core of Indianness”~

Background: The Haudenosaunee people claimed unsurrendered rights to land in the . . . [more]

When lawyers say they can’t afford their own services, you might have an access to justice problem.

Regina lawyer Alex Shalashniy said during the CBA Legal Futures Initiative’s Twitter chat Tuesday night that he’s heard lawyers admitting they would be unable to pay their own fees if they needed a lawyer – something he calls a “telling illustration” of the access to justice problem in Canada.

A number of people participating in the third weekly Twitter chat, this one dealing with how legal services can be changed to increase access, pointed to cost as a barrier.

Corinne Boudreau, owner of . . . [more]

Sean Hocking’s recent article Law Firms Should Have Become Legal Publishers Because Legal Publishers Are Now Becoming Law Firms, although prompted by the news of the establishment of Jordans Corporate Law Ltd., a new offshoot of The Jordans group of companies, brings into question an opportunity that for a long time I have thought feasible. Love or hate them, legal and professional information publishing entities for hundreds of years have been a critical component of the education, training of lawyers and their competence to practice. It is almost surprising to see that, at least since the beginning of . . . [more]

[This is the first of a two-part column on open access and public access to Canadian legal scholarship within the free law movement. This week (October 21-27, 2013) is International Open Access Week. This annual global event, now entering its sixth year, is organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to promote the goals of Open Access to the public generally but especially within the academic and research communities, to demonstrate its benefits and to inspire wider participation in making Open Access a new norm in scholarly publishing. The . . . [more]

Naming has been problematic ever since Adam got the job of dubbing a billion or more different creatures. For one thing, you run out of options, or your imagination fails. For another, you want the name to be distinctive, perhaps, but not abstruse or downright daft. Brains get cudgelled and books get consulted. What shall we call the baby?

I started thinking about this . . . [more]

Law enforcement has contacted us seeking assistance in investigating bad cheque frauds by someone purporting to be Joe Mathewson. He is using the email address Joe111mathewson@gmail.com and the phone number 647-760-4059. The following UPS account numbers have been used on frauds: A82A95 F9236V and F88481.

If any of the above information has come up in a matter you have handled or been approached for, please contact Tim immediately at fraudinfo@lawpro.ca or 416-596-4623 so we can gather further information for the police.

Cross posted at AvoidaClaim . . . [more]