As some readers may know, I retain a small commercial real estate practice. I apply as much of my thinking to my practice as workable. The upside is that my practice runs on very low overhead and is cost-effective for me and my clients. It also forces me to assess risk with my clients so that I don’t negotiate every sentence of every document; which is the essence of being a “trusted advisor.”

The downside is dealing with lawyers (most of whom are from Biglaw) for whom concepts of cost-effectiveness, efficiency and thoughtfulness are completely unknown; lawyers who can’t stop . . . [more]

The British daily The Guardian reports that the Supreme Court in the Australian state of Victoria wants to make the justice system more understandable for citizens by making its website more interactive and hiring a retired judge to blog about cases:

“[Victorian Chief Justice Marilyn] Warren said the court’s new interactive website would become a hub for the court’s communication with the public, who would be able to comment on the website, watch video on demand, debate in online forums, and download judgments and summaries.”

“She said employing a retired judge to blog the courts represented a ‘historic shift

. . . [more]

On October 17, 2013, Quebec’s Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse released an opinion on the government's policy paper, Orientations gouvernementales en matière d'encadrement des demandes d'accommodement religieux, d'affirmation des valeurs de la société québécoise ainsi que du caractère laïque des institutions de l'État (Charter of Quebec Values) previously discussed on Slaw.

 1. The solution for making legal services again available at reasonable cost is to enable CanLII[1] to be the necessary national support service. This requires CanLII be able to provide the support services that are provided by the LAO LAW division of Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) to Ontario lawyers in private practice who do legal aid cases. LAO LAW is a centralized legal research service.[2] As its first Director of Research, beginning in July 1979, I developed its technology of centralized legal research, which involves specialization as an on-going process in regard to: (1) its research lawyers; (2) . . . [more]

The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Ontario recently published a report on ‘alternative voting technologies’, mainly ‘network voting’ by Internet or telephone. The Election Act had been amended in 2010 to require such a study. His conclusion, somewhat controversial, is that no election technology currently exists that can satisfy the criteria that his team decided should apply to any such system before it could be implemented.

The stated criteria are a helpful base line for considering the use of voting technologies. No authoritative list could be found, so after study, the list was created. Most people who have commented . . . [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.

Natural Resource Jurisdiction in Canada
Dwight Newman
Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2013

Excerpt from Chapter 4 Devolution of Jurisdiction to the Northern Territories

In various areas of natural resource jurisdiction, a problem that can exist is that case law developed in very different contexts — without any contemplation of the effects on natural resource . . . [more]

When I was looking for an articling position, people would often tell me to make sure that I found a place where I “fit.” At the time, I found this advice incredibly frustrating. I thought “fit” was a criterion that only those candidates who had multiple Bay Street offers could consider. I was more concerned about factors like type of law, location, and simply whether or not I would be hired. However, as I come to the end of my articling term, I find myself giving prospective articling students the same advice.

I articled at a boutique firm practicing in . . . [more]

Discussions about access to justice typically focus attention on access through the traditional routes of courts, lawyers, law schools and pro bono or legal aid service providers. In this context, solutions tend to emphasize more effective use of online technologies or simplification of processes to bridge the gap between those who need legal services and the services they require.

But, as Julie Matthews made clear in her recent article, Educating the Early Assistance Providers, in some cases, community-based intermediaries can function effectively to provide assistance that can reduce or eliminate escalation of a legal problem to the point where . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has launched a new website this month. The site will be rolling out additional features in the coming months, but already has a new section for the public called “Going to Court?” which provides some basic information about the justice system. There is also a page in this section for teachers and students which provides instructional resources.

In Chief Justice Heather Forster Smith’s speech during the Opening of the Courts on Sept. 24, 2013, she focused on access to justice and the role of technology. In addition to envisioning greater e-filing in . . . [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. Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571
   

   [1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers;

. . . [more]

Lawyers tend to think of time in units of .1 hour.

But that is eons compared to some other time measurements.

If you are having trouble getting your head around the concept and speed of quantum computing that Simon wrote about yesterday, consider time metrics for tech we currently have.

Peter Higgs and Francois Englert recently won the Nobel Prize for physics for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets. The actual existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider at . . . [more]

. . . [more]