In my last column I talked about building reputations by being quoted in the media (proactive media relations). However, when you’re involved in something of interest to the media, it’s not always good news. Reputations can be threatened as well as made by media coverage. Reactive media relations involves the careful management of reputations, whether on behalf of a client, a lawyer, a practice group, or the whole firm.

How often does something occur in a law firm that unleashes the hounds of the media? More often than you might think. I had no trouble recalling ten examples from my . . . [more]

This is one of those fillips where I let someone else do all the work. And in this case it’s a young man named Tim Blais who’ll do the heavy lifting. But that’s okay because the force is with him. The unified force, it seems.

Tim’s a recent graduate of the Master of Science program at McGill University whose thesis goes by the catchy title of “A new quantization condition for parity-violating three-dimensional gravity.” Excellent, right?

But Tim’s a little different. Oh sure, he’s prepared to violate parity, but he does it in the coolest way — at least when . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. recently produced a report comparing the legal situation of temporary or guest workers in 14 countries (including Canada):

“The report includes a comparative analysis and individual chapters on each country, the EU, and relevant international arrangements. It provides a general overview of a variety of immigration systems, and addresses issues such as eligibility criteria for the admission of guest workers and their families, guest workers’ recruitment and sponsorship, and visa requirements. The report further discusses the tying of temporary workers to their employers in some countries; the duration and the conditions that

. . . [more]

Constraints are important. They can define the nature of what we see, as when you drop a frame onto an image, suggesting, at least, that what is framed is now “art”, or when you slap some numbers and lots of indentation onto a patch of text, making it look like legislation. Poetry used to have constraints — rhyme schemes, meter, number of feet and lines, etc. — which, I suppose, was one way you knew it was poetry; and haiku is among the few surviving examples of constrained poetry in common use today.

So long as you adopt the 5-7-5 . . . [more]

The recent controversy over the Sam the Record Man sign, Ryerson University and the City of Toronto is interesting on a number of levels. There is the heritage aspect of the matter and there is the legal contractual element – Ryerson agreed to find a place to hang the sign, then decided that it didn’t want to do so.

Much has been written about the above.

What interests me personally, and as an adjunct professor at a law school, is the ethical element.

Ryerson is an institution of higher learning. It teaches students.

And so, call me old-fashioned, but . . . [more]

100 years ago, in 1913, the Hon. Sir William Ralph Meredith, Q.C., LL.D, at the time Chief Justice of Ontario, tabled his Workers' Compensation report in the Ontario Legislature. From this report emerged the Meredith Principles, which are the tenets upon which the Ontario workers' compensation system was built, the impact of which was felt gradually throughout Canada.

What happens to highly successful women lawyers and corporate executives and managers who decide to stop working and stay at home with their children full-time? Do they miss their successful careers? Do they feel they made the right choice for them and their families? What happens if they want to return to work ten years later when the children are older or their husbands have lost their jobs?

These questions were explored in a recent lengthy New York Times magazine article that revisited twenty-two women who were profiled in 2003 and labeled as the “Opt-Out Generation”.

Each of these women . . . [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.

Start-Up and Growth Companies in Canada – A Guide to Legal and Business Practice, 2nd Edition
Bryce C. Tingle
Toronto: LexisNexis Canada: 2013

Excerpt from Chapter 14

Canada’s Public Venture Markets – A Success Story

Most discussions about entrepreneurial finance in Canada, and certainly most of the public policy initiatives of the federal . . . [more]

Apple’s latest and greatest operating system is launching today. There will no doubt be a rush for iPhone and iPad owners to install the update. Apple fans may scoff at this advice, but if you are updating anything other than a current model, it might be prudent to wait a few days before upgrading.

The odds are that all will go well, but sometimes issues appear in the real world that don’t show up in testing. Typically those issues are more annoyances than anything – such as sluggish performance, or incompatibility with some apps. And typically they are resolved quickly. . . . [more]

This post was originally published on the CBA Legal Futures Initiative website, and is authored by Omar Ha-Redeye, a lawyer with Fleet Street Law, a part-time professor at Ryerson University and Centennial College, and a blogger here at SLAW.

One aspect of the future which hasn’t received as much attention is the significant demographic shift occurring in Canada.

Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of The Big Shift, The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future, spoke at the CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon recently on how the entire face . . . [more]

Communication-based claims and complaints against lawyers remain remarkably common despite the increased ease with which we can communicate with clients through use of technology in addition to more traditional modes of communication.

Strong and effective communications between lawyers and their clients are an essential component of the lawyer-client relationship. Some of the issues that might be flagged as problematic in a communications based claim include:

• Failing to obtain and follow a client’s instructions;
• Failing to keep a client informed of progress, or lack of progress in complying with instructions;
• Failing to advise a client of all settlement offers;
• Confusion as

. . . [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. Garacci v. Ross 2013 ONSC 5627
   

   [1] The defendant brings this motion for an order that the plaintiff Christina Garacci (“Christina”) produce approximately 1100 photographs located on the private portion of her Facebook account and related profile pages. The defendant argues that the photographs are relevant to matters in issue in this action and ought to be produced. Christina opposes the relief requested

. . . [more]