On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons met in the Committee of the Whole to allow the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, the Leader of the Opposition, Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québecois to each offer apologies for the harm done to First Nations and other Aboriginal students through their residential school experiences.[1]

Two new issues, related but readily distinguishable, have arisen in the past few months, about the residential school experience, neither of which were public knowledge at the time of the apology and certainly . . . [more]

“Are we happy being lawyers?” That’s the question Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder tackle in The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010). Lawyers themselves, they have anticipated your next question:

What do you mean by “happy”? On a scale that runs from having root canals to a night of fine wines and sex on a tropical island, where does “unhappiness” turn into “happiness”? Do you mean “happy” right now as I write footnote 17 on this brief for Acme Investments or “happy” during the course of my ten-year legal career? … Also, . . . [more]

CanLII launched their new site today. After several months of beta testing, plenty of opportunities for feedback, and some direct user surveys, CanLII has a new look and new functionality.

I highlighted my favourite function, the ability to have a field based search functions right up front. My use of the system will most often be the “advanced” searching. I have to acknowledge that the wide searching offered by the single entry box search interface is backed up with some excellent filtering and narrowing options that make the system flexible and user friendly.

A nice feature fo the new site . . . [more]

IP Osgoode and Osgoode Hall Law School’s Pierre Genest Memorial Fund are presenting a day-long symposium on User-Generated Content Under Canadian Copyright Law  on Thursday October 10, 2013. The featured speaker will be Professor Victor Nabhan and, according to IP Osgoode,

[s]ome of the topics for discussion include an analysis of the UGC [user-generated content] exception under Canadian copyright law, the interaction of the UGC exception with fair dealing, specific legal aspects of fan fiction and appropriation art, and whether the UGC exception is in conformity with international treaty standards. Representatives from SOCAN, YouTube and BCE will also provide some

. . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Pin Programs to the Windows 7 Taskbar to Be More Efficient
Dan Pinnington

Any program on your computer can be “pinned” to the Taskbar. This makes it visible as an icon on the Taskbar and allows easy access without having to use the Start Menu. To pin a program to the Taskbar, right-click on the program or shortcut to the program and in the menu choose the Pin to . . . [more]

The Internet has eroded traditional sources of authority. Where once the Encyclopedia Britannica was a final word on many subjects, Wikipedia now reigns supreme. A decade or two ago, the annual Information Please almanac with its sweet index could settle all arguments, now a Google search will do. A highly articulated structure of editors and review panels once guarded the mountain top of cognitive authority. But no more. The retrieval of information no longer troubles us, sorting out the glut of data is the trick. Yet one source holds sway in the world of legal information: The Uniform System of . . . [more]

In a few weeks (on Friday Oct 4, 2013) the Pacific Legal Technology Conference will be taking place at the new West Convention Center on the waterfront in Vancouver.

I think this is the best legal technology conference in the country. And even better – this year people from right across Canada can easily attend because all the sessions at the conference will be webcast.

I am disappointed that I can’t attend or speak this year because of conflict. As a past attendee and speaker, I can say you will get the same high quality content, speakers and materials that . . . [more]

I am interested to see what comes out of the CanLII hackathon that took place this weekend. F. Tim Knight kindly shared slides and notes from his presentation on Friday, Linked Data and Canadian Legal Resources.

Don’t know what linked data is? Tim walks us step-by-step through what it is, some of the theoretical background of this concept, how linked data could be used, and how it might apply to Canadian legal resources (such as case law), especially using CanLII.

I especially recommend his slides with notes. In them, he encourages more open contributions of legal data:

If

. . . [more]

The FCA has recently adopted an interventionist approach in the area of patent validity in Sanofi-Aventis v Apotex 2013 FCA 186 (“Sanofi 2013”). The FCA overturned the trial court’s findings that Sanofi’s clopidogrel patent was invalid for inutility and obviousness. First, the trial judge was found to have erred in law in his construction of the patent by “reading in” a Promise that the FCA says was not there. Secondly, the trial judge appears to have erred in failing to properly apply the facts to the Sanofi SCC legal test for obviousness, and asked the critical wrong question in determining . . . [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. Le Blogue du CRL   2. Slater Vecchio Connected   3. Henry J. Chang’s Canada-US Immigration Blog   4. Doorey’s Workplace Law Blog    5. Avoid a Claim

At the CanLII Hackfest in Ottawa this weekend I learned, among a great many other things, about a simple, neat tool that’s already been built with the CanLII API: Common Cases. It enables you to insert up to ten URLs of cases and kicks out citations that your cases have in common. I can see how this might be a useful shortcut for researchers at some points, enabling them to zero in on a core cluster of decisions with rapidity.

The bonus feature is that on the Common Cases page you’re reminded by links of a couple of other, . . . [more]

This weekend thousands of Quebec residents protested the newly proposed Charter of Values. The protests demonstrate there is still significant opposition to the measures the Parti Quebecois would like to see enacted for public employees.

Meanwhile the media has had the opportunity to survey constitutional legal scholars across the country, and there appear to be mixed reactions to how this would pass a s. 1 analysis. . . . [more]