According to a study commissioned by CanLII and released today reported cases have varying “life spans” and cease to be important — as measured by their citation in other judgments — somewhere between three and fifteen years. The exception to this are judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada, the average “time to failure” of which is a whopping fifty years.

Citation Analysis of Canadian Case Law by Thom Neale is a full-on informatics study that:

uses simple statistical and functional analysis in conjunction with network analysis algorithms to examine the network of Canadian caselaw using data supplied by the

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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

[No technology tip this week]
Dan Pinnington

Research

Think About the Reader
Shaunna Mireau

I have had the benefit of working on a writing project with others from my firm recently. One of the key things that I have learned from this is that writers, especially if the work is intended to convince others to act, must put themselves in the shoes of the reader. . . .

Practice . . . [more]

CHANGE. Few like it, and least of all lawyers. It’s important to have a firm culture built on good work but equally important is to build a firm culture around business development. If business development is at the core of how everyone thinks and goes hand-in-hand with excellent work, the financial health of your firm will be more stable. 

But… it’s easier said than done. Your team will resist change… we all do. Samuel Bacharach, a professor of labor management at Cornell, writes for Inc. Magazine… 4 Reasons Your Employees Resist Change–And How to Overcome Them. Bacharach suggests that . . . [more]

If writing is hard — and it is — then legal writing is both easier and more difficult still. Easier, perhaps, because it is stylized: everything from briefs to judgments and legislation is carefully cropped of individuality and approximated to yesterday’s example — understandably, because “It’s not about you, writer” and it is about avoiding risk.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

More difficult, because, well, because life must break through from time to time if legal writers are not to fall on their quills or die of acute accidie. It’s far from easy to give . . . [more]

Conspiracy in restraint of trade

466. (1) A conspiracy in restraint of trade is an agreement between two or more persons to do or to procure to be done any unlawful act in restraint of trade.

Trade union, exception

(2) The purposes of a trade union are not, by reason only that they are in restraint of trade, unlawful within the meaning of subsection (1).

[Criminal Code RSC 1985, c C-46]

This was a law that was slow in coming. In 1872 the Toronto Trades Assembly supported the Toronto Typographical Union’s strike for a 54 hour work week.

George Brown,

. . . [more]

This article is by Nora Rock, corporate writer and policy analyst at LAWPRO.

Punctuality is a virtue much pooh-poohed by a certain kind of lawyer – the kind who views her time as so exquisitely valuable that she must operate in a perpetual state of adrenaline-fueled urgency. Meeting starts at 9:00? If it’s only 8:56, there’s ample time to make an important phone call to get instructions from a different client (and ample time, during the meeting, to surreptitiously type notes about that call into her tablet). If the call runs late and she arrives at the meeting at 9:10, . . . [more]

After years of considerable criticism from the international community, Saudi Arabia has finally passed an anti-domestic violence bill. On August 26, 2013 the Saudi cabinet passed a 17-article protection from abuse law, which would provide up to one year in prison and $13,300 fine for those guilty of committing psychological or physical abuse.

The issue of domestic violence in Saudi Arabia is not limited to nationals, but also affects the significant migrant worker population located there. Numerous cases of abuse towards maids and domestic works have attracted international scrutiny.

Although many critics have attributed these lack of protections to the . . . [more]

Constitutionnel : Les revendeurs de billets de spectacle n'ont pas démontré que la Loi visant à interdire la revente de billets de spectacle à un prix supérieur au prix autorisé par le producteur ne relève pas de la compétence du Québec.

Slaw est très heureux d’annoncer que, grâce à la Société québécoise d’information juridique (SOQUIJ), nous présenterons un résumé hebdomadaire d’un jugement d’un tribunal québécois tous les dimanches comme un de nos billets «Summaries Sunday». SOQUIJ a dit qu’ils axeront leur sélection pour Slaw vers des décisions ayant un intérêt pancanadien.

SOQUIJ se joint à un groupe d’éminents comprenant Maritime Law Book, OnPoint Legal Research et Supreme Advocacy LLP, qui tous contribuent résumés pour Summaries Sunday.

Slaw is very happy indeed to announce that, thanks to the Société québécoise d’information juridique (SOQUIJ), we will offer . . . [more]

Despite the fact that “de-nial ain’t just a river in Egypt”, we are about to head into September which means the real new year for academics like myself is about to kick off. On the the day after Labour Day (American friends take note of the proper spelling with a “u”) a new crop of bright eyed students arrive at university campuses across the country. Every year at this time I always like to take advantage of the excellent work done by the folks at Beloit College who produce the Mindset List, in order to see what I’m getting . . . [more]

“The family of Harper has long been settled in Sussex Drive.”

Parliament, it would appear, is demiprorogued, which might seem as impossible as being just a little bit pregnant. Yet the will-he, won’t-he, has-he, hasn’t-he uncertainty persists so long as the definitive decision is . . . well, prorogued. What is certain, though, is that the House is not in session, which gives us a little time to prepare for what we might say when we again rise up on our hind legs and give voice to our thoughts. And for what we may not say even though we may . . . [more]

Where are courts heading? Three things are converging that are likely to cause seismic shifts in the way they function. It’s a pity that those shape and run courts don’t seem to be aware.

First, there is a financial crisis; acute and big. Everywhere – the Eurozone, the US, Canada, Australia – government budgets are being cut and court budgets are not being left out. “If you think 2013 was bad, you don’t want to see 2014” a senior official of the Dutch Ministry of Justice recently told me. The message from the ministries of finance: do more with less. . . . [more]