In a busy hospital emergency room, a triage nurse can literally mean the difference between life and death, as he or she makes the call on who needs to be seen right away, and who can wait for help.

Within the Legal Futures Initiative’s consultation, some tell us that the legal system similarly needs a good triage system “to move parties to the resources they need and to facilitate more efficient use of resources.”

Most lawyers, and law firms, likely have their own forms of triage – a system by which the firm decides who gets what file, who contributes . . . [more]

Next week marks the 95^th annual meeting of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in. Founded in 1918, the ULCC is Canada’s oldest and longest serving law reform agency. As set out in its Constitution:

The mandate of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada is to facilitate and promote the harmonization of laws throughout Canada by developing, at the request of the constituent jurisdictions, Uniform Acts, Model Acts, Statements of Legal Principles and other documents deemed appropriate to meet the demands that are presented to it by the constituent jurisdictions from time to time.

The constituent jurisdictions are . . . [more]

A lot has been written about the “death of the billable hour”. However, sadly, it’s not dead yet.

In the last year, I’ve made the move from private practice at a large firm to senior counsel at a larger national company. Professionally and personally, it’s been an amazing and challenging transition. One of my responsibilities has been to manage outside counsel and negotiate fee new agreements. It’s a task I’ve found very interesting, particularly given my prior experience on the other side.

From what I’ve seen both in-house and in private practice (and that of a number of colleagues I’ve . . . [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

[There was no technology tip last week.]
Dan Pinnington

Research

Update Legislation on Your Mobile Device
Shaunna Mireau

A couple of years ago I shared a tip for putting the Rules of Court on a mobile device. A couple of days ago there was a notice about an amendment to the Alberta Rules of Court – the rules linked in the example post. Thanks to persistent URLs, the links . . . [more]

No, it should not. That’s the best answer under existing doctrine and I think it is also the right answer.

In my previous post The Curious Case of the Non-Lawyer Attorney General: White Tiger of the Legal Profession, I reviewed the BC courts’ rejection to a challenge to a non-lawyer being appointed to the top legal job in the BC government.

Since then, BC Premier Christy Clark appointed a lawyer (!) as Justice Minister and Attorney General (The Hon. Suzanne Anton).

Despite this, the trend of non-lawyers being appointed as AGs is not abating and the . . . [more]

I’ve had the luxury of doing some good reading this holiday weekend. I thought I would share a few of the articles and books I’ve been looking at:

Resistance to courtroom tweeting based on myth, not reality, by Dean Jobb (Globe and Mail, July 31, 2013)
This is a summary of attitudes and policies towards Twitter use in Canadian courtrooms including a model policy for social media use in the courtroom developed by a team put together by the the Canadian Centre for Court Technology. Hat tip Luigi Benetton.

The Changing Role of Women in the Law . . . [more]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article dealing with clients who urge a quick settlement. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

When lawyers think about real estate fraud, they tend to think about fake clients with forged ID obtaining fraudulent mortgages, or flip frauds where the value of a property is artificially inflated. They rarely think of shelter fraud – . . . [more]

Today is that polyonymous holiday that most of Canada celebrates on the first Monday in August. See our prior posts about this if you’re interested in knowing what kind of a holiday it is (or isn’t) in various parts of the country: 2012, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

Regular features and posting will resume tomorrow. . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada released the decision in Ontario v. Criminal Lawyers’ Association of Ontario last week, dealing with the compensation afforded to amicus curiae. Courts may appoint a “friend of the court,” known as amicus curiae, to assist the court where warranted, and the Attorney General is required to pay the fees for these amicus curiae.

This case involved the appeal of three non-Charter cases in Ontario where the Attorney General disputed the amicus curiae rates as determined by the court, raising constitutional issues about the relationship between the judiciary and the executive and . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week's summaries concern: Indian Act & taxation / Trademark infringement & punitive damages:

Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book “Lean In” urges women to develop greater confidence by moving past internal barriers and leveraging their strengths to move into positions of greater responsibility. This is easier said than done. How do you increase your self-confidence and capitalize on your strengths to do this? How do you overcome inner barriers or external biases if you are not even aware what they are? The answer is through leadership training.

Leadership training is one of the most under-valued and misunderstood opportunities for lawyers – especially women lawyers – to advance their careers. While lawyers regularly take courses in . . . [more]

You get a three-fer this holiday weekend, a trio of nifty things that came into my ken this past week.

The Tune

Thanks to a blurb in the Globe and Mail, I was introduced to Moby, the musician who walks among us as Richard Melville Hall and who specializes in electronica, ambient music, downtempo, and the like (if that last can make any sense). Take a listen to his collaboration with Cold Specks, a Canadian singer living in London whose haunting alto is spot on for the song, A Case for Shame:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98822483″ params=”” width=” 100%” . . . [more]