In a recent tweet, I was asked whether a company should use a big, medium or small law firm. In my opinion, the answer is “Yes”. In my time as in-house counsel at a company with operations in every province, I’ve learned that it’s essential to establish relationships with a number of law firms across the country, of various sizes, in all provinces. While it irritated me when I was in private practice, the era where a company was faithful to one firm for all legal services is over. Using multiple firms can be a very effective tool in managing . . . [more]

I have the pleasure of presenting some information to University of Alberta Law students today who are taking a seminar course titled “Low income individuals and the law”. To prepare, I gathered some free legal research/legal content resources for a handout.

Free law links (PDF)

What would you add to this list? . . . [more]

As service levels and service level credits have become a standard component of outsourcing agreements, service providers have responded with requests for earn backs: the right, if a specified level of performance is achieved, to earn back, or not have to pay, the service level credit. However, if earn backs are to be included in an outsourcing agreement as part of a service level regime, they need to be defined carefully at the beginning and integrated into the service level methodology: when they are included late in the game, as a concession granted by the customer in response to a . . . [more]

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

. . . [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

[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]