This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine. It refers to LAWPRO coverage for Ontario lawyers, but the dangers listed would likely apply to any lawyer’s errors and omissions coverage.

On occasion, lawyers have engaged in activities that have made them front-page news, subject to embarrassment and possibly lawsuits or discipline complaints. Not only can this kind of attention be bad for a lawyer’s reputation, it can also damage or even destroy client relationships.

That’s reason enough to be aware of and avoid activities that could lead to these types of outcomes. But there is . . . [more]

We began our respective legal practices within a year after finishing our articles; we both wanted to be able to express our personal ethics and practice law our way. We had to develop new skills, ranging from file organization to client management, grapple with unforeseen stressors, and learn to congratulate ourselves for victories big and small. Our biggest surprise was that neither law school nor former employers had ever taught us the things we needed most to run our business. So to that end, and in honour of Law Student Week at slaw, here are ten facts you may also . . . [more]

A not-new UK law was given regulatory effect this week and enables the British Library to archive the .uk web, just as it already receives legal deposit of UK print materials. The import of the new regulatory changes in effect April 6 is, I gather, that the archive can built by automated crawl, rather by permission for page-by-page grabs.

As the British Library explains, legal deposit of UK publications to identified libraries is, of course, a practice of long standing. The new regulations extend and entrench the program for UK digital materials:

Legal deposit has existed in English law

You have likely already been warned about the potential impact of your social media involvement on your professional reputation. Hopefully, you already know enough to carefully tailor access to your “personal” online persona, and you stay on top of untagging yourself in too-wild party photos and the like. But cleaning up your image online can only upgrade your social media presence from negative to neutral. If your future legal career will require any marketing at all (and almost all lawyers need to market themselves), you should consider whether you can gain an early advantage by building a professional online identity . . . [more]

Lawyers need to be of good character when they enter the profession but what does good character look like in lawyers already practising in the profession? To answer this, I will turn to Legally Blonde’s very own, Elle Woods, to demonstrate why I think Daniel Bibb[1], a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney who purposely lost a case to avoid a wrongful conviction, is an example of good character in the legal profession.

I watched Legally Blonde for the third (okay, thirteenth) time this weekend and something new occurred to me. Elle Woods is the lawyer we could all . . . [more]

For some years now Slaw has acted as a repository for the memos and precedent opinions of the Toronto Opinions Group (TOROG), an informal group of lawyers primarily practising with the Toronto offices of the larger Canadian law firms, with an interest in third party (or transaction) opinion practice.

Recently TOROG has updated two of the memos and has added a new one, providing a good opportunity for Slaw to remind readers of the existence of these very helpful documents.

Updated are the memos on “Third Party Opinions On Foreign Law Documents” and “Limited Partnership Opinion Paragraphs . . . [more]

A few comments with respect to access to justice caught my attention in the recent Manitoba Queen’s Bench (Family Division) decision in Price v. Laflamme, 2013 MBQB 25 (CanLII). In the course of providing reasons for a decision on costs at the conclusion of a lengthy trial, the trial judge noted that the conduct of the petitioner’s conduct in the matter effectively discouraged any possibility of resolution of the matter. He noted that:

Implicit in that conduct may have been a desire to exhaust the resources of the respondent/father in pursuing his position. No stone was left unturned. No examination

A recent Ontario Superior Court case gives some interesting guidance on regulatory jurisdiction over Internet activities. Civil jurisdiction is not completely resolved, but there are lots of cases, and criminal jurisdiction is also ‘known’ to some extent. What regulators can do or should do is often harder. I speculated a bit on that topic in a presentation on jurisdiction a few years ago: www.euclid.ca/jurisdiction2005.ppt (pages 15 – 20).

In Ontario College of Pharmacists v. 1724665 Ontario Inc., 2013 CanLII 13655 (ON SC), the court held that a call centre in Ontario that was acting for a company in Belize . . . [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 the week of April 2 – 9:

1. R. v. Duncan 2013 ONCJ 160
   

   5. At heart, Mr. Duncan’s case was unremarkable. A minor alleged Highway Traffic Act offence led to a police-citizen interaction in the parking lot of Mr. Duncan’s apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. A request that Mr. Duncan produce his licence led to an alleged refusal, which led to an

With an uncritical eye the Chief Justice of Ontario’s report on professionalism makes a virtuous call for higher standards of professionalism for lawyers. It is a response to the reality of declining professionalism. The report, as well as the prevailing discussion on professionalism, does not reflect certain realities. The discourse bifurcates professionalism and morality in a way that the concept of professionalism is assumed to be morally neutral. The elements of professionalism are listed as: scholarship; integrity; honour; leadership; independence; pride; spirit; collegiality; service; and balanced commercialism. Not only does the list exclude a recognition of some fundamental attributes, but . . . [more]

Firms are navigating a tough financial climate, suppressed growth rates, and declining demand. Previous downturns have been transitory, as the industry has been able to recover within a few years. However this time the landscape has changed and the legal sector is not expected to return to previous levels of growth for a long time. Whatever kind of economist-speak you prefer, there’s no getting around the fact that now is a scary time to be a firm leader. Whether you choose to call it the digital age, the knowledge economy, or even “the New Normal,” it seems clear that we . . . [more]