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 March 26 – April 2:

1. R. v. TELUS Communications Co. 2013 SCC 16
   

   [1] For many Canadians, text messaging has become an increasingly popular form of communication. Despite technological differences, text messaging bears several hallmarks of traditional voice communication: it is intended to be conversational, transmission is generally instantaneous, and there is an expectation of privacy in the communication. The issue in this

There is little doubt that privacy is a hot topic these days in Canada. Recent news stories include the loss of student loan recipient personal information by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada in January of 2013 and the loss of a data stick containing the personal information of approximately 5000 Canadians by a federal government lawyer working on their Employment Insurance appeals in November of 2012.

These news stories, as well as experiences I have had with lawyers through my practice, has caused me to ask the question posed by the title of this post, and to come to . . . [more]

Increasingly, governments across Canada have been pushing private employers to do more to accommodate and hire disabled Canadians. For example, today, the Federal Government announced new programs and funding to help facilitate the process of finding work for disabled candidates and paying for additional training and/or resources. I think that it’s a great program and I applaud the government for this worthwhile initiative. However, will it be effective? Will it make a difference?

The human rights laws of all Canadian jurisdictions have long held that employers are obligated to accommodate disabled employees or candidates to “the point of undue hardship”. . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries is holding its Annual Conference in Montréal May 5-8, 2013. This post is a shameless suggestion to attend Librarian: a multi-faceted professional. Full disclosure, I am proud to be a member of the CALL Executive Board.

Starting with a Pre-Conference Workshop on Saturday, May 4 titled Leading Teams Through Change, lead by Terri Tomchyshyn, the conference program has many interesting offerings.

I am looking forward to the session by Monique Stam, Project Manager, Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (CAIJ), Damien Lefebvre, Co-President, W.illi.am Digital Intelligence, and Anastasia Simitsis, User . . . [more]

As FaceBook executive Sheryl Sandburg observes in Lean In, “If someone has to ask the question, the answer is probably no. When someone finds the right mentor, it is obvious.” While Sandburg joins the growing ranks who praise the benefits of mentoring, she also recognises that finding a mentor can be a challenge.

What factors might increase a lawyer’s chances of finding a mentor? Fiona Kay and Jean Wallace have explored this very question. Their research is part of a twenty-year, longitudinal study of the mentoring experiences of over 700 Ontario lawyers. Not surprisingly, they found that lawyers who . . . [more]

The literary bug has bitten our courts again, this time infecting the writing hand of Fergus O’Donnell of the Ontario Court of Justice. I came across his judgment in R v. Duncan (2013.03.26), since featured in the Toronto Star, in an ethics email list I belong to, where it came in for a lot of interesting criticism. (It’s not yet reported but a PDF copy is available on Slaw.) In the opinion Justice O’Donnell adopted a casual style that owes something to the mystery genre, as well as a good dose of the sardonic approach taken to the . . . [more]

Considering a recent announcement that the European Parliament voted, on March 12^th, to go forward with the development of an EU-wide online dispute resolution (ODR) platform, and that said platform “will be operational at the end of 2015”, it seems that ODR is poised to reach new heights in the next few years.

What this entails for the legal community and how this and other initiatives will impact traditional legal structures are therefore topics that need to be addressed shortly if lawyers want to adapt their practice to this emerging trend.

This is why the Université de Montréal’s . . . [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

Give Me My Old-Fashioned Windows’ Control Panel
Dan Pinnington

While computer newbies may find the categorized Control Panel helpful for navigating the ever more complex configuration and appearance settings for Windows, more tech-inclined individuals may prefer the old version of Control Panel which displayed all items at once. Getting to the old or “classic” view of Control Panel is easy. In Windows XP or Vista, open the Control Panel . . . [more]

I’m pleased to announce the creation of the deClawedbies – the Canadian law blog version of the “igNobles” – to be awarded annually on April 1 before noon (PST*).

Notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to nominate candidates for a deClawedbies will be restricted to “human” persons (as defined by Ontario civil procedure: see Joly v. Pelletier, [1999] O.J. No. 1728 [QL], 1999 CarswellOnt 1587, 1999 WL 33187845 (Ont. S.C.J.)) who maintained Canadian law blogs during the preceding lunar calendar (Jewish, Chinese or Mayan calendars) year who, if they participate, . . . [more]

Lateral hiring of partners or associates occurs at firms of every size, and is becoming far more common. In addition to reviewing the transferring lawyer’s credentials and suitability, the transferring lawyer and firm will need to identify and deal with potential conflicts of interest that may arise with respect to clients at the transferring lawyer’s previous firm, and in particular, clients for whom the transferring lawyer worked.

This critical task is not as easy as it might seem on first thought. The hiring firm must have sufficient information to complete an internal conflicts check, while at the same time making . . . [more]

I love this time of year: many companies traditionally announce some of their more “out of the box” improvements right at the end of the first quarter or beginning of the second quarter. Here are just a few I noticed in my mailbox; you will see Google is the real leader in 2nd quarter upgrades:

Google Fiber to the Pole

Making the Internet more accessible when you are on the road. . . . [more]

Most American lawyers became aware of British Professor Richard Susskind after he wrote The End of Lawyers? in 2008. The book generated a lot of controversy among lawyers with some proclaiming that he had indeed “seen” the future of law and others protesting that the practice of law would certainly not undergo the kind of radical changes that Susskind foretold.

Susskind is back generating controversy once again in his latest book, Tomorrow’s Lawyers. We are unabashed fans of Susskind’s prophesies, even those we may not wholly agree with, because he forces the legal profession out of its natural complacency. . . . [more]