Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Legal Feeds   2. Canadian Securities Law   3. Ontario Condo Law Blog   4. The Court  5. Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style

Having coffee one day with Mitch Kowalski, whom I met through these pages, the idea bubbled up of regular informal meetings of like-minded legal professionals interested in delivering legal services in a way that suits the 21^st Century – not the 19^th.

No agendas, no speakers, no membership lists — just a regular place and time for people to drop in and chat about what we’re doing, following or finding in our efforts to make the legal profession more like a modern business.

Mitch took the important step of actually organizing it. The first meeting took place . . . [more]

While the RFP process for the LSUC’s Licensing Pilot Project proceeds in Ontario, Memorial University of Newfoundland is contemplating their own bid for a new law school in St. John’s. Students interviewed by Heather Gardiner in Canadian Lawyer 4Students express concerns about an articling crisis developing in the Atlantic provinces.

Although I don’t believe in blaming the law schools, it’s worth considering this graphic by Andrew Langille, depicting Ontario law school admissions for the past 5 years:

A new law school in the Atlantic will inevitably add to the pressures of creating adequate numbers of articling positions. We . . . [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: Judicial review / Informant privilege / Party to conspiracy / National security warrants / Workplace safety:

Well I felt pretty good about my 2013 New Year’s Resolutions:

• SKI Mount Washington in February;
• RUN another half marathon in May; and
• HIKE the next section of the Colorado Rockies in July.

The only little problem was this nagging shoulder pain that came out of nowhere and seemed to be getting worse, not better, finally waking me up at nights. “You’ve got idiopathic frozen shoulder” the sports medicine doctor said cheerfully. “The bad news is that you will be in pain for about a year and you can’t do a darned thing about it.” I protested, saying that . . . [more]

Un certain Marchant, avocat, homme d’esprit, disait : «On court les risques du dégoût en voyant comment l’administration, la justice et la cuisine se préparent.»

A certain witty advocate, Marchant, observed: “One risks disgust in seeing administration, justice and one’s dinner being made.”

Nicolas de Chamfort (1741–1794)

Perhaps. But I’ve been involved in the making of a small amount of justice and a much larger amount of dinner, and I’ve rather enjoyed the process in both cases. (“Administration” might be another matter, I freely admit.)

I like to see the creative act in the act, so to speak. Or, to . . . [more]

Everybody knows that computers are everywhere. This is old news. It used to be that a mechanic could fix an errant brake light in my car for 15 minutes of labour and a 15-cent bulb. Now I need a computer diagnosis and the replacement of a sophisticated multi-function panel. Hmmm – $175.00. Progress!

What may still be news is the degree to which the computers are talking to each other – and if they can talk, then they can be overheard.

Let’s start with cars. Richard and Cheryl Balough point out that the average car these days can run some . . . [more]

Last Fall, I read an article about the General Counsel for Kia who creates tests for his external legal counsel. The tests have nothing to do with law and everything to do with process. In one test, external counsel should have taken 20 minutes to complete a mundane task using an excel spreadsheet. The average time taken by Kia’s nine outside law firms? Five hours. Simon Fodden also has a great piece on this, here.

There are many takeaways from this, but an important one is that its shows that lawyers are not always the most efficient personnel . . . [more]

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) regulates the sale of alcohol products in Ontario. Fans of wine not available on the shelves of the LCBO’s outlets may form wine clubs that order particular wines through the LCBO. Until recently, the LCBO collected the names and addresses of all the members of the clubs placing these orders.

Acting on a complaint by a manager/member of such a club, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario recently ordered that the LCBO stop collecting this personal information. In response, the LCBO stopped filling orders from the wine clubs.

According to the CBC . . . [more]

In a special report tabled today in the House of Commons, the Correctional Investigator of Canada Howard Sapers found that the aboriginal prison population has jumped in the last decade and that correctional authorities have not been living up to their obligations.

As well, the report, entitled Spirit Matters: Aboriginal People and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, shows that aboriginal inmates are sentenced to longer terms, spend more time in segregation and maximum security and are less likely to be granted parole.

Among the highlights of the report:

• since 2005-06, there has been a 43% increase in the

. . . [more]

A big congratulations goes out to our long-time Slaw colleague Connie Crosby, who has been elected Vice-President of CALL/ACBD for the term running from 2013-2015. This position is effectively a six year commitment, with the succession plan running through each of the VP, President and Past-President positions (each for two years).

Many readers will recognize Connie as one of our founding members here at Slaw. She also has a long, successful track record working in Canadian law firm libraries; including more than nineteen years working in-house. Connie has been a past-President of TALL, served in a variety of . . . [more]

In the wake of the Quebec government tabling Bill 14, An Act to amend the Charter of the French language, the [Quebec] Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other legislative provisions to improve yet again the eminence of the French language in Quebec (which I discussed on Slaw last December here), the Conseil supérieur de la langue française (CSLF) is of the opinion that the government needs to take a hard-line approach if it wants French to really be the common language of all Quebecers.