Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : L’appelant, qui a été déclaré coupable notamment de voies de fait et d’agression sexuelle, a droit à un nouveau procès puisque le juge n’a pas effectué une analyse sérieuse de la crédibilité de celui-ci et de la plaignante et semble s’être appuyé sur des préjugés liés aux . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case. By Kent Roach. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. xxii, 309 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9780228012122 (softcover) $27.95. <mqup.ca>.

Reviewed by F. Tim Knight
Associate Librarian, Head of Technical Services
Osgoode Hall Law School, York . . . [more]

In Canada (Attorney General) v. Benjamin Moore & Co., 2023 FCA 168 the Federal Court of Appeal had to assess the effort by the Federal Court to clarify the rule around subject matter objections for computer-implemented inventions. This remains a pressing issue as inventors of computerized inventions continue to seek patent protection in Canada. The Federal Court of Appeal declined to take the opportunity to clarify the rules that would be applicable because the parties and intervenors could not provide a consistent statement of the rules they thought should apply.

The background is that Benjamin Moore had been declined . . . [more]

If you read my column from April and thought: “Yes, writing a book is exactly what I want to do with all my free time for the next one+ years”, then you may be wondering how to get to the next step of actually writing a book. Firstly, I want to include the caveat that so far my oeuvre amounts to one book, and these kinds of methodologies are personal, so please customize or outright ignore this advice as you think is appropriate for you. This post is about what worked for me.

Firstly, I will say that I designed . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Même si le régime législatif pour les accusés atteints de troubles mentaux ne s’applique pas au stade de la détermination de la peine, un juge possédant des motifs raisonnables de croire qu’une preuve concernant l’état mental d’un délinquant est nécessaire pour déterminer son aptitude à recevoir sa . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

2023 ONSC 2740 (CanLII) is a defamation case of epic proportions, both for the scope and turpitude of the statements made and in the number of victims. It’s also a strange case, in that the defendant only knew one of the 53 plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs, based all over North America, were mostly strangers to each other. . . . [more]

Some forms of legal research routinely take place in the legal profession. For example, research into the facts of a dispute, prior rulings, relevant regulations, and precedent often informs legal strategy, and generally precedes the presentation of a case or position. Legal research databases that facilitate everyday access to primary and secondary sources of law are staples of today’s law libraries. Legal departments the world over invest—often heavily—in knowledge management systems and legal software expressly to aid in research and curating information. In these ways, and in these spaces, the legal profession embraces research as integral to accessing the law; . . . [more]

Generative AI will disrupt legal research. Its negative impact has been highlighted in mainstream media in the UK and the US. Many legal information professionals have valid concerns about how generative AI’s application in legal research may impact the integrity of the profession. Meanwhile, social media (e.g., LinkedIn and Twitter) is flooded with legal tech companies’ commentary on how it can be harnessed to streamline legal research, improving efficiency and productivity. I reached out to several colleagues to hear their thoughts and ideas on how to address this contentious topic in their legal research classrooms.

Determining whether the impact . . . [more]

“We are already working with more people with disabilities than we think,” says Ben Lumicao, an in-house counsel in Chicago with a visible disability (cerebral palsy). More than a quarter of Americans have a disability of some kind, but only 30% of those fall into the “visible” spectrum Lumicao describes.

That’s an arresting thought for those of us currently without disabilities, and especially so in the legal profession. Many lawyers with invisible or less visible disabilities keep them hidden — in part, the article suggests, because of our profession’s cultural obsession with strength and fear of appearing weak. . . . [more]

Marketing yourself as a legal professional can be difficult. Some take an active approach, while others do little to no marketing at all. In the legal profession, marketing and advertising is always constrained by the parameters set by our law societies as to what we can and cannot say, which further exacerbates the problem.

One way that I market myself is through indirect marketing in my community. Creating connections through networking is great, but finding ways to get into a setting where others can see qualities, beyond being a good networker, that may translate into the type of lawyer you . . . [more]