In his 8 October speech entitled ‘Dissenting Judgments – Self Indulgence or Self Sacrifice’, Lord justice Kerr of the UK Supreme Court poses this interesting question: “Should the possible future utility of a dissent encourage, or should the apparent futility of a dissent deter an expression of disagreement with the majority? And should the circumstance that the dissent is to be expressed in a final court of appeal make a difference?”

Are dissents in courts of final appeal “poignant judicial tragedies” offensive to conventions of certainty and unanimity, as some commentators have said?

Do they weaken the effect of the . . . [more]

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an intriguing story on legal fees and the changes that a client-driven marketplace has had on the way that firms bill not merely for their professional fees, but also for disbursements.

For example, the article comments on ways in which technology has transformed processes which would previously have resulted in charges to clients:

To be sure, technology has swept some items off law firm bills entirely. Before the advent of email, law firms spent small fortunes on couriers to hustle documents across town or out to the airport. Lawyers now upload digital briefs and memos

by Tiffany Wong

On September 17, 2012, I presented at the APLIC-ABPAC and Parliamentary Researchers Conference held at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on the subject of using social media for legal research. I quickly discovered while facilitating discussion through a sample research question that I was not quite able to convince a room full of skeptical parliamentary librarians into using Wikipedia for their research needs, namely research requests on any myriad of topics from current Members of Parliament (MPPs). Understandably, like many lawyers, parliamentary researchers are concerned that the information found on social media is:

• Unreliable
• Changes often
• Out-of-date

New requirements are coming for lawyers wanting to become patent and trademark agents. Registered patent and trademark agents are able to represent applicants before the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

Proposed amendments to the governing regulations were recently published in the Canada Gazette (“Rules Amending the Patent Rules”, “Regulations Amending the Trade-marks Regulations”) for comment. I expect the final amendments to be very similar to these proposed changes and will likely come into force in the next several months. Earlier versions of these changes were published by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) several years ago.

Many of . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) is dealing with a highly contentious issue – the future of articling in Ontario. After consulting with stakeholders and reading submissions from across the province, Laurie Pawlitza, the former LSUC Treasurer described the feedback as “disparate” in the 2012 Canadian Bar Association (CBA) National Student edition.

The Articling Task Force released their Final Report this week, . A preliminary cost assessment of the minority view’s preliminary cost is also available. But what is the Law Society to do, with such polarized views on the subject?

Public engagement theory has steadily moved . . . [more]

This morning, by 6 to 1, the SCC dealt with pornography on a work-issued computer and whether an employee had any reasonable expectation of privacy. The majority of the court set asise the Ontario Court of Appeal’s order in R. v. Cole, to exclude the evidence on the basis that it was obatined in breach of ss. 8 and 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Abella J. would have continued the exclusion. A new trial will be held in any event.

Here is the headnote: . . . [more]

Pretty much from the start people saw the Web as the Wunderkammer that it is, an (impossibly) large room chock-a-block with objects designed to delight, horrify, inform, pander, edify, entertain . . . . Surfing is wandering through this room and fingering the exhibits. Of course, the rational, utilitarian impulse was there at the same time, and is captained now, perhaps, by Google, which asks you to know what you want before you go there, making the web helpfully instrumental, rather than an end in itself.

But even so we tend to keep “useless” corners of the web as surprises. . . . [more]

Sometimes you need to know how an act (or a specific section of an act) read at an earlier point in time. It may be to confirm that the relevant portions of the legislation have not changed, to determine how a contract should be interpreted, or for some other reason.

Finding a point-in-time version of an act can be a challenge. Fortunately a number of electronic services offer point-in-time versions of legislation, although few of these services go back more than ten years. There are three main sources for point-in-time legislation: government websites, Quicklaw and CanLII.

The federal government provides . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

Following yet another Apple-Samsung court battle, this time over tablet infringement, a ruling out of the UK has the Judges ordering Apple to make a public online apology. One of the first references I came across this afternoon, and not yet having read the judgement, was a Gizmodo post that poked fun at the Judges’ very specific directions, that Apple is Forced to Run their Public Apology in 14pt Arial font.

I thought it was pretty funny. That the judges would dictate the actual font and font size that must be used; and that Apple, of all companies, . . . [more]

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) have co-published a white paper called The New Librarian that looks at the new skills that today’s information professionals need to have or acquire to do well and survive. It is full of examples of how law librarians in different contexts are facing up to the challenges of constant change.

In her introduction, Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL, writes:

This joint white paper acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between the law librarian and technologist in driving efficient and effective legal information management. The

On my recent trip to London, England, it was arranged for me to be part of a panel discussion at Middle Temple Hall, one of the oldest legal buildings in London. Indeed, the room in which I spoke (Parliament Chamber) hosted the very first performance of Twelfth Night in 1602. By way of background, Middle Temple is one of four Inns of Court in London that are able to call men and women to the Bar.

So there I was, at the beating old heart of the common law, criticizing the current model of legal services delivery; suggesting that it . . . [more]