On Friday June 15, 2012, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the Criminal Code of Canada provisions prohibiting physician-assisted dying unjustifiably infringe the equality rights of Gloria Taylor and the rights to life, liberty and security of the person of Gloria Taylor, Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of June 8 – 15.

♨ 1. Gayman (Re) 2012 LSBC 12 [Newspaper story here.]

[1] This is a credentials hearing. The Applicant, Michael Grant Gayman, requests readmission to the Law Society of British Columbia, as a barrister and solicitor. The Applicant was disbarred by a hearing panel of the Law Society on May 6, 1999. The basis for disbarment was conduct unbecoming a lawyer. Specifically, the Applicant, acting as a trustee, knowingly breached a trust instrument resulting in a loss of approximately one million dollars to

. . . [more]

Unless you have intentionally avoided any and all Canadian news sources this week, then you have been riding the Omni-Bus with everyone else. All the conjecture inspired me to look at the past several Budget Implementation Acts and see how long they have been or in other words how “omni” they have been.

41st Parl-1st Session: Bill C-38: 753 sections.

40-3: Bill C-9: 2208 sections

40-2: Bill C-10: 471 sections

39:2: Bill C-50: 164 sections

39-1: Bill C-52: 154 sections

39:1: Bill C-13: 217 sections

38-1: Bill C-43: 143 sections

37-3: Bill C-30 . . . [more]

. . . [more]

This is another in a series of columns about developing a law library collection development policy for the new, digital information environment. In my last two columns, I discussed journals. In this column, I’ll consider legislative materials as a subset of government documents generally, their role in legal research, their place in a contemporary law library collection, controversies surrounding print vs digital formats, and possible policies for collecting them.

A discussion of the role of government documents has recently taken on immediate significance in light of last month’s press release from Publications Canada that the decision has been made to . . . [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.

. . . [more]

The May 2012 issue of Connected is available online. The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media on the courts.

It is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

“This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media.”

Most of the stories are about . . . [more]

Earlier today, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the summary judgement decision in Baglow v. Smith, which dismissed the online defamation action in the context of political blogs. The case was previously summarized on Slaw before here, with costs decision mentioned here, and additional commentary here.

Today’s decision will allow the action to proceed to trial.

The key excerpts of the decision follows: . . . [more]

As I write this, deadlines for submission to various legal ranking directories are fast approaching. This one is a survey where you rank lawyers in your field. That one is an interview where you’re asked who (after you, of course) is the best in your field. Another asks to whom you would refer a client if you couldn’t act for that client. Their timetables, criteria, and requirements are all different. Lawyers find the submission process laborious, unproductive, and frustrating. However, they are even more frustrated when they see their competitors’ names ranked above their own names (or worse, not seeing . . . [more]

General Counsel have a great opportunity to change how legal services are delivered – if they choose to do so. While some have made strides to change things up so that they may assume a more strategic and value-added role within their companies (which in my view is the best role for GCs and their teams), many choose to remain reactive fire-fighters, policing an increasing number of outside law firms. In fact many advertisements for in-house counsel now stipulate that experience managing outside law firms is a vital quality for employment. Surely companies should be hiring in-house counsel to bring . . . [more]

Through a recent tweet from Omar Ha-Redeye (@OmarHaRedeye), we learned that private member's Bill C-304, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (protecting freedom) passed third reading in the House of Commons without much media coverage, public attention or debate from the opposition parties.

An almost overwhelming amount of information is generated and stored in disparate places in our digital world. Email, documents, tweets, posts, status updates, reports, and other data flow through our computers, tablets and smartphones. Cataloging and retrieving this information is a challenge. Fortunately there are a variety of tools that make simultaneously searching through these data mines a little easier.

At Your Command

Operating system search tools, including MS Window 7 and Apple’s OS X Lion Spotlight, allow users to search files and emails locally and on external drives. They both can also be extended to search Web sources, . . . [more]