Since it’s not sponsored by the regular legal conference outfits, a conference in Toronto next month may have flown under the radar for the Slaw community. The first Symposium on Criminality in the Art and Cultural Property World will be held at Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West, Toronto, on June 15-16, 2012. Next month, Toronto will be the centre of the art-legal world.

The conference is co-chaired by Bonnie Czegledi and Mr. Justice Patrick Healy, Court of Quebec, Criminal and Penal Division, Montréal, formerly Professor Healy from McGill, and the speakers are quite literally, the world’s experts: Lawrence . . . [more]

For those using Google’s Custom Search Engine service, a recent post from Google announcing new features will be of interest. By utilizing these instructions, and making a small change to your on-page web code, you can now enable both date and relevancy sorting for your collections.

If you’re using any kind of structured data or rich markup — extra classification on “site search” functionality, for example — you can also engage filtering by attribute to restrict the search results even further.

It’s great to see that Google hasn’t been forgotten their CSE web service. It’s easy to use and . . . [more]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the need for firms to take a stronger look at risk management – in other words, to see risk management as much more than simply compliance with law society and other regulations. I suspect that many firms do not have a formal risk management role within the firm because they don’t believe there is much risk beyond compliance issues or that the role is not robust enough to warrant a special position within the firm.

Both of these viewpoints are incorrect, so let me bulk-up the risk manager’s role to include innovation to . . . [more]

The International Labour Organization (ILO), the agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues, is seeking ratification of its eight conventions covering fundamental labour standards by 2015. The ILO Core Conventions are as follows:

Law books tend to lack pictures. As do legal memos, factums . . . and judgments. Though a picture is said to sub for a thousand words, it’s not traditional for legal workers to speed things along that way. And neither is it easy, or possible, perhaps, to come up with images that capture the sort of conceptual thinking that law involves. Yet every now and then the image tells the tale, or, at least, an important part of the story, finding its way into judgments.

Some time ago we featured one such judgment, that by U.S. Justice Posner, . . . [more]

One thing that became obvious at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was that lawyers are embracing tablet devices like the iPad in great numbers. Some people claimed that iPads even outnumbered laptops at the event. I’m not sure if that claim would have stood up to a head count but it was certainly plausible. The little tablets were everywhere.

So, fine, if you’re thinking about bringing a tablet device into your practice I have some advice for you.

Connectivity

There’s no getting around it – most tablet devices are barely useful without some kind of Internet connectivity. You can’t . . . [more]

In the Supreme Court of the United States decision of Kansas v. Marsh Justice Antonin Scalia stated,

It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case-not one-in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.

The court was considering the constitutionality of the death penalty in the Kansas, where the statute specifically provided for this . . . [more]

Toronto will have the first court in Canada which will have a formal policy for the kirpan, a ceremonial dagger worn by observant Sikhs. Other courts in Canada may allow the kirpan, including the Supreme Court of Canada, but do not yet have formal procedures in place.

The arrangement came about through cooperation between The World Sikh Organization of Canada, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Toronto Police, the Toronto Police Services Board and the Ministry of the Attorney General.

Curtis Rush of the Toronto Star explains,

The policy was developed as a settlement of two separate human rights cases.

. . . [more]

Those following the US antitrust litigation against Apple and five of the big publishers in respect of ebook pricing by now will have seen Judge Cote’s decision to deny the defendants’ motion to dismiss the class action suit by consumers. The Opinion & Order, In Re Electronic Books Antitrust Litigation 11 MD 2293 (DLC) makes for quite interesting reading. I read a PDF of the Opinion last night, and the Opinion’s also been uploaded to Scribd.

It’s been a long while since I’ve read one of these, but it’s evident from the Opinion that Judge Cote had no difficulty . . . [more]

Big data is a hot trending tech issue. Wikipedia defines big data as “a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.”

The initial issue with big data is the ability to actually work with massive data sets – how to store, search, and manipulate it. But the tools to do that are becoming more . . . [more]

Probably the most interesting thing happening in the BC legal world just now is the Justice Reform Initiative launched by the BC government back in early February. The review is chaired by Geoff Cowper, QC, of Fasken Martineau. The terms of reference for the initiative are ambitious. According to the government’s press release: “He [Geoff Cowper] will identify the top issues that are affecting the public’s access to timely justice and what can be done to ensure the efficiencies already underway have the desired impacts while respecting the independence of the judicial system.” The chief justices of the BC . . . [more]

The Quebec Court of Appeal recently rendered a decision clarifying the restriction set out at section 128(1)(a) of the Act respecting the Barreau du Quebec (“Act”), which reads:

128. (1) The following acts, performed for others, shall be the exclusive prerogative of the practising advocate or solicitor:

(a) to give legal advice and consultations on legal matters; […]

According to this section and in order to ensure the protection of the public, certain acts are reserved for lawyers called and registered with the Bar. The illegal exercise of the legal profession reserved to lawyers constitutes a penal offence. Unless a . . . [more]