Excerpted from LAWPRO Magazine, Student Issue #1, 2012

What is professional liability insurance?
Professional liability insurance is designed to indemnify lawyers against the consequences of a lawyer’s liability for a client’s loss. For this reason, only lawyers in private practice are subject to the mandatory insurance requirement.

What is private practice?
Private practice, for the purpose of LAWPRO’s insurance program, is the delivery of professional services (including advice) to anybody who is not the lawyer’s employer. . . .

What kinds of lawyers are exempt from the mandatory insurance requirement?
In general, lawyers working as in-house counsel, who are employed by the government, . . . [more]

One of the puzzling things I have noticed about new lawyers is that they tend to come out of law school thinking like 50 year old lawyers – and not like the digital natives they are. In general they don’t seem to think like their peers who have pursued callings other than law. And that’s not a good thing. 

That seems strange to a digital immigrant like myself, who embraces things like a paperless practice and social media. We sometimes wonder why law students are not pushing us into this world and demanding new and innovative approaches, rather than the . . . [more]

by Mona Zarbafian

Chicago lawyer Corri Fetman’s “Life’s short. Get a divorce” marketing campaign is a combination of sexualized images and suggestive slogans that influence a greater market than solely potential divorce-seeking couples. In her quest to deviate from the stereotypical image of legal advertising, Fetman has linked the legal profession to the sex industry; furthermore, she has implemented a marketing strategy that violates ethical codes of conduct, encourages litigation, and diminishes confidence in the legal profession. Although these violations have resulted in individual gains for Fetman, broader collective ramifications for the legal profession are at stake.

There . . . [more]

by Lesley Jacobs*

In all the extensive commentary on the release of the Drummond Commission Report last month, virtually no attention has been paid to the implications for Ontario’s justice system. The Justice system accounts for about 5% of total public sector spending by the Government of Ontario, making it the fourth biggest sector after health, education, and social services. From the perspective of trying to rein in public spending, neglect of the justice system is especially surprising because, as the Report notes, in the past year it has seen the biggest sector increase in spending, almost 11.5%.

The central . . . [more]

The following article appeared in the December 2009 edition of LAWPRO Magazine.

Although social media sites offer lawyers many interesting new ways to interact with people in both personal and work spheres, there are some risks associated with using them. Some of these risks are obvious, some are not.

Before they venture into social networking, lawyers should consider Section 5.5 of the Law Society’s Practice Management Guideline on Technology (“Technology Guideline”). It states, “Lawyers should have a reasonable understanding of the technologies used in their practice or should have access to someone who has such understanding.”

This article will . . . [more]

In honour of law student week I am sharing some advice for students on the differences between writing in law school and writing at a law firm. First let me remind you that I am not a lawyer. My experience in this area comes from being surrounded by legal writing – in the sources that I am responsible for evaluating and collecting in my library, in work product I assist with, read, and have responsibility for retaining for future use, in my email, on the web. I also have responsibility for training articling students in legal research and writing.

There . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal released its much anticipated judgment on the legality of Canada’s prostitution laws yesterday in the decision of R. v. Bedford.

Predicated on the rights of sex workers to ply their trade in an environment that does not jeopardize their constitutional right to security of the person, the case succeeded in overturning two of the three central pillars of the Criminal Code’s anti-prostitution sections.

Provisions prohibiting “common bawdy houses” (what non-lawyers might more commonly refer to politely as brothels) have been declared unconstitutional with the government being granted a one-year reprieve to try its hand . . . [more]

by Wendy L. Werner / Excerpted from LAWPRO Magazine, Student Issue #1, 2012

On the face of it, interviewing should not be all that difficult – particularly for lawyers. As members of a profession who primarily make their living either writing or speaking, the idea that having a conversation about your interests and abilities in your own profession sounds both logical and easy.

But throw the words “job interview” into the mix and a whole new paradigm emerges. With seemingly so much at stake, job interviews take on a new meaning for people who ordinarily would not shy away from . . . [more]

Back in January, I wrote about a class action that had been filed in New York by former law students claiming they had, in a sense, been duped with regard to post-graduation job prospects (see here). These law students sought over $200 million in damages. Last week, the New York Supreme Court dismissed the action (see here).

Justice Schweitzer wrote that students considering going to law school are “a sophisticated subset of education consumers, capable of sifting through data and weighing alternatives before making a decision regarding their postcollege options.” Moreover, Justice Schweitzer recognized that times were tough; . . . [more]

by Marlon Simmons

On the night of August 21^st 1931, the town of Maycomb stood still. In the segregated court of the small Alabama town, an all white male jury tried an African-American man by the name of Tom Robinson. Represented by a white lawyer Atticus Finch, Tom Robinson was found guilty of raping a white woman and was later shot to death after he allegedly attempted to flee. The trial unfolded in a gripping way in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

The film gives us an epoch entrenched in bigotry and institutionalized racism. At the surface level . . . [more]

The web makes so much information available that we sometimes forget that there are still many hidden archives and collections that are not immediately accessible by way of a simple Google search.

One example is the pages created by government departments that house reports, policy papers and the gamut of related materials that are collected by the departments to keep the public informed, and which are often commissioned to inform the government of issues and concerns that may form part of policy. One of our academics was concerned recently when she went to the Department of Justice website to locate . . . [more]

I’m working on the road most of this week, and am currently in Sudbury . I had the good fortune last night of seeing Dr. Jane Goodall at Laurentian University. She presented her 2010 documentary Jane’s Journey and then answered questions from the audience (you can see the trailer here). I have always thought of Dr. Goodall in terms of her work studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. However, there is so much more to her work.

As the documentary explains, at a certain point she realized the chimpanzees she was studying were declining in . . . [more]