Last week Mary Abraham (Above and Beyond KM) asked What’s the Right Question for a Better Answer? Mary’s thought provoking post discussed an experience with preparing questions to get expert advice and realizing that the questions could shape the answer, limit the conversation, and possibly lead to an undesired or lengthy outcome.

By setting out the questions beforehand, I had limited the range of answers and set up false boundaries for our conversation.

I filter Mary’s post with my legal research goggles on. From the librarian perspective, we know to ask open ended questions, identify what the researcher has already . . . [more]

With the launch of Conservative Senator Nicole Eaton’s inquiry into the “Involvement of Foreign Foundations in Canada’s Domestic Affairs”, increased scrutiny is being focused on the activities of Canada’s charitable environmental groups. In particular, is participating in public consultations, or encouraging others to do so, a political activity forbidden to charities?

The Conservatives have expressed concern about foreign foundations making donations to Canadian charities to influence Canadian law and policy, and whether this puts undue obstacles in the way of major Canadian energy projects. This was apparently triggered by frustration at the large number of registered interveners in the Enbridge . . . [more]

[ UPDATE (March 19, 5 pm): As you will see from the comment below from Colin Lachance, the judgment has now been restored. So far as I can determine, no element of the court’s criticism has been altered. ]

Slaw has learned that the judgment of Justice David Brown in Romspen Investment Corp. v. 617666 Canada Ltd 2012 ONSC 1727 has been withdrawn from all publishers’ electronic databases pursuant to the request of the court administration. The request said that the decision had been “sent to publication in error,” and asked that publishers “remove [it] from your records and destroy . . . [more]

Last week I wrote on The High Cost of Cloud Computing Due Diligence, and asked readers what thoughts they had on how the burden of cloud computing due diligence could be reduced.

In his post on The Myth of Due Diligence, David Whelan questions the assumption that we should apply more strict due diligence requirements to the cloud than to traditional desktop-based software:

If due diligence is called for – and something is, whether it needs that name or not – then it should apply equally to the wireless routers, operating systems, and locally installed software within law

. . . [more]

In my post here on 19 September, I railed on about the fork in the road of advocacy – one towards mediation, the other towards traditional court advocacy. I said, “Court advocacy is to mediation advocacy, as tennis is to cage fighting. Without an umpire.” My theme: although there is some overlap of skills, the two are sufficiently different that the advocate should concentrate his or her practice on one or the other.

In the Spring 2012 Advocates’ Journal there is an article by the Chief Justice of Ontario which lays bare the differences between court and mediation advocacy . . . [more]

As the global demand for lower cost and efficient legal services grows, we will see new innovations in the delivery of these services. Integreon, a global provider of outsourcing services recently announced the opening of its legal process outsourcing (LPO) onshore UK delivery centre.

The facility in Bristol will provide a full suite of LPO services, including document review, contract management, merger and acquisition (M&A) due diligence and compliance support.

This is an interesting turn of events in the LPO space. The whole premise of LPO services is the significant cost advantage of the service (amongst other benefits) over local . . . [more]

Blogger Attempts to Protect Content by Country: Redirects .com Blogs to Country-Specific Domains

I vividly remember the salesperson coming to our home as a child, brandishing the 32 shiny, leather-bound volumes. “This,” he said, “is the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Although we had the Vic-20, we simply didn’t have the same access to information online that we do today. As an insatiable bookworm who already professed an encyclopedic knowledge on everything I claimed to be right about, I was completely enthralled.

We ended up settling for the Britannica Children’s Encyclopedia. As I recall it met its eventual demise being cut up into pieces for its pretty pictures for use in elementary school projects in . . . [more]

The recent St. Patrick’s Day publicity, most of which seemed to involve drinking, put me in the frame of mind to notice this development from the home of St. Andrew, where the Scottish government has introduced a bill that would fix mandatory minimum prices for alcohol. The Scottish National Party’s first attempt in the prior parliament was defeated. However, SP Bill 4^* has this time received approval in principle and will proceed on through the legislative process.

There is a basis for concern about the consumption of alcohol in Scotland. The government has set out the argument in favour . . . [more]

Congratulations to newchoir on a great little promotional stunt on behalf of Tourism Ireland in downtown Toronto yesterday!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone. Sláinte! . . . [more]

Those of you who read the Globe and Mail may have seen in today’s paper the report by Jeff Gray, “Yes, Virginia, this is a rant from the bench,” reporting an edited version of what Justice David Brown had to say from the bench, Thursday, about Ontario’s paper-based document management system. I might not have called it a “rant,” which suggests a lack of control; rather, it’s a scathing and at times sardonic denunciation by a judge fully in control of his facts and his language. It concludes:

[17] If some may consider such criticism un-judicial in

. . . [more]

Here’s a good review of the law on shrink-wrap, click-through and ‘browse-wrap’ contracts . I expect the law of New York is much like the law in at least common law Canada on the topic. The comment is inspired by a recent dispute about Facebook’s ability to enforce its forum-selection clause. The author says that most lawyers would have thought that FB’s sign-up process was ‘bullet-proof’, but the court still made a thorough analysis of it.

The process required the person signing up to click on the terms of service to see them, In other words, the assent to those . . . [more]