I just stumbled upon the fact that the decision to discontinue publication of the print version of the federal Table of Public Statutes was reversed.

An issue, up to date to Sept 30, 2011 is now available from:

Queen’s Printer

or from

Federal Publications Inc.

This is good news! . . . [more]

Way back in March, LexisNexis Canada announced an app for Quicklaw on the iPhone. Ted Tjaden covered this new development with a review. The app was updated recently, and I thought it might be worthwhile checking out the new features, including an enhanced search interface and results list.

My personal test of the app found it a bit buggy: app shuts down if you go back to the app from the “view in browser link”, view in browser asks for a client id rather than transferring. This may have been due to settings on my device, or my internet connectivity. . . . [more]

We’re pleased to announce that Adam Dodek is joining Slaw.

Adam is an Associate Professor in the common law section of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. He teaches and writes about public law, legal ethics, the legal profession and the Supreme Court of Canada. He is a founding member of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics (CALE). And at the moment he is writing a book about solicitor-client privilege. You might take a look at his recent work, “Courthouse Cancellations and Challenges to Self-Regulation: Correspondent’s Report from Canada” (Legal Ethics, Vol. 14, No. 1, . . . [more]

In the various provincial election campaigns across the country, there is little attention being paid to the funding of the civil justice system. Among elected officials, the dominant paradigm is one that sees funding of the civil justice system as an obligatory expense for the government. The costs appear unlimited and ever increasing. The challenge within this paradigm is how to minimize this expensive item while still meeting their basic obligations. The results are evident in court delays, the ever increasing number of self-represented litigants, increasing restrictions on access to legal aid, and a myriad of unresolved civil disputes in . . . [more]

Recently, the tech world has been buzzing with recent corporate blow-ups involving high level executives. Indeed, recently, Carol Bartz, the then-CEO of Yahoo, was fired over the phone and subsequently publicly denounced her boss as a “doofus”. As reported in Canadian Business magazine, Michael Arrington’s recent spat with his former employer, AOL, also went swimmingly. Both high-profile terminations had an effect on the employers.

Bartz mainly damaged her own career prospects, but her public outburst reflected poorly on the company. The incident almost certainly hurt employee morale, riled activist investors and added to Yahoo’s legal fees.

Less than a week

Recently, I had occasion to look at the speeches and presentations made by members of ultimate courts of appeal – the Supreme Court and its equivalents. And Canada ranks somewhat disgracefully last in terms of making the speeches publicly available.

Eugene Meehan has monitored the court too for speeches and presentations, but his pickings are similarly slim in recent years. . . . [more]

“Unbundling” is a name given to the provision of legal services for part, but not all, of a client’s legal matter, by agreement with the client. Another name is “limited scope retainers”.

The idea is that by providing Rules of Professional Conduct and guidelines on the issue to lawyers and paralegals, the public will have greater access to justice.

Unbundling raises all kinds of ethical and procedural issues. The OBA struck a task force to draft the OBA’s submissions on the subject to the Law Society’s Professional Regulation Committee. Here are the main issues identified in the OBA’s submissions : . . . [more]

The following article by Nora Rock appears in the Fall 2011 issue of LAWPRO Magazine.

At LAWPRO, we’ve seen a growing proportion of incivility allegations cropping up in claims. For example, lawyers may find themselves personally liable to pay a party’s costs under Rule 57.07 (Rules of Civil Procedure) where the court has found that the lawyer’s actions contributed to running up the bill.

Incivility can also lead to other consequences. The client’s case may be prejudiced because the lawyer is unfavourably viewed by a jury; or a prospect of settlement may evaporate in the face of a lawyer’s . . . [more]

There’s a new player in the flash mob market. Vibe is a Twitter-like app for the iPhone that lets you communicate with other Vibe users anonymously. There is no login, no sign-up, no registration: it’s strictly download and play. Moreover, you shape your “vibes” by the distance you’d like them to travel and the length of time you’d like them to live. If you “Whisper” your vibe travels no more than 50 metres from where you are, “Speak” and the radius is 500 metres, etc; and like the tapes on Mission Impossible, your vibes can self-destruct after 15 minutes, 1 . . . [more]

Medical data is one of the most sensitive types of data and, like lawyers, some doctors have reservations about storing confidential client data “in the cloud.” The security of storing Electronic Health Records and related data on-premise is perceived by many doctors to be more secure than cloud-based alternatives.

This thinking is challenged by a US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) study that assesses the root cause of significant data breaches involving health information. The study finds the top causes of breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to be:

• Physical theft of devices /

Studying or writing about your peer group can be a daunting and sometimes professionally hazardous task. For evidence of this, consider well-respected consultant and legal futurist Richard Susskind whose early work “The Future of Law” was met with considerable skepticism and even derision in some legal circles.

Despite the hazards, inherent in such an endeavour I could not help myself recently but to accept such an assignment that tasked me with the performance of an analysis and the development of a framework for the engagement of consultants in an industry in which I myself am a consultant. The task for . . . [more]