I am pleased to participate in this regular series of posts from the Council of Canadian Law Deans (CCLD) sharing insights and ideas on Canadian legal education. This past summer, I explored the impact of design principles on the justice system and since then, I have been reflecting more on the impact of design principles on Law Schools.

Has our legal education system developed as a series of ad hoc measures, policies and programs or has it been designed according to a plan? This question is being asked more broadly in Law Schools as legal academics and lawyers bring design . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Research

Give Feedback
Shaunna Mireau

I recently did some work for one of my colleagues and was reminded how great it feels when you do something and get feedback. Today’s tip is to give feedback. Often, legal research is shared among many and giving feedback will reinforce all the positive aspects of sharing access to work product. …

Practice

(Random) Tips for September
Garry Wise

September has arrived, ushering in . . . [more]

Prof. Woodrow Hartzog is an interesting voice on privacy law and technology. He has written about his own research and interviewed others on the role that obscurity plays in our modern conceptions of privacy. Technologies like encrypted communication applications and device encryption tools can be privacy-enhancing technologies, while obscurity — the condition of being unknown or not entirely comprehensible to others — is a privacy-enhancing state.

Obscurity, it appears, is a state that many of us seek out when it comes to social media, even if we don’t realize it. And if you’re reading this thinking, “I don’t . . . [more]

I heard Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab speaking with Matt Galloway this morning on Metro Morning. The Citizen Lab team, working out of the Munk School of Global Affairs, will be one of the recipients of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Internet Pioneer Award.

The Citizen Lab is “an interdisciplinary laboratory … focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), human rights, and global security.”

Deibert posted this comment about winning the award on their website:

“It is a huge honour and a tribute to all Citizen

At least two of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s discipline decisions in the last few months referenced a lawyer’s “loss of moral compass.” Even honest and well-intentioned lawyers have, when under pressure or when suffering from illness, addiction or a personal crisis, succumbed to the belief that it’s perfectly fine to bend the rules “just this once.”

Unfortunately, bending rules and getting away with it has the effect of weakening a lawyer’s scruples over time – especially when the pressures that led to the first transgression persist. Preserving your integrity will help you steer clear of serious threats to . . . [more]

On behalf of the Slaw community, we congratulate our colleague Dianne Saxe on her appointment as Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. Her new role takes effect on December 1st, 2015.

As one of Canada’s most respected and knowledgeable environmental lawyers, Dianne has been a key columnist with us here at Slaw since June of 2010. While we are uncertain at this time whether her new role will allow her to continue writing (we hope she will), we are exceptionally proud of her achievement. Dianne is a tireless advocate for our environment and we know she will do well.

Well worth noting: . . . [more]

When I was at law school, many years ago, Stephen Lewis visited as a speaker.

At the time he was Canadian ambassador to the UN. He flew up from New York for the afternoon.

There are two things I still remember about his talk.

The first is a humerous anecdote about his experience at law school. He told of how he went to the library to research an assignment and when, after some difficulty, he found the volume that contained the key case for the topic, the relevant pages had been torn out. This convinced him to quit law school, . . . [more]

Judges and politics don’t mix. Political involvement by sitting judges is an accepted taboo. Political involvement by former judges is a relatively recent development. But as the political candidacy of former Chief Judge of the B.C. Provincial Court Carol Baird Ellan is showing, there is a serious danger of political blowback against the bench as an institution when one exchanges her black judicial robes for the Blue, Red or Orange colours of a political party.

The Progressive Conservative Party is running an attack ad targeting the NDP’s so-called “star candidate”. The ad is found at www.youbethejudge.ca and says:

Carol Baird

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. FamilyLLB  2. Susan on the Soapbox 3. Henry J. Chang’s Canada-US Immigration Blog  4. Legal Feeds  5. First Reference Talks

FamilyLLB
More On Whether a Kid Can Launch His or Her Own Child Support Claim Last

Last year we wrote about a case in which a now-16-year-old girl had . . . [more]

The Green Party of Canada has a filed a complaint with the Canada Revenue Agency over its exclusion from the upcoming Munk Debate on Sept. 28, 2015.

The party claims that by not allowing them to participate in the debate, the Aurea Foundation, the registered charity organizing the event, is in violation of the Income Tax Act. The party meets the definition of a political party under s. 149.1(6.1)(c) of the Act.

In a news release earlier this year, the Munk Debate organizers stated,

There are two ways in which someone is a leader of a party in

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Reconnus coupables d’avoir pris part à une émeute et d’avoir séquestré plusieurs personnes au poste de police de Kanesatake lors d’événements survenus en janvier 2014, les appelants voient leurs verdicts de culpabilité confirmés.

Intitulé : Conway c. R., 2015 QCCA 1389
Juridiction : Cour d’appel (C.A.), Montréal, . . . [more]

For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 29
Lawyer, Guns, and Money