By Julius Melnitzer | July 31, 2025
BONUSES: GOODBYE, HOURS; HELLO, COLLABORATION, INCLUSION & LONG-TERM PERFORMANCE
A recent report by Innecto Reward Consulting and HR Network People in Law suggests that law firms may be shifting their bonus criteria from billings, personal performance and profit to structures that are fairer, more transparent, and contribute to a supportive culture embracing collaboration, inclusion, and long-term success. According to the authors, 80% of global firms will be reviewing their bonus schemes in the next 18 months, and while the proportion is significantly lower in the rest of the legal sector, the trend is widespread. The difficulty, the report points out, will be in evaluating the “softer” contributions that have not been widely embedded in bonus considerations and are not readily measurable by financial metrics.
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CASEWAY COLLABORATION BRINGS AI TO THOUSANDS OF LAW FIRMS
A major integration deal between Vancouver-based Caseway, a legal AI platform, and AffiniPay, an American financial technology company that provides practice management and integrated payment solutions tailored for professionals, marks the first time that a US legal platform has embedded an international AI company on this scale. AffiniPay is the parent company of MyCase, an industry-leading cloud-based legal practice management software company that has partnered with more than 130 bar associations and boasts thousands of law firms as clients. The partnership provides MyCase users with direct access to Caseway’s software, enabling law firms to generate court forms, draft legal documents, and manage complex workflows within the MyCase platform. “We’re talking full platform integration, revenue sharing, and co-marketing,” says Alistair Vigier, Caseway’s CEO.
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SUMMER INTERN FIRED FOR BITING CO-WORKERS
Sidley Austin has fired a summer associate whose first-day activities included roaring at colleagues and biting them. According to Practice Source, the would-be-vampire’s victim count “reached double digits” before her ouster. Strangely enough, she was described as “otherwise personable”.
COURT MYSTIFIED BY “UNREASONABLE” LSBC DECISION
The British Columbia Supreme Court has overturned a finding by the Law Society of BC that a sole practitioner, Priyan Samarakoone, breached client identification verification rules. In what is surely mystifying for a legal services regulator, the BCLS didn’t bother notifying Samarakoone of his right to make submissions in response to the allegations or as to the appropriate penalty before fining him $5,000. But the lawyer wasn’t just exonerated on a technicality, albeit a substantive one: the court found that the LSBC decision was unreasonable and based on a “fatal misapprehension of the evidence and an erroneous interpretation of the statutory framework”. Apparently the BCLS had overlooked the fact that the impugned transaction was exempt from the relevant rules as Samarakoone had received the funds in question from another lawyer’s trust account: the court was “mystified” as to how the LSBC managed to miss this key point.
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COLIN ANDREWS JOINS DLA PIPER
DLA Piper has announced the arrival of Colin Andrews as a Toronto-based partner in its real estate group. Andrews’ practice embraces land development, acquisitions and dispositions, lending and secured transactions, corporate structuring, infrastructure projects, leasing, and share purchase transactions. He is also experienced in traditional real estate investment structures, and represents developers and financial institutions.
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Julius Melnitzer is a Toronto-based legal affairs writer, ghostwriter, writing coach and media trainer. Readers can reach him at julius@legalwriter.net or on his website.