Hi Everyone, I’m looking to expand my professional portfolio by adding more legal research projects. I have 17 years’ experience as a trial and appellate lawyer in Ontario and 30 years as a legal affairs journalist with over 3,500 print and online articles published in Canada’s major dailies and trade journals. I’ve worked with a […]
By Murray Gottheil | February 3, 2024 Unsuccessful people are the ones who are impressed by celebrity, by people’s names and titles – Robin S. Sharma In the old days, there were associates and partners. Every lawyer planned to work ridiculously hard as an associate for about seven years, after which the firm would invite them […]
By Murray Gottheil | February 2, 2025 I never worked in-house. Of course, having no such experience is not going to stop me from spouting off about in-house counsel (“IHC”). So, here we go! CYA Some IHC strive to avoid personal risk. They may always hire Big Law as outside counsel, so that if something goes […]
By Julius Melnitzer | January 29, 2025 Here is the second part of Law360 Canada’s annual list of the Top 10 business decisions in Canada for the year just ended. This is a two-part series, which began in Part I with our honourable mentions and the cases ranked 6-10. What follows are the Top 5 […]
By Marcel Strigberger | January 27, 2025 He shoots he scores! Or at least he’s giving it a shot. I am talking not hockey, but income tax. Leafs star John Tavares is appealing a CRA tax assessment of $6.8 million on his $15.4 million bonus, part of his seven-year, $77 million contract signed when he […]
By Murray Gottheil | January 25, 2024 I spoke to two law firm partners this week: both told me that they were expected to put in 2,400 hours, consisting of 2,000 billable hours and 400 non-billable hours (administration, firm events, continuing education, business promotion, and mentoring) annually. I did some math to determine how many hours […]
By Murray Gottheil | January 23, 2025 In law firms, more zeros are better than fewer zeros. For example, announcing, “Look at me! I just closed a $100,000,000 acquisition” impresses your colleagues more than saying, “I just did a deal worth $10,000,000.” A deal that was only worth $965,000 is not even worth mentioning. Frankly, it is almost […]
By Murray Gottheil | January 22, 2024 I am willing to bet that you did not expect this headline from me! And to be fair, I do not intend it as a general statement. What I am going to talk about is legal research, and it is a fact that Big Law does that better than the […]
By Marcel Strigberger | January 21, 2025 Can a judge make peace between hostile lawyers by ordering them to have lunch together? In the Alabama case of McCullers v Koch Foods of Alabama, the two lawyers involved were not getting along too well. Defense counsel moved to amend his pleading and plaintiff’s counsel opposed the request unless defendant agreed not […]
By Julius Melnitzer | January 20, 2025 Here is Law360 Canada’s annual list of the Top 10 business decisions in Canada for the year just ended. This is a two-part series, which begins below with our honourable mentions, followed by the cases ranked 6-10, in ascending order. Part II will deal with cases ranked 1-5. Honourable mention […]