Artificial intelligence has the potential to wreak havoc on diversity initiatives February 20, 2018 Artificial intelligence (AI), it seems, has become the cutting-edge target for proponents of diversity in the workplace. Some experts claim that AI is increasingly biased against women and non-white people. Even robots, they claim, are being sexist and racist. The bias […]
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 If you’re Law Society of Ontario (LSO) treasurer Paul Schabas, you’ve got to be frustrated by the results of the recent LSO survey that prompted 20 per cent of responding articling students to reveal that they had received “unwelcome attention.” The results evidence the culture of a profession lagging precariously behind […]
Deloitte argues its use of such lawyers does not constitute unauthorized provision of legal services March 7, 2018 The strategy driving an employment class action between Deloitte and more than 400 lawyers is masking an issue fundamental to the future of the legal profession. On its face, the case is about whether Deloitte misclassified the […]
March 6, 2018 In their constant search for diversification, Canada’s largest pension funds seem to be continually restructuring their Canadian office building portfolios. “The goal has been to redeploy their investments by expanding internationally and developing new class A office buildings in Canada as well,” says Ayres Gonsalves, vice-president of commercial at Dorsay Development Corp., a […]
Monday, March 12, 2018 Even genuine self-examination runs the risk of succumbing to navel gazing. So it is with the legal profession these days. Never before have lawyers been so caught up in rapid change. And never before have they taken such a long, hard look at themselves. Should non-lawyers be allowed to own law […]
The unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel overturns a lower court judgment that treated the sharing of such information as a ‘waiver’ of legal privilege March 13, 2018 Dealmakers breathed a huge sigh of relief last week when the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) gave them the go-ahead to share privileged communications with other parties […]
Tuesday, March 27, 2018 Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal, is closing its doors at the end of March. But its legacy, a full-frontal attack on lawyers, looms large. It’s a matter of optics. So far, there’s scant evidence of criminal activity by lawyers in relation to the […]
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 So, Justice Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice believes that law firms seeking carriage of a class action should hire independent counsel to argue carriage motions. Why? For no less noble a reason than to “introduce an element or at least the appearance of some objectivity,” Perell wrote […]
April 16, 2018 While many employers offer a comparable pension or health benefits plan to all employees, where long-term incentives plans are available they usually vary by employee level. A recent Willis Towers Watson survey of Canadian publicly traded companies with revenues exceeding $2 billion found 100 per cent of these companies’ chief executive officers and […]
Ottawa’s true rate is cheaper than its U.S. counterpart, so it’s really up to the provinces to help fix our corporate competitiveness issue April 18, 2018 The role of provincial tax rates is frequently lost in the brouhaha over the negative impact that U.S. tax reform will have on the Canadian economy. “The difference in […]