BARE BONES BRIEFS: Gowling director disbarred for sexual misconduct | BC lawyer fined for locker room gossip | Do employment lawyers need to report general damages to CRA? | “Unfounded attacks” on lawyer merit substantial indemnity costs against client: Div. Ct. | Alberta cabinet minister joins BLG
By Julius Melnitzer | September 26, 2023 EX-GOWLING DIRECTOR DISBARRED FOR FANTASY RELATIONSHIP WITH JUNIOR EMPLOYEE The UK’s Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck Oliver Bretherton, a former senior solicitor at Gowling WLG, off the roll for his part in a sexual fantasy relationship with an 18-year-old female colleague. The 70 allegations proved against the married […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Cyberattack costs law firm $11 million | OCA: testamentary revocations ineffective against RRIF and RFSA beneficiaries | Companies ignoring law requiring disclosure of Indigenous payments | Dubai’s DEC’s first case | Dellelce gets third honourary doctorate
By Julius Melnitzer | September 18, 2023 CYBERATTACK HITS CONVEYANCING GIANT Simplify, the UK’s largest independent conveyancing and property services group, which embraces six of the largest conveyancing law firms in the UK and handles 250,000 transactions annually, suffered almost $12 million in losses from a cyberattack in 2021 that created a major IT systems […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: More lawyers Down Under, especially women, than koalas | 1.46 ABA members suffer data breach in strange hack | Bennett Jones opens Montreal office | SCC Justice Moldaver joins Arbitration Place | Lawyer turned Yale psychologist publishes The Thriving Lawyer
By Julius Melnitzer | September 5, 2023 Australian lawyers faring better than koalas Koalas are now officially an endangered species in Australia. Some reports list the remaining population in the wild to be as low as 43,000. Lawyers, by contrast, are thriving, with the 2022 National Profile of Solicitors reporting 90,329 practising lawyers in the […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Celebrities abound for BLG’s Guy Pratte’s new podcast | BJ’s Will Osler chairs Calgary Stampede | SCC has opportunity to resolve test for appealing domestic arbitral awards | SCC launches new electronic filing portal | Wildeboer’s 30th anniversary
By Julius Melnitzer | March 30, 2023 BLG’s Pratte launches Art of Persuasion podcast Borden Ladner Gervais LLP’s Guy Pratte, one of Canada’s top litigators will launch The Art of Persuasion, his new podcast, on April 21. The podcast will feature conversations with notable Canadians including former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, defence counsel Marie Henein, […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: LSO panel splits on whether Black Lives Matter criticism is professional misconduct | Firm sues ‘underbilling’ associates | Remote lawyering: longer hours: CLIO survey | LSO suspends paralegal who cost clients $500,000 | CTA: compensation for passenger applies to all others on same flight
By Julius Melnitzer | March 8, 2023 IS AGGRESSIVE CRITICISM OF BLACK LIVES MATTER PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT? A Law Society Tribunal has split on whether social media posts criticizing Black Lives Matter, Pride Day and public health mask mandates amounted to professional misconduct. Lisa Simone, who was applying for a paralegal license, admitted the posts were […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Family lawyers make these professional misconduct mistakes | Clio offers escape from restrictive legaltech contracts | Wikipedia influences judges’ decisions: MIT study | Former CJO Strathy joins Arbitration Place | Medical device mass torts proliferating
By Julius Melnitzer | January 30, 2023 PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT MISTAKES FAMILY LAWYERS SHOULD AVOID In a Six Minute Family Lawyer Program, Bill Trudell, who defends lawyers before the Law Society of Ontario, outlined five Rules of Professional Conduct “that frequently are not followed and ones that may be of particular relevance to the family law […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Remote defendants show up bathing and half-naked; OCA provides guidance on limitation defence in allowing negligence claims against Robins Appleby to proceed; Langlois chair inducted into ACTL; Dellelce family donates $5 million to University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law; Top 5 law firm bulletins & webinars
By Julius Melnitzer | June 24, 2022 UK COURTS FED UP WITH REMOTE SHENANIGANS A UK Magistrates Association report concludes that 76 percent of magistrates oppose continued remote hearings. Defendants appearing remotely, respondents said, appeared to take the process less seriously, as evidenced by their “appearing while in the bath, being half naked, smoking and […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: LSO accredits mindfulness meditation training for lawyers; New CEO at Arbitration Place; Calling a man “a bald c***” is sexual harassment; Bennett Jones provides scholarships for Indigenous, Black and first-generation law students; Top 5 law firm bulletins
By Julius Melnitzer | June 6, 2022 LSO ACCREDITS MINDFULNESS MEDITATION COURSE In a nod to the growing recognition of well-being’s importance to the profession, The Law Society of Ontario has accredited a mindfulness training course, Toronto Method Mindfulness, developed and led by Ari Kaplan of Kaplan Law. Kaplan, one of Canada’s leading pension law […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Judges: counsel still wasting courts’ time | Post-Pandora crackdowns target lawyers | Survey: Lawyers profit most from class actions | Top 5 law firm bulletins & webinars
By Julius Melnitzer | January 10, 2022 JUDGES: LAWYERS STILL SCREWING UP COURTROOM PROCEEDINGS “The file is in a state of near total disarray”: these are nothing less than the opening words in a recent Federal Court judgment. That’s perhaps not surprising in a case where the applicant was unrepresented. But what is surprising is […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: OCA reverses heroin trafficker’s conviction after judge delays reasons for 4 years | Women lawyers working 100 more hours than men | 90% of UK lawyers resisting return to office | EU pushes gig workers’ rights | Top 5 law firm bulletins & webinars
By Julius Melnitzer | December 6, 2021 JUDGE TAKES FOUR YEARS TO DELIVER REASONS AFTER THREE-DAY TRIAL The trial involved only three days of evidence. But Judge Kofi Barnes of the Ontario Superior Court took four years to deliver reasons. And that was some 31 months after Shane Artis appealed his conviction and 10-year sentence […]