BARE BONES BRIEFS: Minimum wage overtakes Legal Aid rates | ICE keeps immigration lawyer watch list | Criminal jury trials on the way out? | Bees awarded legal rights | Legal author’s life imitates art
By Julius Melnitzer | January 4, 2026 RATES HIT NEW BOTTOM FOR LEGAL AID LAWYERS $193.20 for 15 hours: that’s what the UK government paid an experienced lawyer for publicly-funded family law work. And according to a recent Bar Council report, that news doesn’t come close to revealing the personal cost of taking on legal […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Law firm risked becoming a terrorist agent | Fearful lawyers refusing cases against Trump | FBI criminalizes environmental groups | Legal Aid can’t refuse to pay for 90% of firm’s document review | Avatars are the new court spokepersons
By Julius Melnitzer | March 26, 2025 CENTRAL LONDON FIRM HIT WITH C$47,000 ALM FINE The UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has imposed a maximum fine of C$47,000 on PCB Lawyers LLP, a central London property law specialist, for breaches of anti-money laundering regulation that exposed the firm to being used as a conduit for […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Trump judges, citing university’s failure to condemn antisemitic acts, won’t hire Columbia grads | European Human Rights Court opens floodgates for climate change litigation | Kielburgers’ mother can proceed with defamation claim | Federal Court certifies class action for “mental illness stigmatization” by Canadian Armed Forces | Bennett Jones appoints new office managing partners
By Julius Melnitzer | May 21, 2024 TRUMP APPOINTEES BOYCOTT COLUMBIA GRADS NBC reports that 13 federal judges appointed by Donald Trump chose Holocaust Remembrance Day to announce that they would not hire students who graduated from Columbia University, which they called “an incubator of bigotry” in which “professors and administrators are on the front […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Climate disruption and natural asset management: perfect legal storm? | Neurodivergent lawyers stay under the radar for fear of discrimination
By Julius Melnitzer | May 6, 2024 NATURAL ASSETS INITIATIVES’S LEGAL PRIMER EXPOSES RISKS IN NATURAL ASSETS MANAGEMENT The growing frequency of climate disruption with its associated impacts in costs, combined with the steady growth of climate and nature-related litigation will doubtless increase the legal risk associated with natural asset management, the process of inventorying […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Blakes absent, but Gowling shines on YouTube | Investment fund liable for “greenwashing” | Lawyer forgives client who stabbed him in court | Ukraine wants to trademark “go fuck yourself” war slogan | Adultery now legal
By Julius Melnitzer | April 4, 2024 BIGLAW MISSES THE YOUTUBE BOAT According to Eric Troutman, a prominent class action defence lawyer with California-based Troutman Amin LLP, writing in Practice Source, YouTube is “the world’s second most visited website and an absolutely critical communication channel for businesses (including law firms) seeking to engage with new […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: ‘From the river to the sea’: a trademark? | More lawyer hubris: 27 cent lawsuit | DWPV study examines 2023 insolvency highs | AI not ‘inventor’ for patent purposes: court | Ecocide now a crime in EU
By Julius Melnitzer | March 12, 2024 JEWISH AMERICANS SEEK TRADEMARK FOR PALESTINIAN CHANT Joel Ackerman and Oron Rosenkrantz, who are Jewish US citizens, have filed separate applications to trademark the phrase ‘From the river to the sea’, used by the Palestinian nationalist movement since the 1960s to express its desire for a Palestinian state […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: “Most positively reviewed” lawyer faces new misconduct allegations | Law firm openly adopts slippery slope | Calling colleague “pathetic human” is professional misconduct | FCA boosts climate litigation | FC certifies “older inmates” class action
By Julius Melnitzer | January 31, 2024 SAMFIRU TO FACE MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS IN ALBERTA Lior Samfiru, the Toronto-based national co-managing partner of employment law boutique Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, a firm that claims to be the “most positively reviewed employment law firm in Canada”, must now contend with allegations of professional misconduct in Alberta in addition […]
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 […]
Critical minerals sector will have to wait on speedier timelines for development
By: Julius Melnitzer | April 18, 2023 Ottawa has made critical minerals development a centrepiece of its economic agenda, but when it comes to the bureaucracy surrounding impact assessment and other permitting processes for major projects, much is still up in the air. The March 28 federal budget proposed a raft of measures to advance the sector, seen as […]
Marine commerce group calls for green shipping corridor to help cut emissions
Would enable marine industry to achieve its 2050 net zero goals By Julius Melnitzer | March 26, 2023 Canada’s Chamber of Marine Commerce is calling for the establishment of a green shipping corridor in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence region as the centrepiece of its 2023 wish list for legislators and policy makers. The green corridor […]