Women GCs on boards double up on men: Blakes study
By Julius Melnitzer | March 18. 2021 Women constituted 66 percent of the general counsel who sat on the boards of Canadian public companies in 2020, outnumbering their male counterparts by 2:1, according to a study by Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP. The surge has been remarkable: since 2016, women GCs represent 75 percent of […]
Anticompetitive regulatory risk on the rise: COVID’s role
By Julius Melnitzer | March 2, 2021 COVID-19 and its economic aftermath have cast a dark shadow of regulatory risk on businesses coping with Canada’s competition laws. There are two reasons: the first is that regulatory enforcement of corporate laws tends to be at its highest in bad times; the second is that that our […]
The new way for in-house counsel to ID legal disputes early
September 28, 2020 | By Julius Melnitzer The Deep Tech Resolution Lab (DTRL) at Oxford’s Faculty of Law is building an artificial intelligence (AI) system to search corporate data for signs of trouble before they emerge. According to the Law Society Gazette, DTRL is asking in-house lawyers to help them with the project. “The idea […]
When law firms need lawyers, whom do they call?
September 21, 2020 | By Julius Melnitzer This is the second of a three-part LegalWriter.net series on lawyers who represent lawyers When lawyers get into trouble, the reputation of an entire firm may be at stake. But the concerns of the individual lawyer and the firm can diverge. They may have different views of the […]
Reciprocal insurance exchange raises ethical, access to justice questions
Friday, May 05, 2017 Whether lawyers have class is open to question. But a select group does have CLLAS. CLLAS is not a typo. It is the acronym used by an elite group of about 15 law firms comprising some 5,000 lawyers who have banded together to incorporate a reciprocal insurance exchange, known as the […]
Judicial independence and the media
Thursday, May 18, 2017 Is there an “unstated compact” between the judiciary and the media? Should there be? And if so, what should it be? The notion of an “unstated compact” found its way to me from a bit of a distance, emanating from a speech given by Justice Barry Leon, who sits on the […]
Branding, skillful mergers the keys to Big Law success
Friday, June 02, 2017 It used to be that beyond name recognition — logos and the like — branding served only a limited purpose for law firms who sold services based for the most part on the individual expertise of their lawyers or their practice groups. But as personal contact declined in a globalized, connected […]
Efforts to cool hot housing markets target ‘foreigners’ instead of speculators
Thursday, June 22, 2017 In an era where anti-immigration policies are picking up steam, “foreign” is a dangerous word. And therein lies the problems with the Ontario and British Columbia measures that impose additional taxes on non-residents buying residential property in the Toronto and Vancouver regions. Notice that, on a quick reading, it appears that […]
Paralegal debate: let’s settle for ‘better’ not ‘perfect’ access to justice
Thursday, July 27, 2017 The current debate about paralegal representation in Ontario’s family courts, and the degree of opposition to it in the bar and judiciary, exemplify just how far the profession is removed from reality. The lawyers and judges opposing the change rest their case on the belief that “quality of service” will erode […]
Groia case highlights tension between lawyers’ duties to client and court
Monday, August 14, 2017 A hint of what awaits Joe Groia could very well be gleaned from the Supreme Court of Canada’s treatment of Quebec criminal lawyer Robert Jodoin, against whom the court upheld a personal costs award for bringing “unfounded and frivolous” motions alleging bias against a Quebec Superior Court judge. It’s worth a […]