Lack of law profession transparency preventing necessary culture change
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 […]
Lawyers’ class action over unpaid employment benefits masks regulatory inaction over unauthorized legal services
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 […]
Canadian pension funds increasingly using co-investments to diversify real estate holdings
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 […]
Rush to adapt misses the profession’s biggest problem: Unrepresented litigants
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 […]
Dealmakers relieved as appeal court says privileged information can be shared
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 […]
Solicitor-client privilege could be next victim of the Panama Papers
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 […]
The current mess of class action carriage motions
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 […]
A look at trends in long-term incentive plans
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 […]
You can thank provincial taxes for Canada’s higher overall tax rate
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 […]
Top 10 business decisions of 2019: From orphan wells to Vavilov trilogy
Friday, February 14, 2020 As the second in our two-part series listing the Top 10 business decisions of 2019, here are the five cases that lead the class, in ascending order. 5. Canada (Commissioner of Competition) v. Vancouver Airport Authority 2019 Comp Trib 6 A focus of intense interest among competition law and scholars, this decision from […]