‘We’re starting to see activity again’: Legal dealmakers show measured optimism after slow 2022
Energy sector is high on the perceived opportunity list By Julius Melnitzer | February 6, 2023 Canada’s top M&A lawyers are taking a measured approach to 2023 after a sharp decline in deal count in 2022, when activity pulled back from unsustainable levels reached during the pandemic. “We’re starting to see activity again as people […]
Ottawa’s Muskrat Falls bailout triggers First Nations lawsuit
Given the number of natural resource projects that have Indigenous support, this type of litigation could become more frequent A pair of disputes in Newfoundland and Labrador and Alberta relating to resource projects on Indigenous territory, suggests that federal and provincial governments still don’t get it when it comes to their well-established duty to consult […]
Defending democracy: the status of “fake news” in Canada
By Julius Melnitzer | May 23, 2021 It’s hard to process the fact that the multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuits launched by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic in the U.S. following on media allegations that they helped President Joe Biden “steal” the American election from Donald Trump may be facing uphill battles in American courts. Why […]
Good faith in contracts: did the SCC blow it?
By Julius Melnitzer | March 25, 2021. This is the first article in a two-part series. Read Part II here. The Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) recent decisions in C.M. Callow Inc. v. Zollinger and Wastech Services Ltd. v. Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Draining have reactivated the polarizing debate about the court’s interpolation of the […]
The Sharing Economy: a book worth sharing
October 28, 2020 | By Julius Melnitzer Nowhere, perhaps, are legal issues emerging more rapidly than in the context of sharing platforms like Airbnb, UBER, LYFT and TURO. What makes this even more interesting for lawyers is that it’s not just the legal issues that are emerging: the industries buying into this model are emerging […]
Canadian lawyer weighs in on Trump’s Twitter tweets
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 | Julius Melnitzer Trump, Twitter & The Law is something of an oddity: a book about The Donald by a Canadian. Sheldon Burshtein, partner emeritus with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto, tells the story of Trump’s profound impact on the U.S. He does it through the eyes of a […]
Canadian law firms hold their own when it comes to making money, U.S. legal publication says
Canada’s homegrown law firms are holding their own in Legal Week’s international law firm rankings October 17, 2016 Canada’s homegrown law firms, the ones who have not been absorbed by the global behemoths and who still have most of their lawyers in Canada, are holding their own in international law firm rankings. Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]