Navigating family law cases requires an abundance of one thing: respect

My 40-plus years litigation practice in the Toronto area consisted of a moderate amount of family, aka matrimonial, cases. In spite of this area being emotionally charged, I think that I was able to maintain a reasonable degree of sanity. Reasonable.

Dec 4, 2023 2:58 PM CST

How reckoning with trauma can help you, your clients and the legal profession

Trauma-Informed Law: A Primer for Lawyer Resilience and Healing seeks to suggest not only how lawyers can provide better client service to traumatized people but also how lawyers, law students and judges can deal with their own traumas.

Oct 25, 2023 3:06 PM CDT

Thumbs-up emoji constituted acceptance of texted contract, Canadian judge rules

A Canadian judge has ruled a farmer’s thumbs-up emoji constituted approval of a contract texted to him by a grain buyer.

Jul 13, 2023 9:00 AM CDT

How lawyers can embrace their inner ‘chicken’

"Chicken?" Why not? I would like to talk about a subject many of us in the legal profession are afraid to discuss: fear. As lawyers, our work can be stressful, leaving us gripped with fear. This must be a relevant issue, as with my glance at a thesaurus, I note that there are at least three synonyms for fear beginning with the just letter “a” alone—namely “anxiety,” “alarm” and “angst.”

May 15, 2023 9:00 AM CDT

Weekly Briefs: Biden can’t grant student-debt relief, judge says; $32.3M malpractice award left in place

Judge strikes down student-debt relief

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of Fort Worth, Texas, ruled Thursday that the Biden administration’s plan to forgive some federal student-loan debt was an unconstitutional…

Nov 11, 2022 3:14 PM CST

Work for Canadian residential school survivors informs lawyer’s debut novel

A lawyer explains how her work informed the writing of her book and why many Indigenous people still feel the impact of the Canadian school system to this day.

May 25, 2022 8:33 AM CDT

Canadian law school mistakenly informed student’s family that she had died

A Canadian law school’s unusual apology to one of its law students has gone viral after it was posted to Twitter last week.

Mar 15, 2022 1:59 PM CDT

US can’t use health law to expel migrants to areas where they face persecution or torture, DC Circuit says

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Biden administration can’t use a public health law to immediately expel migrants to countries where they could face persecution or torture.

Mar 7, 2022 8:35 AM CST

Some California law firms turn down work amid associate shortage; six-figure signing bonuses reported

A shortage of associates in California’s Bay Area is leading some law firms to turn down work and others to strain available lawyers with the workload, according to a report by the Recorder.

Nov 4, 2021 9:26 AM CDT

Human rights abuses at boarding schools for Native American children must be examined, ABA House says

Resolution 801 urges organizations and governments to cooperate with the Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative and hand over school records to help uncover the truth of what happened at the boarding schools.

Oct 1, 2021 1:10 AM CDT

Human rights violations at American Indian boarding schools must be investigated, ABA House says

The ABA House of Delegates voted Monday in favor of a resolution calling for an investigation into human rights abuses at American Indian boarding schools after the president of the Canadian Bar Association appeared in person to support the resolution.

Aug 10, 2021 9:30 AM CDT

Law Society of British Columbia launches ‘innovation sandbox’ to address access-to-justice gap

The law society’s initiative comes several months after the Utah Supreme Court launched its own regulatory sandbox amid a growing movement in North America to open up the legal marketplace to nonlawyer financial interests and practitioners.

Nov 24, 2020 9:37 AM CST

Does firm size matter? Retired lawyer muses on pros and cons of BigLaw and SmallLaw

The concept of BigLaw only recently crossed my radar. Though I had an idea of what it means, I wan’t sure and so I Googled it and went straight to one of my most trusted word reference texts, the Urban Dictionary.

Sep 14, 2020 10:07 AM CDT

Law firm teams up with Canadian legal tech company on AI-powered case prediction tool

Labor and employment law firm Fisher Phillips has partnered with Blue J Legal Inc. to bring the Toronto legal tech company’s AI-powered technology, which predicts court outcomes in the employment law arena, to the United States.

Aug 25, 2020 8:00 AM CDT

Afternoon Briefs: BigLaw’s big bankruptcy bucks; polyamorous ties recognized

Some BigLaw firms will earn big bucks in retail bankruptcies

Several large law firms will likely earn millions of dollars representing retailers such as Neiman Marcus, J. Crew and J.C.…

Jul 7, 2020 4:27 PM CDT