For most Canadians, our awareness of Canada’s firearms legislation is limited to the controversy concerning the long-gun registry — the legislation passed by the federal government as part of a more comprehensive Firearms Act in 1995 — that requires all rifle owners to register their guns. It would seem that most police officers, Crown attorneys, and judges are also a little hazy on the technicalities of the act. “I see a large part of what I do as educating the courts and police officers about our firearms legislation,” says lawyer Edward Burlew. “I have represented hundreds and hundreds of gun owners and, in a great many cases, I have been able to show that the police officers and the Crown attorneys don’t fully understand the legislation’s technicalities.”

Photo: Don Mackinnon

Almost 150 years ago, British Columbia judge Matthew Begbie sitting in New Westminster ordered the execution by hanging of Chief Ahan for his part in the Chilcotin War of 1864. Now, once a month, the First Nations Court sits at New Westminster with Judge Marion Buller Bennett presiding in the courthouse outside which stands a statue of Begbie puffing on his pipe. “It’s like we’re doing it under his nose,” she chuckles.

Illustration: Matt Daley

What is bothersome to many litigators is that our clients, whether companies or individuals, simply refuse to stop using computers. With increasing frequency, the best evidence — the evidence required to prove or defend our clients’ cases — has been generated by a computer and remains there, in some format. The widespread use of computers and related devices (you know the ones: cellphones, BlackBerrys, things that access Facebook, and now Facebook e-mail, etc.) has led to something of an anxiety epidemic among lawyers: e-discovery. 

Firms like Winnipeg’s Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP that have been using digital, networked dictation for a few years may wonder why any law firm would continue to do it the old way — or, indeed, how it survived before installing its Olympus DS-5000 transcription management system in 2006.

 

Cloud computing in the legal industry, almost from the get-go, came under, well, a cloud. Is the sketchy reputation deserved?

 

Landlords may end up with unwanted tenants and unpaid rent as a result of recent changes to Canada’s bankruptcy and insolvency laws.

 

William Brock and his wife, lawyer Maryse Bertrand.

William Brock is not by nature a gambler, preferring calculation to chance. “I am organized, I am disciplined, and I like to win,” declares an unabashed Brock, a Montreal lawyer who works on some of Canada’s biggest litigation cases for Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. Each litigation case is another chess game, as he puts it, full of careful deliberations and strategic preparation for an eventual successful assault on the opponent.

 

The bank drafts looked good, but the grammar in the other lawyer’s e-mail was bad. That’s what made James Morgan suspect he was being targeted for a scam — an attempt to get money out of the small-town Ontario lawyer’s trust account on the strength of forged cheques and a phoney loan to one of his clients.

 

While B.C. condos go green, environmentally conscious developers and lawyers in Ontario are going green with envy, as consumer-protection provisions in the province’s condominium law deter large investments in energy-efficient projects. “It makes me sad to see that’s something we’re missing out on,” says Harry Herskowitz, senior real estate counsel at DelZotto Zorzi LLP in Toronto, whose clients include Tridel Corp., one of Canada’s leading condo developers. 

 

Collecting taxes from clients is certainly not part of a law firm’s core business. It’s a task lawyers are usually content to leave to support staff and accountants. That’s why many lawyers have paid little attention to any of the details involved in the move to harmonized sales tax (HST) in Ontario and British Columbia. And it’s the reason why some law firms and sole practitioners are in for a few nasty surprises, according to tax experts in both provinces.