A few years ago, I had a client who asked me how I “lived with myself” because I helped foreign workers enter Canada. At first, I wasn’t clear on where this client perceived my moral ambiguity to be. The client elaborated to say it seemed immoral to bring the best and brightest from other countries to Canada, when those people should be remaining in their home countries and making things better “at home” (as if it was my decision where they live to begin with).  

There is no shortage of voices telling corporations in Canada that a new dawn of anti-bribery enforcement has arrived. In support of this claim, many cite a fairly recent flurry of activity from the two RCMP international anti-corruption teams set up in 2008 to lead Canada’s international anti- bribery efforts (one in Calgary, the other in Ottawa). But are Canadian businesses really facing a brave new world of anti-bribery enforcement, or is there nothing of substance covering an embarrassing reality for Canada’s law-enforcers?

Sarah Peterson Herr, a research lawyer with the Kansas Court of Appeals, recently learned the hard way that putting your opinions out on Twitter can get a lawyer in trouble. After calling a former state attorney general now facing ethics charges a “douche bag,” Herr found herself out of a job.

Last month, I spent a terrific weekend in Collingwood, Ont., at the bi-annual Fall Forum run by The Advocates’ Society for litigators up to 12 years of practice.

A law firm leadership boot camp workshop was held as a precursor to the CBA’s Law Firm Leadership Conference in Calgary last month. I had the good fortune to participate as a co-presenter with Karen MacKay and Lorie Peters and in preparing for it Karen circulated a survey, titled “The Leadership Imperative,” to a cross section of people involved in law firm leadership in Canadian firms.

Class actions serve the important social purposes of deterring the wrongful conduct of big business, and ensuring that when the “little guy” is harmed, the wrongdoer does not profit. In many class proceedings, the focus is on this latter concept — preventing the unjust enrichment of the defendant — and compensating the injured class members is secondary because on an individual basis the claims are not viable.
 

We baby boomer lawyers hate to admit it but we’re getting set in our ways and it shows. Aquarius’ ability to carry water is diminishing. The more experience we acquire, the more we draw on the bank of subjective judgment. Like used sponges, we absorb new information more reluctantly. In fairness, as I stumble to the gates of the legal quarter-century club, I appreciate more and more the physical energy it takes to keep the old lessons of my early career relevant. Aging and exhaustion are, after all, memetic equivalents. It is often easier to discount the value of the new than to figure out what it means. If we were talking about someone other than ourselves, we would call that being intellectually lazy. If it threatens our view of the world, then we can dismiss it as being invalid. When the analytical mind fails, we grab on to a crutch. We call that crutch common sense.

The social movements of human rights and environmental rights have traditionally operated in separate spheres. Human rights activists have focused on violations of recognized national or international human rights in areas not related to the environment. For their part, environmental activists traditionally focused their activities on advocating for protection of the environment through consultation mechanisms prior to activity that was viewed as harmful to the environment, as well as accountability for environmental harms. Human rights arguments were not part of the picture. More recently, however, there has been an overlap by both of these communities. They have begun to use the language of human rights — both civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights — to argue against the impacts of activity that would lead to environmental degradation.

With Halloween just days away, executive coach Debra Forman explores a common block to effectiveness: hiding your true self behind an inauthentic and, too frequently, convenient mask.

Well, the monsoons have now arrived in Vancouver, Victoria, and the rest of la-la land after virtually no rain since “Junary” (the name given to that wet month between May and July that no one with any sense plans a wedding in).