Slaw (@slawdotca)

Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII? – February 2026 Each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about. For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were: 1. R. v. Fox, 2026 SCC 4 [1] The main issue on this appeal is whether a lawyer charged with a criminal offence can invoke the “innocence at stake” exception to solicitor-client privilege recognized in R. v. McClure, 2001 SCC 14, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 445, and R. v. Brown, 2002 SCC . . . [more] The post Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII? – February 2026 appeared first on Slaw.

11.03.2026 15:09 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A New Home for the BC Family Unbundled Legal Services Roster! Almost ten years ago the BC Family Unbundled Legal Services Roster (the “Roster”) and Unbundling Toolkit were launched [Note 1]. We are delighted to announce that, in partnership with Access Pro Bono BC, the Roster is now being administered by the new Legal Referral Service (“LRS”). This transition marks an important milestone in the continued growth and sustainability of unbundled legal services in British Columbia. Unbundled legal services (often called limited scope services) help to improve access to legal advice, coaching and representation for the public. [Note 2] This approach also offers many important benefits for legal professionals, the . . . [more] The post A New Home for the BC Family Unbundled Legal Services Roster! appeared first on Slaw.

11.03.2026 11:02 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

The Law Firm Disappearing Act Disappearing acts pertaining to people, skills and talents have always happened every few years in the global legal services market as the sector continually refreshes itself. But disappearing has never been more prevalent than it has been of late and will become even more common in months and years to come. Act now. As mentioned in my previous column, I am well aware that my opinions and perspectives especially over the last few years and more so lately are becoming more fearless and urgent as factors impacting the global legal services market surge with a magnitude of force that demands . . . [more] The post The Law Firm Disappearing Act appeared first on Slaw.

09.03.2026 11:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Monday’s Mix Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible. This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Official Clio Blog 2. Canadian occupational health & safety law 3. Meurrens on Immigration 4. Family LLB 5. Double Aspect Official Clio Blog AI Disclosure for Lawyers: When to Disclose, What to Say, and How to Stay Compliant A client who learns you used AI on their . . . [more] The post Monday’s Mix appeared first on Slaw.

09.03.2026 11:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: Supreme Advocacy One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted from January 1 – February 28, 2026 inclusive. Appeals Charter: Mobility Rights Taylor v. Newfoundland and Labrador, 2023 NLCA 22; 2026 SCC 5 (40952) Feb. 13, 2026 During the early days of the COVID‑19 pandemic, Newfoundland and Labrador declared a public health emergency. The province’s . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: Supreme Advocacy appeared first on Slaw.

08.03.2026 11:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec. FAMILLE : La juge de première instance a commis une erreur lorsqu’elle a condamné le mari au paiement de l’intégralité d’une somme correspondant à la valeur du «mahr» — la dot islamique — qu’il avait consenti à l’épouse au moment du mariage. Intitulé : Droit de la famille — 26172, . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ appeared first on Slaw.

08.03.2026 11:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Designing Courthouse Libraries That Truly Work Courthouse libraries play a quiet but essential role in supporting the justice system. As legal research practices evolve and user needs change, the physical layout and design of these libraries matter more than ever. Across Ontario, courthouse libraries are embracing both long recognized design principles and practical, user driven improvements to create spaces that are welcoming, efficient, and adaptable. The Theory of Library Design* Library design theory has long emphasized the importance of aligning space with purpose. Approaches such as functional relationship analysis encourage planners to consider how users move through the environment, where different activities naturally occur, and how . . . [more] The post Designing Courthouse Libraries That Truly Work appeared first on Slaw.

06.03.2026 12:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thursday Thinkpiece: The Law of Occupiers’ Liability Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form. The Law of Occupiers’ Liability Authors: Alan Preyra and Emily Unrau General Editors: Barbara Legate and Deborah Berlach Foreword: The Honourable Darla A. Wilson of the Ontario Court of Appeal Publisher:Emond Publishing Publication Date:December 2025 ISBN: 978-1-77462-745-7 Page Count: 500 Regular Price: $139 (print), $125 E-book Excerpt: “Chapter 7, Common Occurrences . . . [more] The post Thursday Thinkpiece: The Law of Occupiers’ Liability appeared first on Slaw.

05.03.2026 11:59 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

“How to Deal With Humans”: Still the Core Skill of Lawyering During the ten years I spent closely involved in teaching articled clerks lawyering skills, I often described the program—only half jokingly—as “How to Deal with Humans.” This past October, I read an article by Jordan Furlong titled “Three core attributes of tomorrow’s lawyer,” and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. One of the attributes Furlong identifies is personal trustworthiness. He uses this category to capture what he calls “relational skills”: empathy, listening, collaboration, judgment, and discretion. In short, he is talking about relationship-building. But why are we still talking about this? Shouldn’t law students arrive in practice with . . . [more] The post “How to Deal With Humans”: Still the Core Skill of Lawyering appeared first on Slaw.

04.03.2026 12:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Law Publishing and Information Technology Promiscuity and Boastfulness, and Their Consequences My perception, supported by a good deal of evidence, is that some people and businesses favour, and indeed boast of those assets and competences which they already have and from which they are trying to profit; they sometimes play down the worth of products, services and content which they do not have and through which they cannot trade for potential profit. Therefore, to take an example, they might trumpet the significance of blogging in legal markets, while referencing, to little or no extent, the infinitely more dynamic sources of added value legal authority, viz. the authoritative . . . [more] The post Law Publishing and Information Technology Promiscuity and Boastfulness, and Their Consequences appeared first on Slaw.

03.03.2026 12:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Monday’s Mix Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible. This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Welcome to the Food Court 2. Administrative Law Matters 3. Canadian Appeals Monitor 4. Family Health Law Blog 5. David Whelan Welcome to the Food Court Canada-China Agrifood Reset: What Is Actually Fresh? I’ve had a chance to think about the Canada–China Summit this past January, which . . . [more] The post Monday’s Mix appeared first on Slaw.

02.03.2026 12:05 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Keeping Hold of the Reins When Using AI What many of us in law, legal education, and other fields still want to know at this point is: what is AI really good for? What does it do reliably well and better than we could do on our own? And when we use it for those purposes, what risks do we take on? In the early days of ChatGPT, those risks were clear. AI hallucinated authorities and generated biased output grounded in its training data. But as models have improved and we’ve learned to guard against these problems, those concerns have become more manageable. A different and more subtle . . . [more] The post Keeping Hold of the Reins When Using AI appeared first on Slaw.

02.03.2026 12:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec. PÉNAL (DROIT) : L’ensemble de la preuve ne peut conduire à une autre conclusion que la culpabilité de l’accusé, lequel a assassiné les locataires qui vivaient au sous-sol de sa maison; il y a donc lieu d’appliquer la disposition réparatrice à l’erreur concernant l’absence de directive restrictive sur les déclarations . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ appeared first on Slaw.

01.03.2026 12:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The Wellness Lawyer: “Window of Tolerance” Have you ever felt so done with everything that if there was one more thing on your plate you could just explode? I remember watching cartoons as a kid where the characters would get red in the face, the head would get bigger and bigger and then “boom” they would explode in a cloud of smoke. This is the best way to depict how many of us feel when we are at the end of our ropes. That strange sensation in the body that is telling you to walk away from your desk, go out in nature, calm down… do . . . [more] The post The Wellness Lawyer: “Window of Tolerance” appeared first on Slaw.

27.02.2026 12:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Guide Canadien de La Référence Juridique en Accès Libre Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer la publication du Guide canadien de la référence juridique en accès libre (le RJAL), disponible sur CanLII. S’inscrivant dans la continuité du projet initial, le Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide (COAL), le RJAL est le fruit d’une collaboration soutenue entre des bibliothécaires désirant offrir un guide de référence juridique fiable, moderne, accessible et à la portée de toutes et de tous. Sa publication en français constitue une étape importante pour mieux servir la communauté juridique dans les deux langues officielles du Canada. Les règles du RJAL sont en majorité identiques au COAL, mais ont été . . . [more] The post Guide Canadien de La Référence Juridique en Accès Libre appeared first on Slaw.

27.02.2026 11:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) Propose Amendments to National Instrument 52-112 Non-GAAP Disclosure: Lessons for Governance and Legal Practitioners These changes are intended to update existing Canadian Non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) disclosure standards to conform to the new international accounting standard, IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements, which is effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2027. Background and Context IFRS 18 Impact: The IFRS 18 standard requires the disclosure of Management-Defined Performance Measures in a note to the financial statements, which would have removed them from the scope of the existing NI 52-112 definition of non-GAAP measures. Purpose: To continue providing investor protection and transparency, both in the financial statements and beyond . . . [more] The post Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) Propose Amendments to National Instrument 52-112 Non-GAAP Disclosure: Lessons for Governance and Legal Practitioners appeared first on Slaw.

26.02.2026 12:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Book Review: Michael Head’s Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law. Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right. By Michael Head. London, U.K.: Routledge, 2024. vii, 198 p. Includes index. ISBN 9780367608323 (hardcover) US$190.00; ISBN 9781003100652 (eBook) US$56.99. Reviewed by Haley O’Halloran Research Librarian Toronto Lawyers Association While reading this book, Toronto, the city where I live, passed a . . . [more] The post Book Review: Michael Head’s Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right appeared first on Slaw.

26.02.2026 12:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Trust Fractures: AI, Law, and the Small Cracks Worth Watching Discourse on AI and the law often centres on the prospect (or lack thereof) of catastrophic injury to existing legal institutions and structures. Will AI tools decimate the legal profession, replacing all the lawyers? Or will lawyers who use AI simply replace lawyers who do not? Will our courts be overrun by hordes of robo-judges? Or is human decision-making essential and here to stay? These debates have proved remarkably resilient. Versions of them have bounced around for years, shifting shape as the technology progresses and our anxieties evolve. I’m all for looking at the big picture and asking big questions, . . . [more] The post Trust Fractures: AI, Law, and the Small Cracks Worth Watching appeared first on Slaw.

25.02.2026 16:16 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Names Will Never Hurt Me… and Other Lies Told to Me in My Youth Sticks and Stones As a society, we tend to categorize folks. Introverts or extroverts. Calm or anxious. Easy to get along with or difficult. I struggle with these categorizations because I feel that they oversimplify matters. It has been my experience that most people shift how they behave based on who they are with, the environment they are in and the situation. As a result, I often question the benefit of these labels. My greatest concern in this respect surrounds the impact of negative labels, in terms of what they project and the assumptions that are made around them. Groundbreaking . . . [more] The post Names Will Never Hurt Me… and Other Lies Told to Me in My Youth appeared first on Slaw.

24.02.2026 12:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec. PÉNAL (DROIT) : Puisque la juge de première instance n’a pas déterminé les mesures raisonnables prises par l’accusé afin de s’assurer du consentement de la victime à une relation sexuelle, le jugement se prête difficilement à un examen en appel sur la question de la croyance sincère mais erronée au . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ appeared first on Slaw.

22.02.2026 12:14 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: Supreme One-Liners As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted. Leaves to Appeal Granted Elections: Delimitation of Electoral Divisions Attorney General of Québec v. Xavier-Antoine Lalande, et al., 2025 QCCA 1558 (42152) Process re delimitation of electoral divisions. Transportation Law: Railways Canadian National Railway Company v. Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Inc., 2025 FCA . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: Supreme One-Liners appeared first on Slaw.

22.02.2026 12:14 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Researching Greenland Beyond the Headlines [ Photo by Visit Greenland on Unsplash ] Part of being a law librarian and professor on Foreign, Comparative and International Legal Research involves assuaging people’s interest in current events around the world. Personally, I call it the curse of current events. Instead of running away from it, I now take it as an opportunity to leverage that, at times, sudden interest in other parts of the world and further educate into the intricacies of this highly complex and ever changing research puzzle. These days, Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine, Iran and Greenland are perfect examples of this sudden interest. However, . . . [more] The post Researching Greenland Beyond the Headlines appeared first on Slaw.

20.02.2026 12:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The Rise of Claude Cowork Platform and the Potential to Shake Up the Legal Industry Claude Cowork has introduced a legal plug-in threatening to upend the traditional legal industry. The plug-in automates contract review, and provides NDA triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings, and templated responses. It claims to be able to reproduce work similar to that routinely provided by lawyers. In the AI race to see which company can dominate first, Claude has made a name for itself and is one of the frontrunners. Brian Boyle writes in the Daily Upside that the introduction of the Claude AI plug-in has caused shares of predominant Software as a Service firms such as Adobe, HubSpot and Salesforce . . . [more] The post The Rise of Claude Cowork Platform and the Potential to Shake Up the Legal Industry appeared first on Slaw.

19.02.2026 15:54 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thursday Thinkpiece: Adam Dodek’s Constitutional Challengers: The Heroes, Villains, and Crusaders Behind Canada’s Biggest Cases Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form. Constitutional Challengers: The Heroes, Villains, and Crusaders Behind Canada’s Biggest Cases Author: Adam Dodek with Sean Cousins, Yasmeen Atassi, Sébastien Cyr, Asha Sahota, Marna Swart, Jamie Bell, Bionca Chu, and Dominique Charland Publisher: Dundurn Press Publication Date: January, 2026 Shipping dimensions: 9″ H x 6″ W x 1″ L ISBN:9781459755222 288 pages, . . . [more] The post Thursday Thinkpiece: Adam Dodek’s Constitutional Challengers: The Heroes, Villains, and Crusaders Behind Canada’s Biggest Cases appeared first on Slaw.

19.02.2026 12:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In Memoriam: Lisa Moore — Committed to Putting the Public First It is with deep sorrow that we mark the unexpected passing of our friend and colleague at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ), Lisa Moore, who passed away in December. Lisa was a generous colleague, an incisive researcher, and a quiet but formidable force in the access to justice community. Lisa devoted her professional and academic life to understanding how people actually experience legal problems, and to insisting that access to justice research remain accountable to those lived realities. Her passing leaves a profound absence in a field she helped shape with care, rigour, and compassion. What distinguished Lisa’s . . . [more] The post In Memoriam: Lisa Moore — Committed to Putting the Public First appeared first on Slaw.

19.02.2026 12:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

Does Access to Justice Include Access to Judges? At the beginning of January, the Globe and Mail ran an article about the Chief Justice of Ontario’s visits to communities across Ontario, part of an outreach undertaking. From Chief Justice Tulloch’s perspective, this type of initiative provides the members of the bench with an opportunity to gain a, “better understanding of the people we are serving.” While this is a crucial consideration for adjudicators, such outreach serves to benefit communities as well. Not only does it humanize the law by putting an actual face on justice, but it serves to humanize the individuals who are engaged in interpreting and . . . [more] The post Does Access to Justice Include Access to Judges? appeared first on Slaw.

18.02.2026 12:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

We Can Support Law Students Better For most of my career, I have worked on the inside of law firms — advising partners, managing change, fixing things that quietly but persistently get in the way of good work. Strategy. Marketing. Associate retention. Recruitment. Training. Culture. All the unglamorous but consequential pieces that impacts whether a firm thrives or stalls. Along the way, I noticed something that never really changed. Every year, bright, capable law students arrive at firms deeply motivated to do well — and surprisingly underprepared for what the job actually requires. Not because they lack intelligence or work ethic, but because no one ever . . . [more] The post We Can Support Law Students Better appeared first on Slaw.

17.02.2026 12:03 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Monday’s Mix Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible. This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. SOQUIJ | Le Blogue 2. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada 3. Civil Resolution Tribunal blog 4. Canadian occupational health & safety law 5. Eloise Gratton SOQUIJ | Le Blogue L’usage du téléphone cellulaire à l’origine d’une maladie professionnelle Le télétravail et les outils numériques . . . [more] The post Monday’s Mix appeared first on Slaw.

16.02.2026 12:17 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec. PÉNAL (DROIT) : Selon l’approche souple et modulée appliquée par le juge, celui-ci avait raison de conclure que le délai postérieur à la déclaration de culpabilité de l’accusé n’était pas déraisonnable; quant à son appréciation du niveau de culpabilité morale de l’accusé, qui n’était pas réduite de façon importante par . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ appeared first on Slaw.

15.02.2026 12:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Summaries Sunday: Supreme One-Liners As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted. Appeals Charter: Mobility Rights Taylor v. Newfoundland and Labrador, 2026 SCC 5 (40952) Clarification of mobility rights during pandemic. Leaves to Appeal Granted Criminal Law: Sexual Assault B. v. R., 2025 ABCA 270 (42030) Issues re alleged non-condom sexual assault. Civil Litigation; Charter: . . . [more] The post Summaries Sunday: Supreme One-Liners appeared first on Slaw.

15.02.2026 12:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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