The recent appeal decision AA v Law Society of Ontario upheld the Law Society Tribunal’s 2023 decision to licence to applicant “AA” after finding him to be of “good character”—even though AA had admitted to have sexually abused three young children in 2009 (and to hiding this information from the Law Society in an earlier...
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Last semester, with increasing agitation in the media about AI’s potential impact on the legal profession, I decided to wade in and show my students a little AI in my law school classroom. The course is Advanced Legal Research. The Experiment I gathered up a list of interesting readings on the topic of AI and...
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Customer service is in decline. In my opinion, the problem is worse with large organizations. I skimmed the surface in my last post “The Robots are Already in Control (Part One)“. Companies that are primarily internet-based are the worst. One of my major pet peeves is a corporate website that has no phone numbers. For...
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As a general principle, citations in scholarly works have two purposes: to prove that the point is supported by evidence, and to allow the reader to find the evidence that the author is citing to. The pain of citations comes from the requirement that these citations be made as brief as possible by painstakingly utilizing...
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In my last blog post “The Robots (AI) Are Already in Control (Part One)” I reminded users about the headaches involved with system migrations. Our working lives are already controlled by technology. This was to set the stage for the next part of the conversation. Before I go down that rabbit hole, let me say...
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The robots are already in control. Having witnessed several systems migrations, I’ve been saying this for at least a decade. Robots Gone Mad Remember how the Phoenix pay system wreaked havoc on public servant pay back in 2016? Did you know that system has cost more than $2.4 billion? The problems persisted well into 2022....
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The Mobile Rural Law Van and Indoor Winter Venues This brief article is another report on the mobile rural law van and the fixed-location winter locations, referred to together as the “law van’, as the project goes through the process from pilot project to implementation as an on-going part of the delivery model. The story...
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Two more data points in the legal news recently (Canadian Lawyer, to be precise) to support the idea that we’re going about this “articling” thing all wrong. Former Law Society of Ontario governor Peter Wardle criticized the articling system for failing to ensure sufficient, consistent, high-quality experiential training, as well as the law society for...
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“Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M. Get the money. Dollar, dollar bill, y’all” – Wu-Tang Clan While it gets skewed on tv, mediation involves the mediator having no interest in any particular outcome of a dispute. That scene in Friends where Ross “mediates” a quarrel between Monica and Chandler to keep them on track to...
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