Toronto Law Blogger Meetup - December 4, 2012

Hello once again, Toronto law bloggers, tweeters, and legal scribblers.

As previously announced on Twitter, the next Toronto Law Blogger Meetup will be tomorrow, Tuesday December 4, 2012, 6:30 p.m. at P.J. O'Brien's Irish Pub, 39 Colborne Street, Toronto.

We’re thrilled to be joined by for the evening by our old friend and special guest, Kevin O'Keefe, founder of LexBlog,who will be in Toronto next week. Kevin is a reformed lawyer who has become one of the world’s leading authorities on the role of blogs and social media in the legal profession. We last met up with Kevin for a Beer for Bloggers event in November 2010, and expect to have another lively discussion with him on the current and future states of the legal blawgosphere and twitterverse.

It’s a bit of an impromptu meetup to mark Kevin’s visit to Toronto. Sorry for the short notice, but we hope you will be able to join us.

Toronto Law Blogger Meetups happen every month or two, and are open to all in the legal profession and related support industries.  To be added to our event email list, tweet me.

We'll look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. 

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Office website: www.wiselaw.net

Meet the Blawgers

Another successful Law Blogger Meetup was held Wednesday night at P.J. O'Brien's Irish Pub in downtown Toronto. While we missed a few familiar faces who weren't able to make it this time, it was great to see quite a few newcomers joining in with this burgeoning community for the first time. Here are a few iPhone photos from the evening:

Back, From Left: Andrew Feldstein, Omar Ha-Redeye, Bob Tarantino, Chris Jaglowitz, Lorraine Fleck, Connie Crosby, Syed Ali Ahmed, Front, From Left: Antonin Pribetic, Dan Pinnington, Monica Goyal, Michael Carabash, Garry Wise, Joel Welsh, Adam Goodman. Also present: Barry Sookman

Many thanks to our server at P.J. O'Brien's, who so nimbly and enthusiastically jumped upon a chair to take the group shots. Special kudos, as well, to Entertainment and Media Law Signal's Bob Tarantino for setting the wheels in motion for this inaugural 2011 episode of Toronto Blawgstravaganza.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Social Media in 2010 – No Surprises, Just Evolution

The Scoop, JD Supra's legal marketing blog, has today published its annual year-end summation, What Surprised You In 2010? Perspectives from Legal Professionals.

Today's Scoop post contains excerpts from many, varied contributors to this annual legal thought-fest. The complete, extended commentaries can be downloaded here, in PDF and MS-Word formats.

Canada's representatives this year include Steve Matthews, Jordan Furlong, and myself. Thanks to Adrian Lurssen and the good folks at JD Supra for including my thoughts once again in 2010.

My contribution to the mix, 2010 – No Surprises, Just Evolution, is reproduced below.

- GJW

****

2010 – No Surprises, Just Evolution

There were no great surprises in 2010 for lawyers who’ve had their fingers on the pulse of the social media world - just a natural progression.

The once-radical thought that there is a bona fide professional use for social media in the legal profession has been mainstreamed and normalized. Lawyers’ participation online has exploded into an ever-increasing offering of blawgs, tweets, and social media updates.

In fact, as I suggested in an October 2010 post, Social Media and the Legal Profession: Where are We Today?, the primary challenge ahead is no longer about participation; rather, it’s about integrating our multi-platformed online presentations:

Once you have a website and blog, are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc., how do you tie it all together - with the least amount of extra hands-on effort - into a cohesive, seamless and consistent presence that establishes a brand or identity that is both authentic and digestible for readers?

In a natural, logical evolution, the modern world continues to pull lawyers and our courts into this tech-centric 21st century.

Within the last year or so, courts in Canada, the UK, Australia and the USA have permitted journalists to live blog, text-message and tweet from the courtrooms. Canada’s Supreme Court has recognized that bloggers are afforded “responsible journalism” free-speech protections; similarly, bloggers have been held accountable for defamatory publications that have crossed the line.

In some cases, courts have authorized service of legal documents via Facebook. Facebook, itself, has responded to document-retention and electronic discovery requirements by introducing a Download Your Information feature, enabling retrieval and local storage of each user’s Facebook content. Privacy advocates won a series of public battles over the protection of private information on social media sites. Courts have ordered “virtual child visitation” via Skype. And, in Ohio, judges received a green light to “friend” lawyers on social media sites. In South Carolina, Florida and other jurisdictions, it is not so clear.

Looking ahead, this evolution will no doubt continue in 2011.

In the legal profession, greater attention will be focused on the ethical do’s and don’ts of lawyers’ social media participation. We will consider whether blawging should count toward lawyers’ mandated CLE requirements. And our courts and governments will struggle with (and attempt to draw defined lines in the sand) in this brave new world of instant communications, democratized access to publication tools, and blurred distinctions between the public and the private.

Finally. the emerging WikiLeaks debate – is it journalism or espionage? - is likely to be the spark at the center of a crucial, dramatic discussion ahead that will do much to define where we, as a society are heading, online and offline.

It will continue to be fascinating to watch the developments unravel in real time.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Notes on SiteMeter Stats vs Blogger Stats (and Blog Aggregators)

Stats:

This note will probably be of no interest unless you're a blogger, particularly one who uses Google's Blogspot platform and/or the SiteMeter tracking system. Or a diehard statistics junky.

While I hadn't noticed this previously, Blogger has installed a new statistics feature in its dashboard. While it does not track unique visitors, it does provide statistics for page views, post views, traffic sources (referrers and search terms) and various other items.

The statistic counts appear to commence as at July 2010.

I was quite surprised to note the Blogger stats' page view numbers are nearly double those recorded by SiteMeter, the service I've been using for a few years.

A plausible reason for this discrepancy was found at the Wordpress forum, via a comment in the thread, Dashboard Stats vs Site Meter stats:

Sitemeter will not record a page view if the visitor has been to any other page containing sitemeter code unless the page is refreshed. Sometimes even then it will not record the page view.

You can test this by visiting a page which has sitemeter on it, then visiting a page of a completely different site which has sitemeter and open stats.

Go to the second site's sitemeter stats and look for your visit in the reports. IT will not be there. Then go back and hit Ctrl Refresh (or equivalent) and review the stats again. You page will should then be recorded.

That's a good thing for SiteMeter users to know. If the explanation above is correct, visits are probably being drastically under-counted. If anyone knows more about this, please let us know.

On a related note, it's a bit of a regret that we didn't track stats at all for the first two or so years of this blog, so I really don't know how many people have actually visited us, cumulatively. I guess it may be more than I thought.

Whatever the number is, and we'll never know, I really do want to thank you for reading.

......

Aggregators

There's been an interesting debate on Twitter this weekend regarding law blog aggregators, and the appropriateness of third parties utilizing blogs' content via RSS feeds without prior consent of the originating blog.

I have aggregated in the past, on this blog and on Wise Law Reader, and have previously had a relaxed attitude toward this practice when others scoop from our content - probably because it happens so relentlessly, it would be futile to try to stop it.

It didn't take much of a discussion on Twitter, however, to cause me to conclude that blog aggregators should operate on an opt-in, rather than opt-out basis. In other words, your blog isn't included in an aggregator unless you ask that it be included in the aggregator.

While the Twitter discussion focussed specifically on a law blog aggregator site briefly hosted Friday by a local legal marketer who is not a lawyer, that's probably a distinction without a difference, moving forward.

As I feel its important to walk the walk on this, I won't be aggregating from other blogs on this site in the future without express permission in hand, and Wise Law Reader (which statistics everywhere tell me nobody reads) has been permanently retired.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Blogging, Responsible Journalism and Damages for Libel

The wild, wild west of the Canadian blogging wilderness is clearly being tamed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

In separate rulings issued in the past week, two well-known Canadian political bloggers have been found liable for defamation arising from posts on their blogs.

The November 18, 2010 ruling of Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith in Giacamo Vigna v. Ezra Isaac Levant finds the Defendant, blogger and lawyer Ezra Levant, liable for damages in the sum of $25,000.00 for defamatory blog posts, and provides a thorough discussion of the law of libel, as it affects bloggers and journalists:

[140] The fact that Levant is a lawyer is an aggravating factor as he either knew or should have known that continued ridiculing of another lawyer using the internet, and accusing another lawyer of fibbing to the Tribunal, of acting with contempt and acting unethically before a Tribunal, without making a diligent inquiry to verify that his facts were accurate and true, and when he used the manner in which Vigna requested an adjournment in order to further his objective of denormalizing Human Rights Commissions was defamatory conduct. He also continued to republish the same inaccurate statements after he was given notice they were considered defamatory and he was asked to stop.

The Judgment is worthy of a careful read. Omar Ha-Redeye has a thorough analysis of the case at Slaw.

Similarly Mr. Justice Dennis Power's November 23, 2010 default endorsement in Robert Day v. Patrick Ross, while brief (as the action was undefended), leaves little room for doubt as to the courts' willingness to assess significant damages for defamation, where malice is proven:

... The Defendant's conduct detailed in the Statement of Claim and in this motion was clearly malicious. His conduct in this litigation was, as well, malicious.

In the Day case, initiated by the writer of the Canadian Cynic blog, damages of $75,000.00 were assessed against blogger Patrick Ross, together with costs of $10,000.00.

In both cases, the offending bloggers were also ordered to remove the impugned blog posts.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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A Few Twitter Analytics Tools

I've happened on a few useful online services recently that will probably provide a good weekend fix to all those social media analytics and statwistics junkies out there.

Cumulatively, these tools will help you to understand the social aspects of what actually happens to your various tweets and postings once they are published online:

• Who is reposting and talking about your tweets and articles?
• What are your posts' reach and influence?
• What topics are hot and not?
• Which individuals, sites and influencers are driving readers toward your postings?
• How do you rank, overall?

In no particular order, here they are:

• Topsy Social Media Search - Provides real-time search for the social web. It can be used to track links and mentions of your posts, site and authors on Twitter, blogs, and throughout the web.
• Social Mention - Aggregates content into a single stream of information, allowing tracking and measurement of mentions across Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, and Google
• Tweetreach - Tracks Twitter posts, and provides searchable updates on their reach and exposure, along with information on the leading re-tweeters who help spread your information to a wider audience. A good, quick window on how many people actually see what you tweet (whether they read it or not is an open question).
• Twitter Analyzer - a nice, graphic interface provides quick insights on tweets, daily reach, retweets, trends, subject matter and follower growth rates, along with an array of other data.
• Klout - Perhaps the most sophisticated, and therefore useful, of all these analytical tools, Klout ranks, compiles and analyses data on your postings, shares, tweets, and "likes" across various platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your Klout influence scores are generated from fairly deep analysis of this data.

If you are aware of any other, similar sites that you think should be included in this list, please do let us know.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Wise Law Blog Receives Three Nominations in the Canadian Weblog Awards

I was very pleased to learn today that Wise Law Blog has received three nominations in the preliminary, public round of the 2010 Canadian Weblogs Awards.

Nominations were received in these categories:

• Business and Careeer
• Media and Journalism
• Political

The Canadian Weblogs Awards is is a new, juried competition that has held a first round of public nominations. Its shortlists of final nominees will be announced on December 1st, and the finalists will be announced on January 1, 2011.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Obama Meets with Leading U.S. Progressive Bloggers

The President seeks to rally the troops with mid-terms just ahead. A transcript of the meeting is is here, via Duncan Black (Atrios), who was one of the five bloggers invited:

THE PRESIDENT: I thank you guys for coming in. Obviously a huge part of my base reads you guys, cares about what you do. The staff does as well. I think that what the blogosphere has done is to create a conversation that encourages activism across our citizenry, and I think that’s absolutely crucial.

We benefit from the constructive feedback and criticism that we get, and it helps hold us accountable. But you guys obviously have also done a great job holding the mainstream press accountable, and that’s really important to us.

So I’m glad that I’ve got time to sit down with you guys. This is completely open, so you guys can take it wherever you want. And what I’ll do is I’ll just go down the line, everybody gets a question, and then we can just mix it up. How does that sound?

Also attending were Joe Sudbay of AMERICABlog, Barbara Morrill (aka BarbinMD) from DailyKos, John Amato from Crooks & Liars and Oliver Willis from OliverWillis.com.

I guess that pretty much sums up most of the who's who of U.S. progressive bloggers (although the absences of Digby and Glenn Greenwald were hard not to notice). It also underlines the huge influence these leading, new media writers have in the American political sphere.

If nothing else, their collective success has provided a model that Canada's own Progressive Blogger movement could likely emulate and adapt with comparable success.

The splintering of Canada's progressive bloggers among the Liberal, NDP and Green parties notwithstanding, there remains much to be learned from our well-oiled and organized US counterparts.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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NHL Backs Down on Barring Bloggers

The National Hockey League has backed off a previously-leaked draft policy that would have barred sports bloggers from its club dressing rooms and arena press boxes. The league has opted, instead, to continue its current practice of letting each team decide for itself on the issue.

Money quote from today's New York Times coverage:

At the heart of the discussion is a complex — and often strident — debate about the role of bloggers, conflicting views among the teams about the ways to cater to their fans and the challenge of fashioning new guidelines for sports media that, as Brown put it, is “morphing at warp speed.”

Canadian teams are described as among the "hawks" on the issue, remaining largely disinclined to open access to the hockey blogs.

Oh, and by the way, the Leafs beat Detroit 4-2 in Saturday night pre-season play, avenging an embarrassing 7-3 loss on Friday.

Finally, my last hockey note - a bit of wishful thinking in La Belle Province: Quebec City NHL rally draws thousands

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Nevada Lawsuit: Blogs, Copyright and News Excerpts

A Nevada lawsuit, considering whether copyright is infringed by the widespread practice of blogs to excerpt short snippets of news items, has enormous implications for the blogosphere, as a whole. Via Raw Story:

The practice of excerpting news and linking to its source is what drives the blogosphere, engages millions in political discussion and aides the dissemination of information the world over.

However, if [the Planitiff] is successful, a vibrant political forum for American progressives could be shut down, all thanks to a five sentence excerpt from the Las Vegas Review-Journal that caught the paper's attention.

The forum Democratic Underground (DU) which frequently reposts news excerpts for users to discuss, was sued in August for quoting and linking to the Nevada paper. Backed by Internet freedom advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), DU filed a counter-suit on Monday, accusing the paper and Righthaven of engaging in copyright fraud.

See: Progressive political forum fights lawsuit over five sentence news excerpt

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Facebook, My Space and Pre-Sentencing Reports

From Law.com, a very thorough survey of the emerging importance of defendants' social media postings in sentencing dispositions by U.S. criminal courts:

Embarrassing Facebook photos and regrettable MySpace statements are starting to become commonplace in pre-sentencing reports and disposition hearings. At the same time, defendants and their advocates are acknowledging the power of social media as a tool to generate mitigating evidence.

...How deeply must defense attorneys delve into social media in representing their clients at sentencing? The U.S. Supreme Court in Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 741 (1948), cautioned that defendants ought to be guarded from punishments based on false or misleading information. It would seem that this injunction compels counsel to challenge sentencing information drawn from the social centers of cyberspace.

Due process must temper the unchecked use of aggravating social media evidence at sentencing, as well as arraignment and other proceedings. At the same time, these online forums are opening unprecedented opportunities for developing mitigating evidence that can provide courts with a fair picture of the person appearing for sentence.

Read the article by Ken Strutin, director of legal information services at the New York State Defenders Association: The Role of Social Media in Sentencing Advocacy.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Rose Coloured Hockey Visors

Pension Plan Puppets' tongue-in-cheek commentary on last evening's 4-1 exhibition victory by the Toronto Maple Leafs over the hated Ottawa Senators:

...Break Up the Leafs

The only fair thing to do after a performance like last night's is to force the Leafs to tear apart this juggernaut. No one likes watching a sport dominated by one single team.

PPP is one of the better of the many excellent hockey blogs now online. Smart, funny and insightful.

Now that hockey season is back, give it a read. You may never feel the need to pick up a newspaper sports section again.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Warman and Fournier: Divisional Court Protects Online Anonymity, Overturns Motion Court Ruling

Ontario's Divisional Court has overturned a March 25, 2009 motions court ruling in Warman v. Fournier that threatened to weaken the ability of Canadian writers and activists to maintain a cloak of online anonymity.

At the 2009 motion, the Plaintiff in a defamation suit obtained an Order requiring website operators to disclose the email addresses and distinct ip addresses of certain anonymous writers who had posted allegedly defamatory comments at their website.

The Plaintiff sought this information to assist him to identify the incognito posters.

The owners of the site are named Defendants and responded to the motion. The anonymous posters are named as "John Doe" defendants in the action.

The appeal ruling, while not providing an absolute shield from identity disclosure to anonymous online writers, established a four-point threshold that must be met before such disclosure may ordered in defamation proceedings.

Defamation Law Blog summarizes the ruling, as follows:

After surveying previous decisions, Justice Wilton-Siegel set out four considerations, aimed at preventing abuse of the Rules and respecting the privacy of internet users, that should have been considered by the motions judge in deciding whether to order disclosure under the Rules:

• whether the unknown alleged wrongdoer could have a reasonable expectation of anonymity in the particular circumstances;
• whether the Respondent has established a prima facie case against the unknown alleged wrongdoer and is acting in good faith;
• whether the Respondent has taken reasonable steps to identify the anonymous party and has been unable to do so; and
• whether the public interests favouring disclosure outweigh the legitimate interests of freedom of expression and right to privacy of the persons sought to be identified if the disclosure is ordered.

The disclosure motion itself was not decided. It will be subsequently be re-heard before a different judge, who will be bound to apply these considerations.

As I noted following last year's motion ruling:

While I understand the freedominion authors to be an extremely tempting target to many..., little solace should be taken from this ruling.

An order for disclosure may have been justifiable if the statements made by the anonymous posters were, on their face, apparently actionable.

The Court's disinclination, however, to engage in any factual analysis of the alleged defamation or the necessary balancing of competing interests has created a dangerous precedent that should not be allowed to stand.

Based on Warman ruling, the mere commencement of a court proceeding may now give rise to an automatic entitlement to this form of disclosure.

This is an unacceptably broad entitlement to disclosure that unnecessarily threatens the reasonable expectation of online anonymity that many have come to take for granted.

An appropriate balancing of these important interests has now been mandated by the appeal decision.

More Reading:

• The Divisional Court's May 3, 2010 ruling: Warman v. Wilkins-Fournier, 2009 CanLII 14054 (ON S.C.).
• The original motion court's ruling is here.
• Our March 26, 2009 post: Warman and Fournier - Online Anonymity Threatened in Ontario

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Adding the Facebook "Like" Button to Your Blogspot Blog

As you'll see, we've added the Facebook "Like" button to Wise Law Blog today. Detailed instructions on how to install the "Like" feature on your blog are here.

As Social Media SEO noted on April 29, 2010, "after just one week, the Facebook ’like’ button has already been added to over 50,000 sites and the number is growing."

The "Like" feature does appear to slow down the overall loading of the site. We'll monitor it for a while to see whether our readers are using it, and then decide if it's a keeper.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Update - September 29, 2010:

After several months of experimentation, we've recently removed the "Like" button, for now at least. The primary reason is that the "Like"widget was unacceptably slowing down our blog's load times - often by five seconds or more. We're not alone in this complaint. Beyond that, it wasn't highly utilized, and given the cost of slow load times, just wasn't a justifiably beneficial feature, on balance.

- GJW

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Video: Eugene Volokh on Why You Should Read Law Blogs

Volokh Consipracy's Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law at UCLA, speaks on the role of law blogs as a source of immediate, expert information and opinion in the modern media marketplace:

(h/t - Point of Law)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Is Social Media Killing Blogs?

Bottom line - it's faster and easier to tweet than to write.

Via Chris Crumm at Web Pro News, does Facebook provide a solution?

Is social media killing blogs?

No, but it's hard to say that use of sites like Facebook and Twitter (and now Google Buzz) don't lend to less blog posts being created. If nothing else, it’s simply a time issue. It is easy to push out a quick status update if you have something to say. It's easier than blogging. For longer-form content, blogs are generally the better option, which is one reason they are still alive and well. But if Facebook had a blog tab, the social network could cut into the Blogosphere even more, given its huge userbase, while establishing itself as a go-to place for blogging (another area in which Facebook could compete with Google, I might add. Don't forget that Google owns Blogger).

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Supreme Court of Canada To Bloggers: Act Responsibly

The Supreme Court of Canada explicitly addressed bloggers in two companion decisions yesterday that may well have revolutionized Canada's libel law landscape by adopting a new "responsible journalism" defence into Canada's common law.

Chief Justice McLachlin articulated the new rules of the road - for bloggers and traditional journalists, alike - in Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61 (CanLII), 2009 SCC 6:

[62 ...The press and others engaged in public communication on matters of public interest, like bloggers, must act carefully, having regard to the injury to reputation that a false statement can cause. A defence based on responsible conduct reflects the social concern that the media should be held accountable through the law of defamation. As Kirby P. stated in Ballina Shire Council v. Ringland (1994), 33 N.S.W.L.R. 680 (C.A.), at p. 700: “The law of defamation is one of the comparatively few checks upon [the media’s] great power”. The requirement that the publisher of defamatory material act responsibly provides accountability and comports with the reasonable expectations of those whose conduct brings them within the sphere of public interest. People in public life are entitled to expect that the media and other reporters will act responsibly in protecting them from false accusations and innuendo. They are not, however, entitled to demand perfection and the inevitable silencing of critical comment that a standard of perfection would impose. (emphasis added)

This appears to be the first time the Court has directly addressed Canada's bloggers, although a CanLII search did disclose one previous reference to blogs by the court. See its June 2008 ruling in WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson, 2008 SCC 40, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 420:

[73] This is all the more true in an age when the public is exposed to an astounding quantity and variety of commentaries on issues of public interest, ranging from political debate in the House of Commons, to newspaper editorials, to comedians’ satire, to a high school student’s blog. It would quite simply be wrong to assume that the public always takes statements of opinion at face value. Rather, members of the public must be presumed to evaluate comments in accordance with their own knowledge and opinions about the speaker and the subject of the comments. (emphasis added)

Thus, it appears that from the vantage point of the Supreme Court, Canada's archetypal blogger has now, finally and gratefully, moved beyond high school.

Happy graduation.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Update:

Also see James Morton and Warren Kinsella on these SCC rulings.

- GJW

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LawPRO Magazine's Social Media Issue is Online

LawPRO Magazine devotes much of its issue this month to an in-depth examination of social media's impact on the legal profession, so do take a look. See: Social media: Why, what and how to do it right.

As an added bonus, you will find a nice photo and article about yours very truly inside.

Many thanks to LawPRO's corporate writer/editor Norm MacInnes for the kind mention of Wise Law Blog and his thorough coverage of the increasingly important role played by law blogs and social media, generally, in the modern legal practice.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Law Blogs, Free Speech and Professional Ethics

A New York Times article today canvasses recent professional discipline decisions flowing from over-the-top online comments by U.S. law bloggers that were held to be improperly critical of the Courts:

“When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court,” said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at the Washington University law school.

And with thousands of blogs and so many lawyers online, legal ethics experts say that collisions between the freewheeling ways of the Internet and the tight boundaries of legal discourse are inevitable — whether they result in damaged careers or simply raise eyebrows.

Bottom line - don't refer to a judge as an "Evil, Unfair Witch," as did Florida lawyer Sean Conway, who was fined and reprimanded in April for an online outburst utilizing that phrase.

Or to state it more simply, if a lawyer ought not to make a specific comment in a public speech or debate, he or she ought not to say it online, either.

There is more on this topic, including a look at the applicable provisions of Ontario's Rules of Professional Conduct, in the latter part of my article Untangling Web 2.0 - A Survival Guide for (Modern) Legal Professionals:

The blogger often analyzes and comments upon decisions of Ontario’s courts and Tribunals. A temperate tone in such commentary is appropriate and mandated by this Rule.

While a law blogger may disagree with a particular Court’s ruling, I would suggest he or she has a professional obligation to present a well-reasoned and dignified argument in support of the view taken that expressly avoids any overt or oblique disparagement of the Courts or otherwise undermines the administration of justice.

In raising these points, I am cognizant of a particular Western Canadian writer, whose repeated blog references to certain provincial and federal tribunals as “kangaroo courts” have previously brought these rules to mind.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Ten Years of Blogger

Google celebrated the tenth birthday of Blogger, the miraculous platform that hosts and operates this blog and millions of others, today.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

EMPLOYMENT LAW • CIVIL LITIGATION • WILLS AND ESTATES • FAMILY LAW & DIVORCE

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG • SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG