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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Ontario Employment Law: Notice Periods for Non-Managerial Employees

Ontario employers are required to provide reasonable notice when terminating employment without cause. The duration of the notice period required is based on a number of factors, such as length of employment, seniority, the employee's age, likelihood of re-employment and character of employment.

In this article, we will consider the notice entitlements of non-managerial employees in non-unionized workplaces, based on the factors relevant to the assessment of reasonable notice, as articulated in the oft-cited case of Bardal v. Globe & Mail Ltd. (1960), 24 D.L.R. (2d) 140 (Ont. H.C.).

In Wallace v. United Grain Growers Ltd. 1997 3 S.C.R. 701, the Supreme Court of Canada awarded 24 months salary in lieu of notice to a company’s top salesman, noting that such an award could be said to fall at the “high end of the scale.” In coming to this decision the Court applied the well-known Bardal factors:

Applying these factors in the instant case, I concur with the trial judge’s finding that in light of the appellant's advanced age, his 14-year tenure as the company's top salesman and his limited prospects for re-employment, a lengthy period of notice is warranted. I note, however, that Bardal, supra, does not state, nor has it been interpreted to imply, that the factors it enumerated were exhaustive: see e.g.Gillespie v. Bulkley Valley Forest Industries Ltd., [1975] 1 W.W.R. 607 (B.C.C.A.); Corbin v. Standard Life Assurance Co. (1995), 15 C.C.E.L. (2d) 71 (N.B.C.A.); Bishop v. Carleton Co-operative Ltd. (1996), 21 C.C.E.L. (2d) 1 (N.B.C.A.). Canadian courts have added several additional factors to the Bardal list. The application of these factors to the assessment of a dismissed employee’s notice period will depend upon the particular circumstances of the case.

In addition, the court considered inducement - a factor not addressed in Bardal.

In Wallace, the employee had been induced by the employer to leave previous secure employment:

In my opinion, such inducements are properly included among the considerations which tend to lengthen the amount of notice required. I concur with the comments of Christie et al., supra, and recognize that there is a need to safeguard the employee’s reliance and expectation interests in inducement situations. I note, however, that not all inducements will carry equal weight when determining the appropriate period of notice. The significance of the inducement in question will vary with the circumstances of the particular case and its effect, if any, on the notice period is a matter best left to the discretion of the trial judge.

In the instant case, the trial judge found that UGG went to great lengths to relieve Wallace's fears about jeopardizing his existing secure employment and to entice him into joining their company.

Of course, the Wallace case is best known for its articulation of principles relating to bad faith termination; these principles were ultimately revisited and revised by the Supreme Court in 2008's seminal ruling in Honda v. Keays [2008] 2 S.C.R. 362.

In Cronk v. Canadian General Insurance Co., 1995 CanLii 814 (ON C.A.), the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the trial judge’s decision to award a clerk sternographer (who was 55 years of age and had 28 years of service) 20 months of notice on the basis that the clerical character of the employment of the plaintiff did not entitle her to as lengthy a period of notice:

In my opinion, the character of the employment of the respondent does not entitle her to a lengthy period of notice. As pointed out by Saunders J. in Bohemier v. Storwal International Inc., supra, at p. 269:

It seems to me that the character of the employment of the plaintiff with Storwal does not entitle him to a lengthy period of notice on the basis of decided cases and the reasons I have stated. If the issue had been addressed at the time he was first employed, it would not have been reasonable for his employer to have agreed to a notice period sufficient to enable him to find work in difficult economic times. In saying this, I hope that it is not thought that I am unsympathetic to the plight of the plaintiff. His claim, however, is based on contract and it is not reasonable to expect that his employer would or could have agreed to assure that his notice of termination would be sufficient to guarantee that he would obtain alternative employment within the notice period.

In the end, the majority of the Court opted to give Ms. Cronk twelve months' pay in lieu of notice.

In Minnott v. O’Shanter 1999 Can Lii 3686 (ON C.A.), 42 O.R. (3d) 321, a case decided after Cronk, the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected “the rule of thumb” approach to calculating notice periods, where an employee is essentially given 1 month of notice for each year worked, emphasizing the need to use a contextual approach that considers the Bardal factors and other such factors.

In this case, an employee who had worked in the employer’s maintenance department for 11 years received 13 months of notice. In so deciding, the Court stated the following with respect to the Cronk case:

I do not agree, however, that this court’s decision in Cronk establishes an upper limit of 12 months notice for a manual worker such as Minott. And I do not agree that an award of damages equivalent to 13 months notice is unreasonable. Although perhaps at the very high end, 13 months notice for Minott is within an acceptable range.

Minott and Cronk exemplify the range of Ontario courts' approaches to the notice entitlements of non-managerial employees.

In Bramble v. Media Health and Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (1999) 214 N.B.R. (2d) 111, a decision that has garnered considerable attention from courts across Canada including the Supreme Court of Canada, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal departed from prevailing judicial thought, especially in Ontario, in disregarding the Bardal factor dealing with Character of Employment as an established factor in the assessment of the employee’s notice period:

It is now widely accepted that employment is an essential component of a person's self-worth. See Reference Re Public Service Employee Relations Act (Alta.), [1987] 1 S.C.R. 313, at p. 368, Machtinger v. HOJ Industries Ltd., supra, and Wallace v. United Grain Growers Ltd., supra, at para. 93. By treating junior employees unfavourably solely on the basis of the status of their employment, the traditional approach undermines, without any justification, their self-worth. As a result, courts have been justifiably uncomfortable with a continued adherence to the traditional view. This discomfort may go a long way in explaining why courts, despite the lip service paid to character of employment as a factor, have tended, of late, to award notice periods to junior employees that approximate those historically reserved for senior employees.

In taking this position, the Court was moved by Statistics Canada research, especially unemployment figures, indicating that lower level employees have a more difficult time finding work than high level employees.

Ultimately, the calculation of reasonable notice upon termination of employment is dependant on the specific circumstances of each case. If your employment is terminated, legal advice should be obtained as to your specific entitlements.

- Robert Tanha, Toronto

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Ontario Employment Law: “Just Cause” for Dismissal

When can employment be lawfully terminated "for cause?"

In order for the courts to find that an employer has dismissed an employee for “just cause," the employee must be found to have breached a fundamental term of the contract of employment.

In other words, the employee must fail to perform a fundamental obligation of his or her job: Mckinley v. B.C. Telephone, 2001 SCC 38, (2001) 200 DLR (4^th)

What constitutes “just cause” in any particular circumstance?

In the classic English case of Pearce v. Foster (1886) 17 Q.B.D. 536, a case whose discussion of “just cause” is regularly cited by Canadian courts with approval, the court stated:

What circumstances will put a servant into the position of not being able to perform, in a due manner, his duties, or of not being able to perform his duty in a faithful manner, it is impossible to enumerate. Innumerable circumstances have actually occurred which fall within that proposition, and innumerable other circumstances which never have yet occurred, will occur, which also will fall within the proposition.

In the much more recent Canadian case, Mckinley, the following description of “just cause” is given by the Supreme Court of Canada:

The conduct under consideration must be seen in context. The issue is whether the employee’s misconduct was such that gave rise to a breakdown in the employment relationship.

If a court finds that there was just cause for the dismissal, the employee loses entitlement to notice, pay in lieu of notice, and may fail to qualify for unemployment insurance.

An important point to remember is that “just cause” can only be relied upon by an employer to justify termination when cause arises.

If an innocent employer does not warn the employee or dismiss for cause at that time of discovery of the misconduct, or otherwise fails to respond when fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the misconduct, it may be found to have condoned, or essentially forgiven, the misconduct.

Thus, absent timely response by the employer, the employee’s alleged or actual misconduct can not alone be relied upon by the employer as a reason to dismiss the employee at some remote, future time.

We see this rule at work in the following passage from Kellet v. Mazda, 2008 CanLii 74291 (ON S.C.), a case involving termination of an employee by an employer for, among other things, multiple acts of sexual harassment:

The sexual harassment evidence herein is properly taken into account in deciding whether there was just cause for dismissal. The defendant did not condone or waive these serious acts of employee misconduct. It disciplined the plaintiff and warned him by letter about the seriousness of the conduct in issue. That letter also contained a warning about other unprofessional conduct. Pursuant to Nossal v. the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Toronto (1985) 51 O.R. (2d) 279 (C.A.), further misconduct allows past misconduct, even of a different nature, to be considered when deciding whether there is just cause. In other words, all acts of misconduct, unless condoned or otherwise forgiven, properly may be accumulated for the purpose of deciding whether there was just cause, in the circumstances.

With respect to the definition of “just cause," courts have stated that the misconduct for which an employee is dismissed must be of a serious nature; mere dissatisfaction by the employer is not enough.

Of course, assessing the seriousness of the misconduct will be context-specific; in other words, it will depend largely on the nature of employment. Only in rare instances will a single mistake justify the dismissal of an employee, for example where that mistake threatens life or the continuance of a business. In most circumstances, a pattern of conduct and a series of warnings will be required before just cause justifying a termination will be found by a court.

In Pearce v. Foster, the court identified specific circumstances that can justify a finding of “just cause” by the employer:

1. serious misconduct;
2. habitual neglect of duty;
3. incompetence, off duty conduct that is incompatible and prejudicial to the employer’s business;

Other circumstances that can justify dismissal of an employee include insubordination, post-dismissal conduct, and sexual harassment.

Legal tests, which are highly sensitive to context, have been articulated by our courts to address these various circumstances.

In future posts, we will consider each of the noted circumstances.

We will also look at the key role written warnings by an employer may play in determining whether grounds exist for termination of employment for just cause. Finally, we will look at alternate forms of discipline, such as temporary suspension of employment, which may be an appropriate remedy to misconduct.

- Robert Tanha, Toronto

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Google Street View and Privacy

Barred from the Czech Republic and under review in Germany, will Google Street View be next in Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart's crosshairs?

Also see Web Pro News: Google Street View Stopped Again By Czechs.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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South African Tweeter Charged for Speed Trap Alerts

Via CNN:

A controversial Twitter user has been challenging South African authorities by alerting thousands of followers to speed traps set by traffic police.

Now the Johannesburg police are pushing back, saying they have charged the @PigSpotter Twitter user with defamation, impairing the dignity of another person and "defeating the ends of justice," according to Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Wayne Minaar. He declined to name the person who has been charged or provide documentation of the charges.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Canada's Privacy Commissioner: I ♥ Facebook

According to Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, Facebook's privacy protections have come a long way, indeed.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada published a news release today, Privacy Commissioner completes Facebook review, setting out its findings, after a review of the social media site's controversial privacy policies and practises:

OTTAWA, September 22, 2010 – The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has finished reviewing the changes that Facebook implemented as a result of her investigation of the social networking site and has concluded that the issues raised in the complaint have been resolved to her satisfaction.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart today issued the following statement:

The changes Facebook has put in place in response to concerns we raised as part of our investigation last year are reasonable and meet the expectations set out under Canadian privacy law.

The investigation has resulted in many significant changes. Facebook has put in place measures to limit the sharing of personal information with third-party application developers and is now providing users with clear information about its privacy practices.

Read more....

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Advice For The Third-Year Law Student Without An Articling Position

So you've gone through two years of law school already.

You've written exams. You've written papers. You've (hopefully) gotten a little bit of practical legal experience under your belt. You've gone through the on-campus interview process: three or four extensive interviews every day, some of them (like Crown office interviews) quite rigorous.

And when it came time for firms to call you back and offer a job, nothing happened. No call, no job, no nothing.

Okay: not good. Nobody likes being the person who doesn't have a job; you're going into third year having a lot of additional stress and extra work to do, while your classmates who all have jobs already get to sit back and do the third-year-coast. (It is generally about this time that you realize that so many law students are, in fact, insufferably smug. Not you, of course. You don't have a job yet.)

So, how do you get a job?

1.) Ask your professors - or anybody else you know - if they know anybody who's looking. You will get this advice so often it will become incredibly trite to you, but it's not a bad idea, so let's get it out of the way: networking is just part of being a lawyer. Not just finding a job, but having a circle of contacts who can pass along referrals, who can offer advice or consultation when you're out of your legal depth, knowing people who know people who can help your case (sometimes in esoteric ways).

Do not get your hopes up about this tack. The reason everybody will suggest it to you is because everybody knows to do it - especially with regard to your professors. By the time you go ask them "er, do you know anybody who might be hiring?" you will be, at a minimum, the twenty-first person to ask them, and probably at least the twentieth they'll have to tell "no" because after the first person their friend who was considering hiring told them "please don't send me any more of your students." Your professors still won't get angry with you for asking - you're a student without a job and if you're polite about it then it's the responsible thing for you to ask. But the odds that they can help you are very low.

Your odds of professional contacts being able to help you are a bit better, if only because they aren't being constantly beseiged by other job-seeking students - but only a very small bit of better. The simple truth about getting an articling position through networking is that articling positions are a very specific sort of job and, unlike other sorts of jobs, don't generally flourish with more practice popping up. Small firms are reluctant to hire articling students because of the cost.

A clever applicant can sometimes work around this by arranging a dual article via your law society, working five months with one practice and then five months with another - but as a general rule you'll need to have good contacts at at least one of the practices and preferably both. Many careers offices at law schools will confidently tell you about how a dual article is the answer to a prospective graduate's job dilemma, but the truth is that a dual article means you have to sufficiently impress two interviewers rather than one, and just because they're hiring you for half the time doesn't mean you only need them to trust you half as much. In practice a dual article is often harder to achieve than your basic single article: only bother with it if one practice really likes you but is really worried about the cost of hiring you.

(I haven't mentioned family connections. If a close relative of yours is a lawyer in a practice where they have some influence over hiring and you haven't thought of asking them for help yet, maybe this law thing is not for you. Consider becoming a shepherd.)

So after you've talked to everybody and nothing's happened, what do you do next?

2.) Apply to job notices and postings. I really hate that this is my second option, but they're there and you're going to use them, so let's discuss them. You're primarily going to rely on two sources for these: your law society's job postings and what your school's careers office provides. The former is usually a fairly steady stream of notices; the latter will vary widely, depending on how proactive and talented your careers office is. (They range from "extremely dedicated" to "well-meaning but inept," and size and/or reputation of the law school generally has nothing to do with how good its careers office happens to be.)

Of course, those won't be the only areas you'll find articling postings. Some of the other legal job sites occasionally have articling postings other than large firms' annual OCI announcements, and I memorably once found a solo criminal defense practitioner advertising for an articling student on Craigslist. But generally your law society and careers office will have almost all of the advertisements for jobs.

Do not apply for every job, no matter how desperate you might be. You're simply not going to be the candidate for a lot of positions: if you're interested in business law and securities and have no litigation background at all beyond taking Evidence because everybody takes it, you're not even going to get an interview with that criminal practice, and the same goes for you criminal law specialists and business firms. Applying for this sort of job wastes your time and more importantly theirs; there's no sense in irritating somebody you don't even know, especially since it can only hurt your networking down the line.

The average job notice generates about ten interviews at most. (As a general rule: nobody wants to interview more than ten people for any job ever. OCIs are a special case.) But those ten interviews come out of an immense stack of applications. When I interviewed with one small estate litigator earlier this year who had posted a job notice, he told me that he had received over 150 applications, and that about a quarter of those were from out of province. Practices outside of large cities will get less applications, obviously, but even one practice in the Kawarthas (three or four hours' drive from Toronto) where I interviewed got over a hundred.

Personally, I am not a big fan of the "just apply to things" school of finding a job. A generation of kids have come out of high school convinced by guidance counsellors that the best way to get a job is to check want ads (or the online version thereof). If you get a bit of experience in the real job market, you quickly come to learn that most positions never get mentioned in want ads: they get filled before there's ever a need for one. Articling positions are no different. So what do I endorse?

3.) Cold calls. I know you hate making cold calls. So do I. Everybody hates making cold calls; they make you feel awkward, uncomfortable, intrusive, even rude. However, one thing is undeniable: cold calls work. This is not because they are brilliant or especially effective for what they are; they work because you can do a lot of them in a short period of time. If you know another student or two who's also looking for a job, you can set up a cold-call team, each of you calling certain segments of the list and then each of you sending your application packages to all the "yes" answers both of you get; this can make it less soul-destroying, as well as quicker and more effective.

When I began cold-calling, I set up a system. I went to the law society's directory of lawyer's contact numbers and began copying and pasting. The LSUC's directory doesn't have a "browse" option, but it lets you search by postal code; thus I put together a big spreadsheet of postal codes and began sorting out redundant numbers from lawyers working at the same firm or practice, as well as identifying out-of-date information (of which, unfortunately, there was quite a bit). I also made sure to do a bit of research on each practice with Google and Quicklaw to figure out what each firm actually did so if asked questions about the firm I could appear engaged and interested.

This took about a week to set up, but once I finished, I had a call list for pretty much every firm, office, chambers and solo practitioner in Toronto, the GTA and outlying communities in southern Ontario. I started with those areas closest to me geographically and started systematically working outwards.

I put together a pretty basic script for the calls: greeting, inquiry as to whom handled hiring, then a simple straightforward "are you planning to hire an articling student within the next X months?" (X was usually six; sometimes I went to eight.) About nine answers out of ten were "no, sorry," in which case I thanked them and moved on. The remaining ten percent were either "no" followed by a lawyer being very friendly and asking how it was going, if I had tried asking my profs for help or going to the LSUC, et cetera; or they were "you can send us your resume and cover letter." Sometimes they were actively hiring and just hadn't put up a notice yet; sometimes they weren't openly hiring but were open to the idea of the right candidate. One or two lawyers told me apologetically that they weren't hiring but then directed me to another practitioner they knew who was thinking about it.

At a rough estimate I'd say I made about fifty calls per day. Fifty calls per day meant five applications going out per day; of those applications, I'd say about one in twenty led to an interview. This sounds terrible, but in context it's pretty good: that's one interview generated by every two days of cold-calling. (The last one, which I got about a week before Garry hired me, was from an application I had sent over two months beforehand; their previous articling student had quit and they needed an immediate replacement. They called me for a second interview after I'd accepted a position with Wise Law, which gave me the welcome opportunity to politely reject an employer rather than vice versa.)

Cold calls can be dispiriting and mentally fatiguing; it's hard to hear "no" so many times in one day. But if you grind away at them, they will eventually get you a job you want; you can say this about no other method of looking for work.

- Christopher Bird, Toronto

A brief note:

As a quick add-on to Chris' extensive comments, students should note that law firms' requirements can and do change as a year progresses. Often, particularly in smaller firms, positions may come available in June or July that weren't even contemplated in the months preceeding.

Thus, it never hurts to check back in with firms that are of particular interest to you - you never know....

- Garry J. Wise

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140Law - Legal Headlines for September 22, 2010

Here are today's leading legal headlines from Wise Law on Twitter.

• Lawyers Sued Over Blog Posts Criticizing Referral Hotline for PI Cases http://is.gd/flsUg
• Beyond Passwords: Two Factor Authentication Comes to the Cloud http://is.gd/flt6v
• Ont. schools investigated for testing irregularities http://is.gd/flvSO
• Sex Discrimination in Large Law Firms http://is.gd/fml44
• Baby sitter, 11, charged with murder http://is.gd/fmko8
• Canadian Privacy Commissioner to announce Facebook conclusions http://is.gd/fmtf2
• Lawyers in Conrad Black case prepare for court - Telegraph-Journal http://is.gd/fmtg9
• News Analysis: Despite Setback, Gay Rights Move Forward http://is.gd/fmlh2
• Personal Injury Practice Bonds With Technology http://is.gd/fmtiF
• Supreme Court Shows Interest in Music Download Case http://is.gd/fmtjf

- Rachel Spence, Toronto

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Quoteworthy: On Joint Custody

National Post's Barbara Kay, arguing for family law reform to establish "equal parenting as the default custody presumption (in the absence of abuse) after separation:"

Decades ago women told men they had to take more responsibility for active parenting. They listened. Fathers have earned the moral right to equality of involvement in their children's lives in post-separation agreements as a matter of social justice. It is now up to our legislatures and judiciary to assume responsibility for establishing an equal-parenting presumption in law,

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Toronto's Next Mayor?

Oy... Rob Ford on bike lanes:

(h/t: Omar)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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“Totally, Totally Illegal” under the Federal Privacy Act

Canadian Press reports on an emerging scandal centered on Stephen Harper's Conservative government:

Confidential medical and financial information belonging to an outspoken critic of Veterans Affairs, including part of a psychiatrist's report, found its way into the briefing notes of a cabinet minister.

Highly personal information about Sean Bruyea was contained in a 13-page briefing note prepared by bureaucrats in 2006 for then-minister Greg Thompson, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.

...Mr. Bruyea has filed a formal complaint with the federal privacy commissioner, whose investigation continues. He has also filed a court challenge, claiming a breach under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

...Retired colonel Michel Drapeau, a lawyer and expert in privacy law, expressed shock on viewing the documents. Mr. Drapeau said it was the worst breach of privacy he'd seen in decades of practising law, calling it “totally, totally illegal” under the federal Privacy Act, which allows for the collection of information for specific purposes.

“The way I read the briefing note, it clearly comes across that this is a way to impugn his reputation and to come across as someone who is less than stable, less than able to speak confidently and accurately about veteran's issues,” Mr. Drapeau said in an interview Tuesday.

(h/t - Rick Mercer on Twitter)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Update:

More on this from CTV: Psych report of veterans critic improperly accessed. Galloping Beaver also weighs in: What?!!!

- GJW

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Musings on Mandatory Mediation in Family Law Disputes

Ontario’s Chief Justice Warren Winkler is calling for compulsory mediation in family law disputes. If Justice Winker gets his way, court will be the last checkpoint and only after family law disputants have exhausted alternative forms of dispute resolution.

While I cannot help but emphatically agree that the litigation process should not be a starting place for parents, soon to be former spouses and anyone else who falls into the “family” law bucket, I do believe that it has it’s place in the process and not always at the end of the road.

Chief Justice Warren Winkler’s hope to map quest mediation at the beginning of the divorce journey is groundbreaking if only to ensure that mediation and alternative forms of dispute resolution are made known and I hope – available, to all family law disputants. This begs questions such as: who is paying for these services and are those providing the services educated, experienced and equipped to deal with the matters presented?

If, in order to be successful, mediation requires the “buy-in” of the participants, is it an oxymoron to mandate mediation? If a disputant is a “window-shopper” and/or not even a prospective buyer, can a skilled mediator turn the disputant into a customer? Can a non-communicative relationship be turned into one that allows for a healthy conversation? Can mistrust result in open and honest disclosure? And what about domestic violence, safety and power imbalances that impact one’s ability to make sound decisions?

While I am all in favor of a presumption of mediation, I am not confident that mandatory mediation is the answer. I believe it is critical that there be a screening process, and perhaps a multi-level approach to care that strongly emphasizes and encourages mediation at a very early stage in the process.

While I am filled with questions about how this “fresh approach” will work and serve the needs and interests of Canadian families, I remain optimistic that Chief Justice Warren Winkler is working on the answers.

- Deborah Mecklinger, LL.B., M.S.W, A.T.C

Mediator and Coach

www.walkthetalkcoaching.com

Deborah Mecklinger is a lawyer, mediator and therapist with a successful private practice in Toronto. She is well known for her work in the areas of divorce, mediation, conflict resolution, and individual, couple and family therapy. Contact her by email at deb@walkthetalkcoaching.com

_________________

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140Law - Legal Headlines for September 21, 2010

Hopefully, those Torontonians who commute via TTC from Eglinton to Bloor made it home all right last night! 680 News tweeted that the subways were closed due to a report of smoke at track level. Thank goodness for above ground TTC services!

Moving right along, here are today's leading legal headlines from Wise Law on Twitter.

• Animal Protection Attorneys Are Pushing the Law to Treat Animals More Like Humans http://is.gd/fjHHL
• Child support for post-secondary degrees - Lawyers Weekly http://is.gd/fjHtQ
• Should Mobile Phone Carriers Dictate What Type of 'Speech' is Acceptable in Text Messages? http://is.gd/fjHgj
• Gym memberships among top consumer complaints http://is.gd/fkrkI
• GMAC Suspends Foreclosures in 23 States After Questions About Legal Paperwork http://is.gd/fkrFj
• Kenney wants tougher rules for refugees http://is.gd/fkw83
• Four More Weeks Until Resumption of Omar Khadr Trial - Americas Quarterly (blog) http://is.gd/fkwdn
• Gay couple awarded $13.4K for rental refusal http://is.gd/fkwAN
• Leafs' forward Grabovski sued for allegedly knocking Habs fans unconscious at Olympics #Leafs http://bit.ly/bmKEEw
• Judge at centre of sex scandal wants lawsuit tossed http://is.gd/fkwf1
• Judge of the Day: ‘I find myself… not guilty!’ http://is.gd/fkrMh
• Scalia: First Amendment Protects ‘Idiot’ Pastor Who Threatened to Burn the Koran http://is.gd/fjInq
• Is Justice Breyer Emerging as New Leader of Liberal Bloc? http://is.gd/fjI26

- Rachel Spence, Toronto

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Videotaping On-Duty Police Officers in America

Radley Balko, senior editor at Reason Magazine summarizes the law on videotaping on-duty police officers in the various American states:

This summer the issue of recording on-duty police officers has received a great deal of media attention. Camera-wielding citizens were arrested in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts under interpretations of state wiretapping laws, while others were arrested in New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, and elsewhere based on vaguer charges related to obstructing or interfering with a police officer.

So far Massachusetts is the only state to explicitly uphold a conviction for recording on-duty cops, and Illinois and Massachusetts are the only states where it is clearly illegal. The Illinois law has yet to be considered by the state's Supreme Court, while the Massachusetts law has yet to be upheld by a federal appeals court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently issued an opinion concluding that arrests for recording cops are based on a misreading of the state's wiretapping statute, but that opinion isn't binding on local prosecutors.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Advice For The First-Year Law Student

So you’re a freshly minted law school student.

You’ve been accepted. You’ve done the orientation.

You’re now in your first few weeks of classes, learning the building blocks of tort, criminal and contract law that will serve you in good stead for the rest of your career.

This seems like an ideal time to tell you some of the things you need to know about law school, because at this point, you’re pretty much in it to the end.

1.) Distinguish yourself. Your law school probably offers you a number of opportunities to broaden your education beyond simply taking classes. Many law schools operate legal clinics serving those in need; others offer programs which will give you a comprehensive grounding in a certain practice or subsection of law. My alma mater, Osgoode, offers a veritable heap of clinical and intensive programs, and other law schools are rapidly offering many as well. If these are not to your liking, consider volunteering with your school’s legal journal or the school paper.

I know this sounds like something your high school guidance counsellor might say, and that’s not an unfair observation. But there’s a reason for this beyond simply spiffing up your resume: most of your classes in law school will focus largely on the theory of law.

The practical side of being a lawyer is one that most law schools only barely touch upon, and you can get a head start on that experience through clinical and volunteer work.

Now that I’m articling, my clinical experience is all the more valuable to me; learning how to really properly assemble a brief, deal with a client over the phone, or docket your time isn’t hard, but it takes a while for you to get used to it. Better to hit the ground running, rather than be overwhelmed on your first day.

And besides, having something to spice up the daily grind of classes is fun.

2.) Your marks are important. Your profs and the careers office and pretty much everybody in a position of authority over you will tell you over and over again that marks don’t determine who gets a job. This isn’t entirely true. Marks don’t determine who gets a job all by themselves, but most employers looking at articling applications will have a benchmark. At a big firm, it’ll be a high threshold. At a smaller firm, it can often be a lower one, but that’s no guarantee at all.

More importantly to you, marks usually become quite important if you want the easiest route through law school to an eventual career: the second-year summer student position at a medium-to-large firm which results in an articling hireback. Most first-year law students come fresh out of university and don’t have anything interesting on their resumes beyond, maybe, some volunteer work or an odd extracurricular activity. What distinguishes you from other students, all too often, are your marks.

3.) Don’t assume it’s the end of the world if you get a C. Everybody gets a C at some point.. The brainiest student I know – someone who rewrote her papers for fun, someone who had an A average and who’s now clerking for a very important judge – got a C in administrative law. It’s practically impossible to avoid a C during your time at law school. Interviewers won’t care about one C. Like a scar, it’s a mark of character. It makes you relatable.

Besides, nobody really trusts a person who’s good at everything.

So good luck to you, and try to enjoy the ride.

- Christopher Bird, Toronto

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Canada's Military 'Parade"

More 'wisdom' from the U.S. right:

"Well, those [countries] that do [allow gays to serve openly], they're the ones that participate in parades, they don't fight wars to keep the nation and the world free,"

- Tony Perkins, Family Research Council,at the Value Voters Summit

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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