Would you like to stay informed about Canadian legal news?  It is essential for members of the legal profession to stay current with new developments in the legal field.  However, this can be challenging. The multitude of blogs, websites, and information resources available online can make the task of staying up-to-date seem overwhelming.

Are you familiar with the Canadian Law Blogs List available at LawBlogs.ca?  The Canadian Law Blogs List describes itself as “open directory of Canadian blogging lawyers, law librarians, marketers, IT professionals and paralegals in Canada.”  It was launched in 2005 by Steve Matthews, founder and …

Did your studies in French get you as far as the subjunctive mood and all its weird variations (que je sois, que je fusse, que j’eusse été)?

Things are a little less complicated in English, but still not straightforward. This partly because the English subjunctive, while falling out of use (since the eighteenth century), isn’t dead yet – and was never consistently applied when more alive.

To refresh your memory, the subjunctive is the form of a verb that is used for an action or state that is conceived (but not actual), hypothetical or prospective; or …

Periodically the question arises: how does one determine which English acts are still in force in Canada?

The short answer is that there is no comprehensive list of what English statutes are still in force in Canadian jurisdictions. In J.E. Cote, “The reception of English law”, (1977) 15 Alberta Law Review, 29-92, the author lists a number of statutes and the provinces in which they were still in force in 1964. This list is based in part on Appendix C (pages 1060-1064) of W.H.P. Clement, The law of the Canadian constitution, 3d ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 1916) which listed a …

This is the grammatical term for the distinction between the singular and the plural.

Unsurprisingly, a singular noun takes a singular verb (takes being an example of that), while plural nouns take plural verbs (that was another example, in case you missed it).

Where there are two subjects in the sentence, the verb is generally plural (Diligence and enthusiasm are desirable in an articling student).

It’s easy to lose the plot, however, when the two components of a compound  subject are separated by a lot of intervening material.

A case in point is a clause a lawyer …

The federal Justice Department’s Consolidated Regulations are organized by regulation title. So how do you find all of the regulations passed under a given statute?

Well, there are a couple of ways, the simplest of which is to go to the act itself in the Consolidated Acts, and select the first letter of the title in the A-Z menu. The left-hand column lists all the acts beginning with that letter, along with their chapter number –

and the right-hand column has PDF links to the acts and little yellow “R” boxes. Any guesses what the R stands for?

Good …

More in this series.

Dependant, dependent

The first is a noun, most commonly used to mean ‘a person who depends on another for support or position’ (He is a single man with no dependants). Dependent is the adjectival form of the noun (Each dependent child will receive a payment …) Dependent  also means, more generally, ‘contingent on or owing its existence to something else’ (Your success as an articling student is dependent on many factors, some of which may not be apparent to you).

In the US, dependant is almost never seen; Americans use …

It is straightforward to find out out how a Canadian case has been subsequently treated by Canadian courts; all you need to do is note it up on Quicklaw, WestlawNext Canada, or CanLII. However sometimes you need to find out if a US case has been mentioned in the Canadian case law and this is slightly more challenging to do.

The easiest way to note up a US case in the Canadian case law is by a Boolean search for the names of the parties and any citations for that case. For example, if you were trying to find out …

I generally stay away from drafting issues, but thought I’d mix things up a bit.

Depositary and depository

Depositary in US contracts has always seemed wrong to me. Shouldn’t it be depository?

No, in fact. The two words, while ‘often confounded’ (as the Oxford English Dictionary Online puts it), mean different things.

A depositary is ‘a person [natural or otherwise] with whom anything is lodged in trust; a trustee; one to whom anything (material or immaterial) is committed or confided; …a bailee of personal property, to be kept by him for the bailor without recompense.’

A depository, on …

Over the past few months, CanLII has been rapidly growing its collection of secondary sources, which now includes law reviews, journals, and newsletters. For more information on what’s available, see the Law Society of Saskatchewan’s recent posts:

• Law Reviews on CanLII
• Journals Available on CanLII
• Newsletters are being added to CanLII

Hat tip to the Legal Sourcery Blog for keeping tabs on these developments!…

Professor Frink says this on The Simpsons, but don’t you do it.

In simple terms, a verb is an action word. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a good verb available to express a particular action, so it may make sense to adapt a noun or some other word.

This is often fine, but often not. Herewith, some of the pitfalls.

Noun as verb

In The Sweet Smell of Success, the 1957 film noir classic, Burt Lancaster’s character holds up an unlit cigarette and says ‘Match me, Sidney!’ in a particularly venomous speech directed at Tony Curtis.

An …