Are you using CanLII Connects for your legal research?  CanLII Connects is a phenomenal website that features high-quality legal commentary and summaries of Canadian court decisions.  It’s a continually growing source of authoritative legal commentary that is free, accessible, and open to anyone.  Currently, the site boasts summaries of thousands of Canadian decisions dating back to the 1800s.

CanLII Connects is more than just a website.  It’s a community resource.  It brings together members of the legal community and provides a space to share their analysis and opinions of court decisions.  The commentary found on CanLII Connects is created by …

This is an excerpt from an actual letter received from a writer whose identity shall remain shrouded with a justly deserved veil of anonymity:

“We acknowledge your recent correspondence and attachment of the 29th instant with thanks, same being forwarded herewith to our client for reference and review, with the writer confirming our telephone conversation of the 19th, and your undertaking not to take steps to the detriment of our client without ample prior notice to the contrary being first given to the writer, [client] presently being in the process of retaining litigation counsel to deal herewith, with service being …

Tracing the legislative history of an act can be challenging, and even more so if the act you are looking at is the Income Tax Act. Here are some things to keep in mind when tracing the legislative history of the Income Tax Act:

• The Income Tax Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. 1 (5th Supp.) maintains the section numbering from the previous version, rather than being renumbered.
• The Income Tax Act, R.S.C. 1970, c. I-5, although published in the revision, never came into force due to the major changes proposed by the bill that later became S.C.

The fourth in a series.

Next week: please don’t tell me you write letters like this

–Neil Guthrie (@guthrieneil)…

Me and others, in fact: these are largely submissions by loyal readers.

Alright
No, you are thinking of almost. It’s all right – two words, always.

Anyways
A word that used to be used to mean ‘in any way, in any respect, at all’. Witness the Book of Common Prayer (1560): ‘ all those who are anyways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate’ (btw, English prose doesn’t get much better than the BCP).

More recently, anyways has come to mean ‘in any case, at all events, anyhow’ – but in usage that is variously described as ‘informal, …

Nouns can be used in ways that tire the reader. Here are some things to watch for.

Noun chains
Richard Wydick, author of the excellent Plain English for Lawyers (5th ed, 2005), observes that long chains of nouns used as adjectives don’t make for vigorous prose.

As Wydick puts it, ‘noun chains create noun chain reader strangulation problems’. (See GWWT 42 for the contrasting German approach, which is fine with noun-accumulation.)

Writers of headlines in a certain kind of newspaper love noun chains: ZIKA VIRUS HEALTH CRISIS WARNING – NAZI MYSTERY GOLD TRAIN DISCOVERY – DEATH CRASH POLICE OFFICER …

Conflict of laws, also known as private international law, is a topic concerning the rules governing what happens when two or more legal systems clash in a private dispute. Pitel & Rafferty’s text on Conflict of Laws identifies three key questions: (1) whether a court has jurisdiction, (2) what law the court will apply, and (3) whether a judgment from another jurisdiction will be enforced. Unlike public international law, conflict of laws is not the same everywhere, but is particular to each jurisdiction.

As such, some people have asked about developing a Saskatchewan-specific resource for conflict of laws. While most …

Oh, Microsoft, Apple and your ilk! You think you’re being helpful when you release new tools and updates, but you generally wreak more havoc than you bring clarity and certainty.

Herewith some views on some various writing ‘solutions’ (to use the lingo of Silicon Valley).

Auto-correct
I am a terrible typist, so in some ways a feature that automatically corrects obvious typos is a blessing.

But also a curse. The auto-correct feature that you get with the standard Microsoft products was not devised by lawyers, nor is it set up to work in a Canadian setting. It can also defy …

Today’s SLAW tip is short and sweet. If you’d like to see an overview of the current status of federal bills, the Parliament of Canada website has a handy table: http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/LAAG.aspx.

— Susannah Tredwell…

The proof is in the pudding
This kind of makes sense, perhaps if you grew up in a culture where it is common to put a coin or other prize in a festive dessert (like the English at Christmas or the French on the jour des Rois).

But that isn’t the origin of the phrase. In its full, correct form, it’s the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

In other words, you don’t know what the thing is going to taste like until you actually sample it. Also applied metaphorically to any situation or thing that …