Ethical lapses on the part of lawyers are often due to mistake, rather than known wrongdoing. The problem is not intention, but lack of attention. Taking the time to pause and ask yourself the following ethical questions before embarking on a course of action will help maintain your ethical obligations, your quality of representation, and the benefit you provide to the public.

1.Are you competent in the relevant legal areas?
“Don’t dabble” is an oft-repeated mantra. Lawyers may sometimes feel pressure to expand the scope of their representation to encompass tangential or additional matters brought forward by …

From Saskatchewan, to ask whether it’s court house or courthouse.

Either, really. Or, better, court-house.

The OED uses a hyphen, but its examples of usage (mostly from the US) give all three forms.

The single-word, no-hyphen version is often seen (British Columbia has its Courthouse Libraries), but does suggest an unnatural pronunciation (coor-THOWZE).

Perhaps the best way to go is to talk about the Victoria Avenue Court House in Regina, but to say that the parties settled on the court-house steps.

–Neil Guthrie (@guthrieneil)…

When you post content on LinkedIn or even comment on someone else’s post, what part of your profile do your connections see in their feed? Three things. That’s it.

1. A mini thumbnail of your headshot
2. Your name
3. A headline (120 characters or less)

Most lawyers and other professionals use their LinkedIn profile headline for their literal job title. That’s not actually the best way to maximize this line. Job titles all tend to sound the same and they aren’t really that interesting. Imagine seeing a sea of these titles in a search result.

Yawn.

Your headline can convey more than …

Long, long ago, when the interweb was new and I was an articling student, I had to write a conference paper for a partner — one of those pieces that ended up with his name as author and mine in a footnote.

I was doing research in the firm’s library and among my sources were conference papers by other lawyers. At one point, I said to myself, ‘Oh, wait — I’ve read this one before, haven’t I?’ When I checked the pile of binders on the table, I realised I had read the paper before — but it was ostensibly …

Hansard is a very useful tool when trying to determine the intent of an act. Researchers often look at a specific section of an act and what it was intended to achieve. 

However, section numbers can change from when the bill receives First Reading to when it receives Royal Assent, so it is good to confirm what the number was for the section of interest when it was in bill form. This is especially true when reading Hansard for a very long bill. In order to do that, researchers will require a copy of how the bill read for that …

In a recent tweet, John King of CNN cautioned his followers not to ‘misunderestimate the relentless base and focus’ of Trump supporters in their drive towards November.

That word (italicised here for emphasis), attracts red underlining on the screen, signalling an issue, and attracted a raised eyebrow from me.

The mis- prefix is redundant, because you’ve already got under- working to qualify or compromise estimate.

Misunderestimate isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary — but it is in the Wikipedia entry on ‘Bushisms’.

That is, the various ‘unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, and semantic or linguistic …

Small things to watch for and avoid.

Any questions, please contact X
We’ve all seen this, and we all know what it is intended to mean.

Interpreted literally, it means the questions themselves are being directed to contact X.

It should be either If you have any questions, please … or Any questions? Please …

Convicted of eight counts
Properly, on eight counts.

Honour role
Seen in more than one student application letter or CV.

Yikes. It’s honour roll.

Unnecessary question marks
Seen recently in e-mails from partners: Let me know if this makes sense? Please let me …

My sister sent me a fun article about these.

They are sentences that you think are going in one direction but which suddenly seem to go off on a weird tangent that doesn’t quite make sense.

When you read them again, you realise they do make sense but just not in the way you expected.

By way of example: The old man the boat.

Your brain probably tells you at first, ‘Oh, this is about an old man who …’ but then the path diverges and you have to figure out that man is not a noun but an unexpected (and perhaps …

Administrator’s note: thanks to legal copy and content writer Steve Toews for this guest tip!

…

Administrator’s note: thanks to Toronto legal communication expert and litigation consultant Caroline Mandell for this guest tip!

Here are five tips for virtual oral argument, now that I’ve watched some Zoom appeals:

1. Stand, don’t sit. The neuroscience shows we literally think better on our feet, and it’s the way you’re accustomed to arguing. Invest in a desktop lectern to make it feel more authentic.
2. File an oral argument compendium to direct the court to key documents rather than sharing your screen. It’s easier for judges to follow along and mark up their own copies. (Bonus: the compendium forces you to