This could be a long one, but I’ll restrain myself as much as possible. And I admit, not all of these are strictly writing tips.

Many aspects of the working day are, well, kind of boring. In response, people in business seem to want to jazz up the English language – but the result , more often than not, is a collection of expressions that were often bizarre to start with and hackneyed soon after.

If everyone is using them, you don’t want to. Instead, dazzle your reader (or listener) with language that is clear, precise and original.

In the …

♫ I know that something has changed
Never felt this way
I know it for real
This could be the start
Of something new…♫

Music and lyrics by: Matthew Gerrard, Robbie Nevil, recorded by Vanessa Hudgens.

(Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0)

The American Bar Journal on April 1, 2015 posted an article on “100 Innovations in Law” by Jason Krause.  It is an interesting review (admittedly from an American perspective) of how law has changed over the last 100 years or so. It makes for an intriguing read, but with all due respect to the author, I would …

When looking at legislation it is sometimes helpful to know if there are similar provisions in other provinces. Rather than reading through each and every statute to check for equivalent provisions, it is much faster to use a concordance.

The trick is finding a concordance for a specific act. While concordances don’t exist for all acts, they do exist for a significant number of them. Publishers often include concordances in consolidated legislation. For example, LexisNexis’s Consolidated Canada Business Corporations Act & Commentary concords the Canada Business Corporations Act with all the provincial and territorial business corporations acts.

Concordances also exist …

♫ This is the end, beautiful friend 
This is the end, my only friend, the end..♫

Lyrics and music by: Bruce Franklin, Eric Wagner, Rick J. Wartell, recorded by The Doors.

(© Copyright Peter Ward and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Garry Wise, my co-author in our SlawTips.ca weekly column, had his mother pass away this past weekend.  Extending condolences and sharing his grief is only natural; but it started me thinking about whether there were anything we can take away from the grief and try to find meaning in the loss.

Another friend of …

Bryan Garner, editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and a legal writing expert, recently blogged on the exciting topic of when italics should be used for Latin words and phrases and when they can be in roman (plain) type. It must have been a slow day in the blogosphere.

His ‘fuzzy rule’ is that you can skip the italics when the word has become fully naturalised into English. So, ‘habeas corpus’ and ‘prima facie’, but ‘sensu stricto‘ and ‘in pari materia‘.

In a waspish mood, I left a comment on Garner’s blog, asking whether it wouldn’t be …

Doing legal research increasingly means having multiple windows and applications open. You might be referring to CanLII in one window, the CRA website in another, and that email you’re working on in a third. Some of you might even have two or three screens set up beside each other on your desk!

This new normal became 100% more efficient for me when I learned how to use the below four keyboard shortcuts to quickly marshal all my open windows. These first two shortcuts instantly resize your window to take up half of the screen and then snap it to one …

♫ But the plan won’t accomplish anything
If it’s not implemented…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Built to Spill.

(image used pursuant to Creative Commons CC0 licence)

There are many questions to ask yourself and to think about before you reach your decision as to whether or not you would like to open a law practice. In talking to other lawyers, they will have some very helpful questions that will be very insightful and provide guidance as to whether you are making the right move or not. Owning a law  practice is a huge responsibility, so you want to …

You feel nervous about publishing something, right? You should be, a bit – but don’t let it put you off.

Some things to bear in mind:

• get a partner to vet your idea and your draft, for technical accuracy
• defer to the senior person on points of law (unless you can show you’re right), but not always on stylistic matters (as an articling student, I stood my ground when a partner insisted that theirself was a word)
• check whether your firm acts for any party you’re talking about – you don’t want to say anything a client might not like

In the course of your work as a legal professional, you may receive the occasional call from the media, seeking your comments or insights on a recent legal development or issue.

Handling these enquiries with expertise and grace will always be beneficial to you and your practice.

Here are a few tips on working with the media in this context:

1. Generally speaking, media enquiries will initially come by email, with the journalist specifying the topic to be covered and asking for your availability to participate in a telephone interview.
2. If you wish to participate, don’t delay. Journalists work on very

The Local Government Act, R.S.B.C. 2015, c.1, came into force on January 1, 2016. If you know that the last Revised Statutes of British Columbia were produced in 1996, this citation looks a little confusing. The explanation is that the new Local Government Act is what is known as a limited revision of an act.

British Columbia’s Statute Revision Act allows the government to produce a limited revision of a single act instead of revising all the statutes. Traditionally, British Columbia’s statutes have been revised every 15 years or so, with R.S.B.C. 1996 being the last general revision; it remains …