February

That’s Don Bayne’s best advice for lawyers when facing a trial that’s likely to be tried in the court of public opinion. Bayne knows whereof he speaks – the partner at Bayne, Sellar, Boxall in Ottawa is most recently known for representing Senator Mike Duffy on fraud charges.

René Basque, of New Brunswick, talks about his priorities for his upcoming year as President of the Canadian Bar Association.

What are some of the reasons people might not get legal help? Cost is the obvious reason. But according to Sarah McCoubrey, a strategist on access to justice issues, people with legal needs often point to two other reasons. They’ll say they’re too intimidated or afraid to ask for help. And that dealing with lawyers and legal documents is too confusing.

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) and American Bar Association (ABA) have entered into a reciprocal agreement to promote associate membership

René J. Basque, Q.C., a partner in the Moncton law firm Actus Law Droit, becomes president of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) at the close of the 2016 CBA Legal Conference in Ottawa on August 14.

Social isolation is today’s most pressing public health issue, says author and psychologist Susan Pinker.

Psychologist Susan Pinker was one of the keynote speakers at the CLC in Ottawa today. CBA National caught up with Pinker author of The Sexual Paradox and The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, to ask her about the importance, in the digital age, of human contact between lawyers and their clients and colleagues.

What do your clients think about you? The answer to that question, Sandra Goodwin might say, referring to an old Saturday Night Life bit, will be found in the Journal of Duh. That is, it’s obvious – ask them.

It happens every day – you sit down to work on an important task and constant interruptions keep you from finishing it: people drop by, the phone rings, notifications keep popping up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen telling you you have new email that looks far more urgent than whatever you’re working on.

Negotiation is a basic life skill, something every toddler learns how to do in order to get what they want, testing new tactics each time they hit a wall. You develop a strategy and you re-examine it as situations evolve, Sean McGee of Nelligan O’Brian Paine told a PD session at the 2016 CBA Legal Conference in Ottawa.