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Just when you thought the G20 couldn’t get even more ridiculous.
Susan Clairmont of the Hamiton Spectator:
Everyone is allowed to take notes in court.
Period.
But the other day a Toronto justice of the peace decided to make up his own rules. He banned “note-taking” in his Etobicoke courtroom where bail hearings were being held for G20 protesters.
It was the latest — and most ridiculous — in a series of bizarre steps taken by court officials to build a big fat wall around the whole judicial process for accused demonstrators.
So much for an open and transparent court system. So much for accountability.
Parkdale Defends G20 Protesters
Riali Johanesson, a lawyer in Parkdale, tells how she was arrested by police for being on the scene,
This is the first time in my life I’ve been so afraid of the police.
Parkdale is not within the fenced-off area for the G20.
The law of street protest in Canada
The events of the G20 weekend in Toronto raised important legal issues and exposed gaps in our law. Are street protests legal and when can the police break them up? Can the police have special powers when world leaders are in town? How did we go from guaranteed freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly to a third-world style detention centre for protesters and police “kettling” of citizens at Queen and Spadina? What is the law of street protest in Canada?
The starting point for any analysis is the guaranteed freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly in sections 2(b) and (c) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We start here because these freedoms are secure from any government body, including the federal parliament and provincial legislatures.
There is no absolute freedom of assembly in Canada. First, the Charter itself limits it by guaranteeing only “peaceful” assembly. That’s why the government can restrict certain kinds of assembly that it considers not peaceful. Such restrictions do not infringe on the Charter freedom of assembly unless the courts disagree with the government’s interpretation of what’s “peaceful.”
Second, the Charter freedom of peaceful assembly is guaranteed only “to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” (s. 1 of the Charter). It means legislative acts or judge-made common law in Canada can limit even peaceful assembly, but they must have very good reasons. Legislative acts include federal and provincial laws and regulations as well as municipal by-laws.
Only law can limit a Charter right. A police officer cannot limit a Charter right on his or her own initiative without any authority in law. When the police break up a street protest, they can do it either because the protest is not peaceful or because law prohibits the protest for a good reason acceptable in a free and democratic society. Police officers may not break up a protest in any other circumstances. If they do, these officers will be breaking the law. But in Canada, it’s hard to tell when officers break the law for the following reason.
Laws regulating protests in Canada give the police a lot of discretion in deciding, first, what assemblies are peaceful, and second, when peaceful protests are not allowed. Police discretion contradicts the values of accessibility and precision that gave rise to the s. 1 requirement that limits on Charter rights be prescribed by law. The idea is that citizens should have a “reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited” (Peter W. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, Student Ed. 2007 at p. 798)—that’s accessibility of law, and that officials must not engage in discriminatory and arbitrary breaches of rights—that’s precision of law.
But in R. v. Hufsky and R. v. Ladouceur, the Supreme Court held that as long as police discretion comes from law, it meets the s. 1 standard of “prescribed by law,” even if the discretion is unfettered. So completely random stops of cars authorized by an anti-drunk driving law are capable of s. 1 justification, but pulling over a car merely on a hunch as in the recent landmark case of R. v. Harrison cannot be justified by s. 1 because it is not prescribed by law.
There are five types of law that regulate street protests, and all of them give enormous discretion to the police. First, s. 63 of the Criminal Code prohibits “unlawful assembly,” which it defines as “three or more persons” gathered in a way that causes reasonable people in the neighbourhood to be afraid that the assembly will either disturb the peace tumultuously or provoke others to do so. This provision apparently complies with the Charter guarantee of “peaceful assembly” because words “disturbing the peace” and “tumultuous” imply that the assembly is not peaceful.
Second, s. 31 of the Criminal Code gives the police a general power to detain people for “breaching the peace.” The result is that street protests that breach the peace may be dispersed. The breach of peace arrest power seems to restrict the freedom of assembly without infringing on the Charter’s guarantee of peaceful assembly. Again, the police have discretion in deciding what is a breach of the peace.
Third, municipalities can pass by-laws prohibiting street protests that are not peaceful because they interfere with interests merely local in nature. For example, a by-law may prohibit excessively loud protests. It’s unclear if such prohibition fully respects the Charter, where the word “peaceful” may have a more dramatic sense than merely something touching on city noise by-laws.
Fourth, the police can use their ancillary common-law powers to regulate protests (in Ontario, see s. 42(3) of the Police Services Act). At common law, the police have powers that are necessary to discharge their duties. One of the duties of the police is to preserve the peace. If it is necessary to restrict a street protest to preserve the peace, the common law gives this power to the police. Again, apparently such police restriction would not infringe on the freedom of peaceful assembly, and again the police has tremendous discretion.
Finally, municipalities, provincial legislatures, and the federal parliament and respective cabinets can pass laws, regulations, and by-laws restricting the freedom of peaceful assembly, but only for a good reason. For example, it may be reasonable and democratic to prohibit protests in residential areas after 11 pm, in construction zones, on highways, or inside courthouses or secret military installations. If protesters challenge such law, the government will have to justify it under s. 1 of the Charter.
In a 1978 pre-Charter case Dupond v. City of Montreal, the Supreme Court upheld a city ordinance prohibiting street protests. The court cited the following English law dictum: “A claim on the part of persons so minded to assemble in any numbers, and for so long a time as they please to remain assembled, upon a highway, to the detriment of others having equal rights, is in its nature irreconcilable with the right of free passage.” After the Charter, it is not clear if municipalities still have the power to prohibit street protests.
The word “peace” is a common thread in all the laws that regulate street protest. These laws either give the police powers to preserve the “peace” at its discretion or ignore the peaceful nature of the protest for other arguably higher goals.
When the police boxed citizens in at Queen and Spadina for hours, they could invoke any of three sources of authority to break up protests disturbing the peace: s. 63 of the Criminal Code, breach of the peace provisions of the Criminal Code, or common law ancillary powers to preserve the peace. All three would require the police to make a judgement that the protest was not peaceful. Since the statute delegates this judgement to the police or recognizes its common-law authority to make that judgement, the courts would likely defer to the police expertise to decide what is peaceful and what is not.
The police could also rely on a statute that allowed it to disperse even peaceful protests. According to witnesses, some officers cited the Public Works Protection Act (PWPA) when they detained citizens on the street. That law does limit the freedom to peaceful assembly in places designated as public works, and it would probably be justified under s. 1. After all we don’t want protests in a courthouse or maybe within the G20 fence. But justifying the mass detention at Queen and Spadina, which was hundreds of meters from the G20 fence, by the PWPA is futile. And it’s clear the police didn’t need the PWPA authority there as they had plenty of discretion under other laws.
The bottom line is our courts and legislatures have consistently failed to set out rules for police engagement of street protests. The statutes are either drawn in broad terms like “tumultuous” and “peace” or simply avoid regulating protests by deferring to broad police powers at common law. Canada is not a police state—far from it. Our ideal is the rule of law and protection of civil liberties. But just like with ideals, we shouldn’t take our eyes off frightening possibilities. In a police state, armed agents of the state are free to limit freedoms and rights as they please. Their discretion is completely unfettered, almost like the discretion our laws grant to the police in dealing with street protests.
Our police forces are professional, highly trained, and generally honest. But it is not their job to determine the content of the Charter freedom of peaceful assembly. Provincial legislatures and the federal parliament must step in and give clear guidance to the police when they can break up street protests. The police can make mistakes and may have its own institutional interests that are not necessarily the same as the public interest. The people have a right to clear notice of what is lawful, and we all have a fundamental freedom of peaceful assembly. Our legislators must set out with much greater precision what the police powers are in regulating street protests.
Pulat Yunusov is a Toronto litigation lawyer.
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
Paikin on police attack against peaceful protest
Paikin: “There’s a distinction that needs to be made…
This was not a great day for democracy in Toronto. I saw things I’ve never seen before, I saw things that shouldn’t have happened.”
Violent Protest or Agent Provocateurs?
Civil liberties suspended in Toronto during G20?
The G20 summit in Toronto has come and gone, but not before leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. I’m not just referring to all the shattered glass and burned out husks of police cars; I’m talking about Torontonians’ faith in the rule of law.
Our Ontario police forces, particularly the Toronto Police Service, are some of the finest and most professional in the world. They have worked hard to build community relations and win the respect of the public. Just as we rely on the police to keep us secure, the police rely on public cooperation to effectively do their jobs.
When the public trust in police is diminished, and people begin to see the police as an enemy, it puts our safety in jeopardy. That is precisely what is happening. The police are coming under heavy criticism for the perceived overzealous tactics they used this weekend. I have heard of many strong supporters of the police, some of whom were caught up in the mass detentions, beginning to question whether their support was misplaced.
The front page of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director’s website has been changed to add a special notice about G20-related complaints. I suspect the new bureaucratic agency will have to expand just to handle all of them.
Preliminary reports of apparent civil rights violations are coming in from all over the city. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says that these were not isolated incidents.
I saw many with my own eyes. I was in downtown Toronto to take photos of this once-in-a-lifetime event. What I saw terrified me and broke my heart.
The disgraceful actions of a relatively small, hardcore group of criminals running amok in the city have been used to justify the biggest suspension of civil liberties in Toronto’s history.
Peaceful protesters and onlookers at the designated “free speech zone” in Queen’s Park were attacked with batons, pepper spray, and rubber bullets with little or no warning (I was there; I heard none). Nine hundred people were rounded up and arrested, including credentialed journalists, pedestrians walking their dogs, and even a TTC worker in full uniform. Ordinary people at Queen and Spadina were surrounded on all sides by riot police. One by one, seemingly for no reason at all, people were snatched from the trap by force and then disappeared behind a wall of riot police. The fear is vividly captured in this video (watch the whole thing or just skip ahead to 7:30).
Those arrested were taken to the Eastern Ave. Detention Centre, a specially constructed temporary facility. What happened inside that facility is not yet fully known. Openly homosexual and transgendered people allege that they were segregated into separate cells by homophobic police. Women have made shocking accusations of being threatened by their jailors with rape. The unconfirmed allegations made by Amy Miller in this video are so terrifying that they defy belief. At the very least, corroborated reports describe the conditions inside as deplorable:
Cramped and filthy cells, mismanagement and disorganized paperwork, lack of food, water and toilet paper, and denial of legal aid and access to lawyers.
Taylor Flook said she spent almost 24 hours in detention before being released without charge and witnessed strip searches of women by male officers, as well as sexist remarks made by several officers.
Hundreds of people have since been released without charge; the vast majority of those arrested weren’t doing anything illegal in the first place!
And then there was the controversial G20 security law. A regulation, quietly passed by the Ontario cabinet under the Public Works Protection Act, empowered police to stop and search anyone attempting to enter the G20 security perimeter. Police Chief Blair now admits that he deliberately misled the media and public as to the scope of the law. He claimed (and the media reported) that it covered a 5-meter area outside of the fence. In fact there were only a few areas outside of the fence which were covered by the regulation. I was misled too (hey, I can admit a mistake).
Trouble is, apparently the Chief failed to tell his own officers about the limited scope of the law. They were enforcing that law all over Toronto, even though it didn’t apply there. When pedestrians far from the security zone were stopped by police, and demanded to know the source of the police authority, they were told: “Public Works Protection Act, you can look it up.” I myself saw people stopped and searched in this manner.
Closer to the security zone, people who were just cycling by, with no intention of trying to enter, were stopped and told they had to surrender their bags for a search or be arrested. Despite the Chief’s claims that “if they refuse and they have the right to refuse, then they leave and they will leave without being arrested,” these people had no option to leave.
Elsewhere, people were stopped on the street and subjected to searches without reasonable suspicion that they were involved in a criminal offence. They were told they were under investigative detention. In the video below, a woman is stopped at King and University (a fair distance from the security zone) and told she must submit to a search of her bags or face arrest. While the officer was polite and respectful, I’ll let you decide whether he violated ss. 8, 9, and 10(b) of the Charter (hint: see R. v. Mann, 2004 SCC 52 and R. v. Suberu, 2009 SCC 33).
After what I saw this weekend, I believe that the government must call a public inquiry into what happened. I fear we will discover that civil liberties throughout Toronto were effectively suspended — the most troubling encroachment on civil rights in Canada since the FLQ crisis. There are lessons to be learned. The police have admitted that mistakes were made. We must have a full accounting of those mistakes to ensure that they are not repeated.
Secret Laws and Extraordinary Police Powers: G20
Normally, Canadians have the right to be left alone by police. Pedestrians generally don’t have to answer police questions and don’t have to identify themselves. They certainly don’t have to submit to searches by police. Not so this weekend in Toronto!
Following up on Pulat’s post regarding the legality of G20 police cordons in Toronto, if you’re going to be down near the G20 security zone in Toronto, you should be on notice. This weekend, police will have extraordinary powers to stop, search, and arrest anyone who comes within 5 meters of the zone.
The source of this power is the Public Works Protection Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. P.55. The Act allows the government to designate areas as “public works.” Once an area has been designated as a public work, police and appointed “guards” have special powers to secure the area. Police and appointed guards can:
- require anyone approaching the zone to identify themselves (s. 3(a));
- search, without a warrant, anyone who is approaching the zone (s. 3(b));
- search, without a warrant, any cars whose driver or passenger attempts (or is suspected of having attempted) to enter the zone (s. 3(b));
- use as much force as is necessary to prevent a person from entering the zone (s. 3(c));
- arrest anyone who refuses to comply with their directions (s. 5(2)).
But failure to comply with directions doesn’t just get you arrested. It is a provincial offence punishable by a maximum $500 fine and/or 2 months in jail (s. 5(1))!
So where does the “Secret Laws” part of my title fit into all this?
Well, as it turns out, the Ontario cabinet quietly designated a 5-meter radius around the G20 security area as a “public work” without really telling anyone.
The regulation authorizing these powers in relation to the G20 zone was filed on June 14, 2010 and went into force a week later. But to my knowledge, the government made no announcement of the regulation. Worse yet, it has not been published in the Ontario Gazette (it will only be published in July, after it is no longer in force). Since the regulation is not yet part of Ontario’s consolidated law, the only way to access the regulation is to look it up in the “source law” section of the e-Laws website here.
For all practical purposes, this is a “secret law,” because of the failure of the government to publicize it.
This law authorizes extraordinary police powers, and it significantly derogates from our ordinary civil rights. There is a real risk of people being arrested and charged when exercising the same rights to refuse to answer questions and submit to searches that apply everywhere else. In my opinion, the government should have been more forthcoming about the law to minimize that risk.
The legality of G20 police cordons in Toronto
Toronto is a changed city this weekend. Various police forces have cordoned off a big part of downtown searching and checking IDs of those wishing to enter. We in Canada are not used to ID checks and car searches on public streets. Canadians are usually free to walk in public areas, and the police cannot stop people and force them to show ID or even answer questions without a good reason to suspect them of a crime. When a big part of a crowded and bustling city becomes off limits, many people will probably wonder if G20 is worth it. Many lawyers will perhaps ask a different question: does the police have the power to cordon off downtown Toronto. The answer is yes.
The simplest and shortest explanation is in s. 10.1(2) of the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act (FMIOA), which charges the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) with the security of “intergovernmental conferences” in Canada. Section 10.1(2) of the act expressly grants the RCMP the power “to take appropriate measures, including controlling, limiting or prohibiting access to any area to the extent and in a manner that is reasonable in the circumstances.” The Integrated Security Unit that includes the RCMP is responsible for securing G8/G20 events. The RCMP’s role is “the Summit site and surrounding areas,” so presumably it is the RCMP that has cordoned off a part of downtown Toronto. It has a statutory power to do so.
An Act of Parliament grants the RCMP this power to cordon off streets. That ends the real-life analysis. But imagine there was no law like that or imagine the Toronto Police tried to cordon off a few blocks in Toronto. Would the police still have the cordon-off power? This is an interesting theoretical question because many police powers do not come from statute, and it’s important to know when the police exceed their authority. The FMIOA doesn’t apply to Toronto police, and Ontario’s Police Services Act and City of Toronto Act don’t grant the cordon-off power to the Toronto Police Service. (The FMIOA presumably allows the federal government to delegate RCMP’s cordon-off power to other police services (s. 10.1(4)), but let’s pretend it’s not the case.)
In Ontario, police powers come not only from statute (express acts of the provincial legislature or the federal parliament) but also from common law (courts’ judgements). Police existed before any act of parliament incorporated it, and during that period courts had the final word on police powers. When legislatures recognized police powers under statute, sometimes they continued police powers that existed at common law. Under s. 42(3) of the Police Services Act, “[a] police officer has the powers and duties ascribed to a constable at common law.” This provision allows the courts to continue to adjudicate police powers not expressly granted by the legislature.
When Canadian courts resolve a dispute in which a complainant questions the existence of a police power, they apply the Waterfield test, named after an English case that explained police powers at common law (also known as the ancillary police powers). A court applying this test would see first if a police action interfered with personal liberty or property without statutory authority. If yes, the court would see if “(a) such conduct falls within the general scope of any duty imposed by statute or recognised at common law and (b) whether such conduct, albeit within the general scope of such a duty, involved an unjustifiable use of powers associated with the duty.” (R. v. Waterfield [1963] 3 All E.R. 659 (C.C.A.) at 661). Basically, at common law the police can do anything necessary to discharge their lawful duties as long as the use of their powers is justified.
Judicial precedents guide us as to what is justified. For example, in Knowlton v. R., a 1975 Supreme Court decision, the court held that cordoning off the sidewalk in front of a hotel hosting a foreign leader is justified. A photographer who tried to break through the cordon was arrested and charged with obstruction of police. Part of the reason for closing the sidewalk was a previous assault on this foreign leader in another Canadian town. This and the fact that everyone knew about the widely publicized assault helped the court conclude that the cordoning off was justified even if the police didn’t explain their legal authority to the photographer. The court held that the photographer should have known the police had a duty to protect the foreign dignitary in these circumstances. The photographer also had a chance to get his pass but missed it.
I haven’t heard of a court case that looked at something on the scale of G20 events in Toronto, but Knowlton gives us some idea what a court would say. It would emphasize the history of violence at such events and the massive publicity reaching probably every resident of Canada. Closing off the downtown core is not the same as blocking a sidewalk but the number of dignitaries is many times higher and it’s common to believe that the world is less secure today than 35 years ago. The courts would likely defer to police judgement on the size of the cordoned area given the courts’ relative ignorance of operational security issues. The reasoning will be similar to the rationale behind s. 10.1(2) of the FMIOA. The police would tell the courts that cordoning off a chunk of downtown Toronto is necessary to protect foreign leaders and keep order and the way they do it is justified. The court would likely accept that.
Presumably, if cordoning off passes the Waterfield test, it will also be justified under s. 1 of the Charter. (I am not going into detail on this, but see R. v. Clayton, 2007 SCC 32 for a related discussion.) Of course, unless a court finds that we have a Charter right to freely go downtown, s. 1 won’t even come up.
I am not happy with the G20 summit’s impact on Toronto. It will hurt downtown businesses (except hotels), cause traffic chaos, and bring clashes between the police and protesters. Having to show ID and submit to searches to move around your own city is a sacrifice of our liberties and it simply looks bad in a democracy. Walls separating city quarters are notorious in history, and we probably don’t want any resemblance here. But the police likely have full legal authority to cordon off streets for the G20 summit, and any challenge to such cordons should be not legal but political.
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
The Swiss Banking Business Model Faces Realignment
First posted on Commercial Law International on June 29, 2009.
The world economic down turn has had many knock on effects, many of which unexpected. It seems that bad times has the uncanny effect of making the once unthinkable, unsayable and undoable all very much possible.
The Swiss banking model can be best characterized with one word: Secrecy.
This don’t ask, don’t tell attitude is more than just a business model – it is enshrined in Swiss law. The high protection that client confidentiality receives in Switzerland has made it a favorable destination for the money of my high net worth individuals wishing to shield their money. Also it doesn’t hurt that it also has a very favorable tax policy as well.
This Swiss shield unfortunately is not very discriminating – it basically protects all comers. It makes no distinction between those who wish to shield their money for legitimate or illegitimate purposes. Moreover, it doesn’t even a make a distinction between rightfully and ill gotten gains. This hands off approach while very profitable has lead to some very tragic and embarrassing incidents for Switzerland. Specifically, I am mainly speaking of Nazi accounts filled with plunder during their rise and fall but generally I am also referring to Swiss banks being the preferred destination for the money of certain criminal elements and many a dictator.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to say that the Swiss actively seek out ill gotten gains – to my knowledge they do not – nor am I saying that they have done nothing to try and rectify ill gotten gains ending up in their banks, I am not trying to say that at all. Then what am I trying to say?
What I am trying to say is simply this: any system predicated on secrecy will have its limits on how well it can tackle the twin issues of legitimacy and source of funds.
However, times they are a changing.
This change is evidenced by four things. The first is a long and as yet to be resolved battle between UBS and US authorities over the names and identities of some of the banks US clients and with it opposing interpretations of the US-Swiss Tax Treaty. The second is the OECD´s tax haven black list, talk of G20 nations developing a sanctions regime aimed at tax heavens and the drive by OECD countries and in particular the US to conclude double taxation agreements. The third is the revised US-Swiss double taxation treaty. And lastly is the current economic climate.
All of this has forced the Swiss into re-think mode. As reported in the Financial Times: leading members of the Swiss Private Bankers Association have recognized they may have to raise tax compliance with clients and, if necessary encourage them to declare previously hidden assets.
Does this mean an end to secrecy as the cornerstone of the Swiss banking model?
Highly unlikely. However, it does mean a few rays of light into the otherwise dark room of secrecy called the Swiss banking model.
Real Media Don’t Die, We Multiply
If you’ve been alive and on the Internet in the past year you would have read the obituaries – print newspapers are dead. Or dying, so they claim.
Some are even claiming the recession with determine the outcome of print, who are expected to see a major decline in 2009. Even law reviews are seeing the transition to exclusive virtual publication. And print legal researchers may be an endangered species.
One of the best April Fool’s gags this year was The Guardian‘s story on how they had moved to Twitter – exclusively.
But others claim that traditional media is not dying, it’s simply changing. Parker Mason, a PR friend of mine in TO said,
Did the invention of the printing press kill off the spoken word? No. It just meant that hand-lettered books were no longer necessary, and it gave more people access to literature and information.
Did the invention of radio kill off the written word? Again, no.
Did television indeed kill the radio star? No, but it might have forced some radio stars to adapt to become more television-friendly. And it also created a whole knew breed of radio stars.
Did the internet kill television? Again, no. If you’re like me, you might not use an actual television set but you probably still enjoy watching television shows on your computer or portable device.
Print media is likely to be around regardless. What papers will do is probably enhance their online presence, and many Canadian papers are already seeing an explosion of comments and interactivity on their sites. Dany Horovitz of Law is Cool also writes for the National Post’s Executive Blog, an exclusively digital publication.
Legal media is probably not much different, despite our affinity in this industry for paper. With over 4,500 hits a day on this site (and growing), we’re competing directly with legal print media for numbers. But not necessarily readership, because ours is global; or even for content, given our unique format and different focus on students specifically.
Smart newspapers will make this transition seamlessly. Smarter ones will partner with existing online media outlets.
The University of Western Ontario’s law school paper, Nexus, did post here for some time through their former editor-in-chief, Alex Dimson. The paper has gone through some changes and is now named Amicus Curiae, and we’re pleased to announce that the new paper will posting selective articles on Law is Cool as well.
Check out Ahmed Farahat’s excellent interview with Justice Binnie. Kamila Pizon of Amicus Curiae will also be posting shortly on the transition from LL.B. to J.D.
The synergies between print and virtual media are natural but often overlooked. We benefit from well-researched, carefully edited pieces, and they have an opportunity to speak to a larger audience.
Trained journalists also benefit from going online, and bring their writing skills with them.
For example, we’ve just taken on Digal Haio, a 2L at Osgoode. I first met Digal years ago during outreach activities in politics, where she was working for the Somali Press, an important voice for a vibrant and dynamic community with unique challenges of marginalization, discrimination, and racism. We’ve always had a strong mandate on this site for social justice and empowerment, and her contributions will definitely be valued.
At one time I also worked as a reporter in a print-based newspaper as a side job.
But the conversation goes the other way as well. I recently did an interview with Charles Adler on his nationally-syndicated radio show. The topic of conversation? My blog post on Animal Spirits, something everyone is worrying about in the midst of the G20 and economic troubles. I did another interview yesterday with Luigi Bennetton for Lawyers Weekly on web collaboration and wikis.
The Internet is an excellent place journalists to find topics of interest among the public, and find resources and experts for their pieces.
Law firms and lawyers have never underestimated the need for media presence, for client development or even basic advocacy. At some point they’ll have to start including online media, because that’s where most of the content will be. The University of Western Ontario law school recently started posting videos and downloadable audio files for our distinguished speakers, a move that will likely increase their profile generally in the legal community.
The growth of online media does not necessarily mean the demise of print. It just harkens change, one of the inevitabilities in life. Those embracing this change will not only flourish, but will find their media experiences enriched as a result.
Please note most of us are entering our exam period, and regular postings will be on hold.
