Pulse

  • January 21, 2026

    Alberta Court of Appeal considers jump principle in determining appropriate sentence

    Before dawn on a winter morning in Calgary, a brief encounter in a deserted school parking lot set in motion a chain of events that would carry a 20-year-old man from street-level allegations to years of appellate scrutiny and a penitentiary sentence measured in years.

  • January 21, 2026

    Watson Goepel names Dalene Visser and Shashika Stanislaus as partners

    Watson Goepel LLP has welcomed Dalene Visser and Shashika Stanislaus to its partnership, according to the Vancouver firm.

  • January 21, 2026

    Cox & Palmer names 3 new partners in St. John’s

    Cox & Palmer has promoted Neala J. Kielley, Kyle Mercer and Brett M.K. Ludlow to partner in its St. John’s, N.L., office, according to the firm.

  • January 21, 2026

    Billable hours, client trauma and vicarious stress in legal practice

    Lawyers who live in a billable-hour world know that time is money, but for those working with traumatic subject matter, time equals exposure. The more hours spent inside a client’s worst days, the more likely it is that the work follows you home at night.

  • January 21, 2026

    Clocks, time and the humiliations of criminal justice

    When you are arrested and placed in a police cell, the police take your watch along with other personal possessions such as your wallet and phone — even your wedding ring. You soon realize there are no clocks in or visible from the cells, and no windows, so you have no idea what time it is.

  • January 20, 2026

    Devry Smith Frank adds associate David Cooper

    Devry Smith Frank LLP (DSF) has welcomed David Cooper as an associate in its collections and mortgage recovery and commercial litigation groups.

  • January 20, 2026

    Dickinson Wright names 2 new Toronto partners

    Dickinson Wright has named Ryan Cooper and David Seifer as partners in its Toronto office, as part of a broader class of 16 new members and partners primarily based in the United States, according to the firm.

  • January 20, 2026

    The new copyright, AI and pictures: Article 70 and the Italian path to the EU AI Act

    The rapid ascent of generative AI has turned the act of “looking” into a legal battlefield. For an AI model to generate a picture, it must first “digest” millions of existing ones. In response to this technical reality, the Italian parliament’s fall 2025 reform introduced Article 70-septies into the Italian Copyright Law (ICL). This provision represents the “Italian path” toward harmonizing national intellectual property law with the landmark European Union AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689).

  • January 20, 2026

    Das Kapital and the making of Canadian employment law

    Karl Marx’s Das Kapital remains one of the most influential critiques of industrial capitalism. Although Canada has never adopted a Marxist economic model, the themes articulated in Das Kapital have indirectly shaped the trajectory of Canadian employment law.

  • January 19, 2026

    What estate litigators can expect in 2026

    2025 marked significant updates in estate litigation, introducing key reforms for practitioners. Changes to Estate Forms under Rules 74, 74.1 and 75 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, which took effect mid-August to simplify probate applications, will remain active into 2026. A notable Ontario Superior Court ruling in Mavalwala Estate v. Fast, 2025 ONSC 4100 confirmed that only physically executed wills are valid, and that electronic drafts are not valid. There have also been discussions regarding the changes to the Rules, which started in 2025 and will be implemented in 2026.