What is Rep*ar*tee?

repartee

Take part in the relaunch of OBA’s charity!

OBA Foundation is the new name for ALERT (the Advancement of Legal Education and Research Trust).   Established in 1987, we’ve supported many great legal research and education projects over more than 25 years.

To announce the launch of the OBA Foundation Chief Justice of Ontario Fellowships in Legal Ethics and Professionalism, which will be funded and administered by the OBA Foundation, we’re having a party!   “Repartee” is our inaugural fundraiser, taking place on June 13, 2013 from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm, at 20 Toronto Street, Toronto.  Tickets are $35.00 per person.  “Repartee” will include a silent auction and live auction, featuring some terrific items and services donated by lawyers, law firms and businesses.   Continue reading →

L’Humour juridique – jamais insolite, mais souvent efficace

Dans l’article du Accidental Mentor du mai 2013, “The Persuasive Art of Coded Understatement,” j’ouvre la Boîte de Pandore.  Qui utilise l’humeur dans le monde juridique?  Et qui devrait bien l’éviter?  Les avocats et les avocates peuvent vous faire rigoler, mais ceci n’est pas, ou ne doit pas, être le but.  Sans blague.

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What lawyers can learn from actors – Ce que les comédiens puissent nous enseigner

Chapter 7 of Uta Hagen’s 1973 technical manual for the professional actor, Respect for Acting, is devoted entirely to thinking.  As a theatre or cinéma fan, read this book and you may never put up with bad acting, ever again.  As a lawyer, we could only wish the equivalent were available to help us stay on top of our game.

In my April, 2013, Canadian Lawyer column, Respect for Lawyering, I suggest that our profession, once respected for our prowess at thinking, might learn a thing or two from Hagen’s disciplined approach to the actor’s craft.  Whether it is resisting the movement toward commoditization of legal services, or ways of enhancing public confidence in courts, earning respect for our thinking must start with approaching thought as work.  Click on Hagen’s image, right, to link to the column.

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Chapitre 7 du tome magistral d’Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting, dévoile les techniques de la pensée active des comédiens. Pour eux, penser et un aspect du travail.  Après avoir lu ce livre, peut-être que vous ne supporterez jamais plus les rôles mal joués.  En tant que juriste, c’est un malheur que l’équivalent de ce bouquin n’existe vraiment pas pour nous.

Tant pis.  Dans mon article de l’avril 2013 du Canadian Lawyer, Respect for Lawyering, je propose que les juristes peuvent apprendre l’art de penser en se visionnant comme penseurs actifs.  Si notre travail est dévalué de ces jours, en tant qu’avocats ou en tant que juges, faut-il nous rappeler que le grand public veut nous respecter, et de voir la preuve que nous pensons, comme travail.  Cliquez sur l’image de Uta Hagen, à droit, pour accéder à l’article.

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Why Civil Litigators Have to Keep Current on Criminal Law

In the privacy of mediation rooms, I often listen to assertions made by counsel about certain facts, such as soft-tissue injuries suffered in a car crash, and then I ask: How are you going to prove that?

I may as well have asked a question about Heidegger’s thoughts on the revelation of reality.  The lack, most of the time, of a satisfactory answer to my question comes from the apocryphal nature of the rules of civil evidence in Canada, and from the dearth of actual trial experience among litigators called to the bar in the last 15 years.

(la version française suit)

So much of the practice of civil litigation is now not about evidence but information.  An entire industry called E-Discovery has grown in large firms which has little to do with litigation as it does about searching for dots in complicated constellations of (hoped for) exceptions to the hearsay rule.  Parties in large commercial cases are tempted to settle after shuddering at the size of the bill for a round of E-Discovery.  Very few of the lawyers involved in such matters actually have much sense of what the case is about.  The holy grail is server full of coded productions, whether or not any of it might end up being used by the court as proof of fact or legal theory. Continue reading →