Law Times

416-487-4447 • admin@adrontario.ca www.adrontario.ca/findapro.cfm ADR Connect: Find an ADR Professional Arbitrators ntitled-1 1 Mediators $4.00 • Vol. 22, No. 30 7/5/11 9:40:55 AM Inside This Issue 2 International Alliance 7 Tough Times 9 Focus On IP/ Trademark Law Quote of the week "If Canada adopts an internationally competitive IP regime, it will drive the creation of innovative medicines, which are crucial for patients and for protecting our health care." — Russell Williams, president, Rx&D, See Canada, page 12 Covering Ontario's Legal Scene ntitled-2 1 September 26, 2011 7/7/11 9:10:05 AM Judicial resources uneven, stats show Lawyer alarmed at numbers for central east, west regions BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN Law Times tario, says a Markham, Ont., family lawyer. While 91 judges are assigned to the T court's Toronto region to serve a popula- tion of almost 2.7 million, the central east region, which includes Barrie, Newmarket, and Oshawa, Ont., gets just 44 judges for a similar combined population. Th at means Toronto has one Superior Court judge for every 29,000 people, while central east gets one judge for every 56,000 residents. Th e central west region, which includes Brampton, Ont., is even worse off with one judge for every 65,000 people. Only in the northeast and northwest regions are the ratios more favourable than in To- ronto. Andrew Feldstein, who practises family law in courthouses throughout the Greater Toronto Area, says the distribution is unfair on his clients who happen to live outside Toronto. "What you notice when you go to a court like Newmarket, Oshawa or Barrie is that the judges have extremely long lists, whereas if you come to the city of Toronto, there may be four or fi ve items on the docket that day. Th ose judges have a lot more time they can devote to work on a resolution of a matter or moving it forward. So the qual- ity of justice you get in Toronto versus other areas is signifi cantly better." According to Feldstein, family case he communities around Toronto are being shortchanged by the distribu- tion of Superior Court judges in On- settlement conference will give you no more than an hour because of the lengthy dock- ets. How can you take a complex matter and in one hour resolve it? Sometimes you need lengthy periods of time with a judge, and in Toronto they have more time to help people that way." In the criminal sphere, lawyer Edward Prutschi of Toronto fi rm Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman also practises throughout the Greater Toronto A rea. He says the diff er- ence between Toronto and surrounding com- munities is less acute in his area of practice, something he puts down to the nature of the work judges are doing in the provincial capital. "Often, there's only seven or eight matters over seven diff erent courtrooms and these are all lengthy projects or homicide cases that are tying up a judge for months and sometimes years at a time, so you can't use judicial re- sources in the same way as a smaller jurisdic- tion that might have a higher proportion of day-to-day, run-of-the-mill cases," he says. "Anybody who claims Toronto is over- With more judges per population, 'the qual- ity of justice you get in Toronto versus other areas is significantly better,' says Andrew Feldstein. conference lists in the central east region can run as long as 12 matters. "Th at judge is going to have to read 24 briefs a day to be ready for court. Th at's a lot of briefs and a lot of information to bring in. Even with the best of intentions, they're limited to about 30 minutes per client that comes in. Even a serviced judicially is wrong. I can say that clearly. What it may mean is that outlying regions are even more underserviced than Toronto. You're certainly not getting a situa- tion where Toronto judges are sitting around on their hands." Feldstein says he'd like a complete review of the allocation of judges and more appoint- ments to the central east and central west regions in particular. "It doesn't necessarily mean to me judges need to be permanently assigned there, but in Newmarket, judges See Stats, page 5 Lawyers warned about negligence in e-discovery I BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN Law Times n the high-tech world of electronic discovery, lawyers need to take old-world steps to avoid negligence claims, say lawyers who practise in the area. A panel of lawyers tackled e- discovery negligence at a confer- ence on Sept. 19 organized by Sedona Canada and sponsored by the Law Society of Upper Can- ada, the Ontario Bar Association, and Th e Advocates' Society. Susan Wortzman, co-founder of e-discovery law fi rm Wortzman Nickle Professional Corp., noted she has seen lawyers negligently collect too few or too many rec- ords, both of which can be fatal to a case. "If you over-collect, the problem you will face is that you are left with so much data. You can use all the fancy tools you want to cull it but if you collect a million records and you're suc- cessful in culling 75 per cent of it, you still have 250,00 0 records to review, and that is a lot of records. Now you need lawyers to sit for days, months, and maybe years, and the costs are going to become exorbitant." Glenn Smith, a found- ing partner at Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffi n LLP, said there's a risk of negligence right at the inception of a fi le if law- yers fail to exert the type of supervision that seems routine in other areas of practice. "If you allow a client to self-collect the evidence, you may already have a negligence problem. It's like having the client go through the fi ling cabinet without you there. You wouldn't do that in hard copy but you somehow allow it to happen today." In the event of mistakes, judg- es won't look kindly on parties who failed to adequately super- vise collection or put safeguards in place, Smith said. According to Wortzman, law- yers may have to do battle over this issue since clients are often anxious to avoid the costs associated with bringing in a third-party vendor to do collection when they feel they can do just as good a job. "One of the ways that we have dealt with it is by saying, 'OK, you can do the collection yourselves, but we're See Profession, page 5 Susan Wortzman has seen law- yers negligently collect too few or too many records. Click here to subscribe today to LAW TIMES LT Digital version.indd 1 6/25/10 12:59:47 PM Childview_LT_Jan24_11.indd 1 www.lawtimesnews.com 1/19/11 11:04:05 AM

• Cover
• International Alliance
• Tough Times
• Focus On IP/Trademark Law