Torys LLP picked up on a post about pension law reform from Slaw and posted it on their site:

Canadian Constitution Foundation held its Third Annual Law Conference on Race, Religion, Equality and Freedom: Current Canadian Legal Controversies.

The first panel was titled, Is there a human right to be free from offence?

Debating the restrictions on free speech in human rights legislation
Grant Huscroft, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law
Richard Moon, University of Windsor, Faculty of Law
Philippe Dufresne, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa

The second panel on Intellectual property law featured Howard Knopf of Macera & Jarzyna, and  Richard Owens of Stikeman Elliot LLP.

The third panel addressed, The legal status of polygamy

Debating whether polygamy should be a Criminal Code offense
Martha Bailey, Queens University, Faculty of Law
Nicholas Bala, Queens University, Faculty of Law
Lorraine Weinrib, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
Bradley Miller, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law

Keynote speaker over the lunch was Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louis LeBel.

Justice Louis LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada

An afternoon panel looked at the recent decision in R. v. Kapp,  Racial equality, aboriginal rights, and Section 15

Dwight Newman, University of Saskatchewan, College of Law
Bryan Finlay, Weir Foulds LLP, Toronto
Craig Jones, Office of the Attorney General, British Columbia
Jonathan Kay, National Post, Toronto

The kenynote speaker over dinner was George Jonas of the National Post.

Justice Louis LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada

In his regular column for Lawyers Weekly Magazine, freelance technology writer Luigi Benetton quoted Omar Ha-Redeye in Draft, edit docs in real time, in the Aug. 21, 2009 edition.

Omar Ha-Redeye, a University of Western Ontario law student, shares Smith’s point of view. “It’s all incredibly inefficient, especially in light of the technology we have today,” he says, adding that lawyers will need to better their productivity using such measures. “If they don’t, their competitors will,” he says.

…“The majority of graduating lawyers are now female, and the majority of practising lawyers are not,” Ha-Redeye notes. “Legal practise is not conducive to having a family, picking up kids, dropping off kids and those types of responsibilities, which are not necessarily gender-specific but tend to be, given our history.”

…Ha-Redeye believes that collaboration systems might strengthen groupthink in organizations as hierarchical as law firms.

“They’re different from anonymous tools like Wikipedia,” he says. “People may be highly deferential to those higher in a hierarchy than they are.”

Reviews on Slaw and Law is Cool.

Draft, edit docs in real time

Glenn Kauth of Canadian Lawyer magazine mentioned Omar Ha-Redeye in the current June 2009 issue,

Even law students are using the Twitter-blog combination to get their names out there and position themselves in the field. Omar Ha-Redeye, a second-year student at the University of Western Ontario law school, has garnered a lot of attention through his blog as well as through the web sites Law is Cool and Slaw, too, which he says is already benefiting him as he develops a reputation well before he graduates. “I have lots of informal mentorships with lots of lawyers practising in the field.”

The article also interviewed Erik Magraken of MacIsaac & Co, Deborah Glendinning of Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, Rick Powers of the Rotman School of Management, Simone Hughes at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Michael Rabinovici of AR Communications Inc, Dan Michaluk and Susan Carnevale of Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP, Michael Rynowecer of BTI Consulting Group Inc., and David Diamond of Diamond & Diamond Lawyers.

A review of the piece by Omar Ha-Redeye can be found on Slaw.

BD BIG – Canadian Lawyer Magazine

Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher Arar who campaigned tirelessly for his return to Canada, spoke at UWO Law today.

After a Royal Commission that exonerated him, Arar received an apology from the RCMP and compensation from the Canadian government to help cover his legal costs. Despite this, nobody has been held accountable in Canada, and he continues to face difficulties over his inclusion on lists in the U.S.

She said her husband’s case is just one of many that the Canadian public need to learn more about.

On Mar. 18, 2009, Hon. Jason Kenney, Min. of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, spoke at Huron College at UWO.

See the write-up and the discussion on Law is Cool.

Omar Ha-Redeye participated in the finals for the Lerners LLP Cup at the University of Western Ontario.

He was awarded the Mr. Justice CD Stewart Trophy for Appellate Advocacy.  The award is given to the team with the highest score during any of the preliminary rounds.  Omar shared shared the trophy with his partner Lawrence Gridin, who also writes on Law is Cool.

The winner of the Lerners LLP Cup this year was Christopher Crighton.

Lawrence Gridin, Leitch J, Kileen J (ret), O'Reilly J, Omar Ha-Redeye

Coverage of the event can be found on the UWO Law website.  A special thanks goes to Prof. Mysty Clapton and Lerners LLP for hosting the event.

On three separate days, Omar Ha-Redeye met with undergraduate students at the University of Western Ontario to talk to them about why they should apply to law school.

On Monday, Sept. 22, 2008 he spoke to the Black Law Students Association.

On Tuesday, it was the African Students Association.

On Wednesday, he saw the Caribbean Students Organization.

Omar is the President of the Black Law Students Association at the University of Western Ontario.

The group is a chapter of a larger organization, the Black Law Students Association of Canada (BLSAC), which raises awareness around issues of advocacy relating to minority populations in Canada.

A special thanks to Craig Cameron, Ugbad Farah, and Carly McLarty for making this possible.

Full text of the speech is as follows:

Why ALL of you should apply to law school

My goal today is to convince all of you here today that you should continue your education beyond your undergraduate degree, and that the legal profession is what you should pursue.

What I love best about the law is the ability to challenge and break down stereotypes. For example, Canadians generally overestimate the number of minorities that have committed a crime, which is usually lower than the general population.

However, the 1995 Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System stated, it is no secret that “black accused, for example, are more often held without bail”.

The need for advocates to fight this subtle yet pervasive form of discrimination is pressing indeed.

Maybe Criminal law isn’t your thing.

A recent survey indicated that the average salary in Canada was just over $36,000.

The jobs that required a high school education a generation ago now require a bachelor’s degree. The opportunities simply are just not there for recent university graduates without professional and advanced degrees.

Lawyers and legal professionals ranked the highest out of all careers in Canada, with an average of $123,000 for lawyers and $178,053 for judges. Only specialist physicians made slightly more.

But medical schools in Canada are swarmed with applications. There are only 2,400 positions a year across Canada, but there has been a 20% increase in applications recently. Only 0.5% of applicants to McMaster University and 6% at UWO are accepted.

If you have a science background and thought that your only alternative to med school was graduate research, you’re wrong. One of the booming areas of law is intellectual property, and lawyers in this field almost always have a science or engineering background before law school.

That doesn’t mean getting into law school is easy though. You do need a strong undergraduate GPA, and have to worry about this pesky test called the LSAT.

But it’s worth it, unless you are completely content with the status of minority people in Canada.  A legal career allows you to pursue professional goals while maintaining an advocacy role within society.

And because the law affects nearly everything we do, there are areas of law that are of interest to everyone.

Fred Rodell, a former professor at Yale, wrote back in 1939, in a book entitled “Woe unto you lawyers,”

It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us – our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power – in the lawyers. As the schoolboy put it, ours is “a government of lawyers, not of men.”

It is not the businessmen, no matter how big, who run our economic world. Again it is the lawyers, the lawyers who “advise” and direct every time a company is formed, every time a bond or a share of stock is issued, almost every time material is to be bought or goods to be sold, every time a deal is made. The whole elaborate structure of industry and finance is a lawyer-made house. We all live in it, but the lawyers run it.

And in our private lives, we cannot buy a home or rent an apartment, we cannot get married or try to get divorced, we cannot die and leave our property to our children without calling on the lawyers to guide us. To guide us, incidentally, through a maze of confusing gestures and formalities that lawyers have created.

A legal career is not only the smart move in tomorrow’s volatile markets, it’s the right one.

The deadline for law school applications in Ontario is Nov. 3, just over a month from now. You still have time to prepare your application and get it in.

And if you need any help reviewing or planning your application, please feel free to contact me.

Law school starts again today at the University of Western Ontario.

A few differences from first year – all courses are now only a semester, and courses are selected based on interest. Many courses also have an essay option, instead of a strict 100% exam marking scheme.

Course selections for this semester are:

• Corporate Law
• Healthcare Law and Policy
• Evidence
• Administrative Law

Ronald Reagan once said,

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

A lot has changed since Reagan’s time, specifically the use of technology to transmit information through mediums such as the Internet.

But what is the impact on politics?

This was the subject of a session at the MaRS Centre entitled The Permanent Campaign.

Renowned technology expert and journalist, Jesse Hirsh, moderated a panel of speakers on the subject which included:

• Omar Ha-Redeye – First-year law student at the University of Western Ontario
• Gillian Moody – PR Professional
• Andrew Coyne – National Editor of Maclean’s magazine
• Andrea Moffat – President and owner of Divercity Consultants
• Stephen Taylor – The Blogging Tories

Prof. Greg Elmer, Director of the Infoscape research lab, Ryerson University, Toronto, gave the introductory plenary.

Jesse Hirsh has provided an overview of the event.