More Manitoba Statutes on HeinOnline

Last year HeinOnline completed a major update to Manitoba legislative content on their service; however, it was missing the 1970 revised statutes and the 1987 re-enacted statutes, as well as a few miscellaneous individual annual statutes. We undertook to ensure Hein had the content to add to their collection, so that all lawyers in Manitoba could conduct legislative research from their desktops.

HeinOnline is just one of the resources available to all members of the Law Society of Manitoba behind the members’ portal. If you haven’t used it yet, consult this guide for assistance.

CPLED Redevelopment

[Reprinted with permission from the February 2019 edition of Communiqué by Joan Holstrom.]

The CPLED Program has been the Manitoba bar admission course for the past 15 years. It has been delivered through three provincial organizations, the Legal Education Society of Alberta, the Law Society of Saskatchewan-Bar Admission Office and the Law Society of Manitoba. While the past 15 years have successfully launched many law graduates into rewarding careers, it is a program that is due for a refresh to bring it in line with the changing nature of the profession and the practice of law. Technology, diversity, increased cultural and gender awareness and changes in the way legal services are delivered have called out for changes in how we bridge law graduates from being students to being professionals. As a result, CPLED hired a new CEO last spring and significant strides have been taken to redevelop our Bar Admission program into what we are calling CPLED 2.0.

CPLED is preparing to have CPLED 2.0 ready for all articling students in the 2020-2021 year. In anticipation of that, a pilot program offering of CPLED 2.0 will be available for articling students in the 2019-2020 year. The pilot program offered will operate from January 2020 to September 2020. It will be offered at half the tuition cost of the legacy CPLED program which will run during the 2019-2020 year from September 2019 to April 2020. The pilot program will be offered to articling students when registering for the 2019-2020 bar admission year. Please consider allowing your articling student(s) to participate in this pilot program. The pilot program will be of interest to you or your articling student if:

  • Tuition costs are a concern;
  • The student cannot start articles before August 2019 (e.g. student is travelling or clerking elsewhere; your firm cannot hire someone before August 2019 due to budget);
  • The student cannot start CPLED before September 2019 (e.g. still awaiting a Certificate of Qualification from the National Committee on Accreditation).

The CEO of CPLED, Dr. Kara Mitchelmore, will be in Winnipeg during the first week of March and would like to meet with as many employers and principals as possible. Dr. Mitchelmore would like to share with the profession what changes will be forthcoming with CPLED 2.0 and what impact that might have on articling students and their relationships within their workplaces. Larger employers will be contacted directly to set up meetings with Dr. Mitchelmore. If you are a smaller workplace that routinely takes on articling students or if you anticipate taking on an articling student in 2020 or beyond, please contact Joan Holmstrom, the Director of Manitoba CPLED, at 204-926-2017 to attend one of the presentations given by Dr. Mitchelmore on March 4th or on March 8th, 2019.

Recruitment of Practitioners to assist with CPLED 2.0

CPLED 2.0 will require practitioners to assist by providing feedback to students on their submitted work and performances within the formative phases of CPLED 2.0. It will also require practitioners to assist with evaluating students’ work and performance in the evaluative phases of CPLED 2.0. Finally, CPLED 2.0 will require practitioners to act as practice managers for students as they work through CPLED 2.0. These practice managers will act as a resource for students as they develop skills in managing themselves, their work and office systems. If you are, or may be, interested in helping CPLED 2.0 in one of these capacities and you have been called to the Bar for at least 5 years, please send an email to jholmstrom@lawsociety.mb.ca setting out:

  • Your teaching experience;
  • Presentation experience;
  • Academic writing experience;
  • Your area of expertise;
  • Your area of interest;
  • Experience as a mentor or principal.

This will be an enriching experience for lawyers who have a passion for teaching and mentoring. We hope to hear from you.

Webinar on Pre-Crime

Summary:

This webinar will explore recent developments in Canadian law that indicate a new trend toward imposing punitive measures at increasingly earlier stages of the prosecutorial process. The result is a potentially new field of criminal management some academics have dubbed “pre-crime”. Pre-crime, which seeks to use the law as a technology of surveillance, is based upon ideas now seen as commonplace in the era of the “war on terror”. Specifically, the need to ensure security at all costs, the proliferation of digital data, and the development of drones, social networking, and cloud storage to gather personal data. The webinar will be of use to anyone with an interest in criminal law, policing, and surveillance, as well as those interested in how areas of law, such as immigration, health, and anti-terrorism, are mobilizing the logic of risk and surveillance in new ways that emphasize precaution

Speaker:

Dr. Richard Jochelson is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and holds his PhD in law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a Masters in Law from University of Toronto Law School, and a Law Degree from University of Calgary Law School (Gold Medal). He is a former law clerk who served his articling year at the Alberta Court of Appeal and Court of Queen’s Bench, before working at one of Canada’s largest law firms. He worked for ten years teaching criminal and constitutional law at another Canadian university prior to joining Robson Hall. He has published peer-reviewed articles dealing with obscenity, indecency, judicial activism, police powers, criminal justice pedagogy and curriculum development, empiricism in criminal law, and conceptions of judicial and jury reasoning. He is a member of the Bar of Manitoba and has co-authored and co-edited several books. He has recently co-authored Criminal Law and Precrime: Legal Studies in Canadian Punishment and Surveillance in Anticipation of Criminal Guilt (2018, Routledge).

Webinar Costs:

CALL/ACBD Member: $40 + HST = $45.20 
CALL/ACBD Student Member: $25 + HST = $28.25
Non-member: $60 + HST = $67.80

Click here to register.

Crossing the Border with Electronic Devices

[Reprinted with permission from the February 2019 issue of Communiqué by Darcia Senft.]

What You Should Know

It used to be the case that when a lawyer took a vacation, work was left at the office. While all of us may try to take a real break from work when we are trying to recharge our batteries, the reality is that clients have become accustomed to being able to email their lawyers at all hours of the day and on weekends. For a variety of reasons, lawyers often respond to client matters while they are on vacation or when out of the country for one reason or another. Lawyers often travel with a laptop or a tablet and almost always with a cell phone in order to access emails, client information and other work-related materials. Do you know what risks you face when travelling with your electronic device and what you can do to minimize those risks?

The Federation of Law Societies of Canada has published a reference document for the legal profession dealing with the risks of travelling internationally with an electronic device. You can find the document here.

The document, developed by the Policy Counsel Counterpart Group of the Federation with the assistance of law society practice advisors, describes the risks of travelling with an electronic device when returning to Canada, going through preclearance with U.S. border officials on Canadian soil, and when travelling to the U.S. and beyond.

Decision of the Week: Sexual Offences Sentencing

The following decision was granted leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada: R. v. Friesen, 2018 MBCA 69. As summarized in Supreme Advocacy Letter #11 (2019):

Mr. Friesen met the mother through an online dating website. The mother brought Mr. Friesen to her home. On the date of the offence, the mother’s children were sleeping and were being cared for by the mother’s friend in the mother’s house. Mr. Friesen asked the mother to bring the child into the bedroom. The mother’s friend was awoken by the child’s screams, entered the bedroom and took the child out of the bedroom. Mr. Friesen demanded the mother retrieve the child and threatened her if she did not comply with his demand.  Mr. Friesen entered guilty pleas to sexual interference and attempted extortion. The sentencing judge imposed a sentence of six years’ incarceration concurrent on both charges. The C.A. granted leave to appeal sentence. The C.A. allowed the appeal and reduced the sentence from six to four and one-half years’ incarceration for the sexual interference conviction and reduced the sentence from six years to 18 months incarceration concurrent for the attempted extortion conviction. “The motion for an extension of time to serve and file the response to the application for leave to appeal is granted. The application for leave to appeal…is granted.”