Legal regulation research from around the world of interest to ICLR members
This article discusses the implications of three decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2016-2017 term that touch directly upon the “law of lawyers”, that is, privilege issues and legal professional regulation. Lizotte v. Aviva Insurance Company of Canada and Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. University of Calgary reaffirm the significant protection our courts accord to both solicitor-client and litigation privilege, such that a legislative provision will…
Over the last few years, some consensus has emerged on the fact that the standardisation models adopted in both the European Union and in the United States have increasingly delegated the private pillar to create and maintain the technical and technological rules. Nevertheless, the two systems still diverge on a number of significant respects, thus…
A current burning debate in legal practice today appears to be the man-made fight for superiority between the skills of legal practitioner and the legal artificial intelligence skill provided by information and communication technology (ICT) loosely tagged as “legal technology.” The essence of the debate is that legal technology can replace legal practitioners’ role. The…
Blockchain technology has been hailed as the next disruptive leap forward in data sciences. Most legal scholarship related to the topic has focused on its relevance to finance, but it could revolutionize business supply chains. Specifically, blockchain-enabled solutions are expected to improve the reliability of data related to supply chains and to help businesses eliminate fraud,…
This article focuses on Edith Haynes’ unsuccessful attempt to enter the legal profession in Western Australia. Although admitted to articles as a law student in 1900, she was denied permission to sit her intermediate examination by the Supreme Court of WA (In re Edith Haynes (1904) 6 WAR 209). Edith Haynes is of particular interest for two reasons….
The legal profession is facing a convergence of forces, most notably significant advances in the capabilities of technology, economic pressures challenging existing business models and globalisation, that herald momentous change to the practice of law. In Australia the lead in seeking to understand these developments and formulate responses has been taken by the Law Society of New South…
Given the ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern societies, it is clear that individuals, corporations, and countries will be grappling with the legal and ethical issues of its use. As global problems require global solutions, we propose the establishment of an international AI regulatory agency that – drawing on interdisciplinary expertise – could create a unified…
England and Australia have abandoned self-regulation of the legal profession yet Canadian law societies continue to function on this basis. This article argues that the self-regulatory model on which the Law Society of Ontario (the “LSO”) operates represents an inadequate form of governance in terms of the accountability it yields. When compared to other organizations, including law societies…
The aim of this paper is to offer a broad framework to allow a better understanding of the current legal situation of Robo-Advisory. The disruption of robo-advisors as new market players in the financial sector are bringing new challenges that the regulators must face in the short term. For this reason, at this time, it…
This article examines the new Australian consumer Comprehensive right to access and use data, also known as the Consumer Data Right, recently proposed by the Australian Productivity Commission, and adopts a comparative analysis with data protection, competition and consumer developments in the European Union (EU). Firstly, a brief overview is given of the legal context…
