January-February 2013 Issue of Canadian Bar Association National Magazine

 The January-February 2013 of National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association, is available online:

• A pathway to justice?: "Public interest litigants usually face a tough battle for standing, as the long fight to strike down Canada’s prostitution laws has shown. In 2008, the Supreme Court of British Columbia denied anti-violence advocate Sheryl Kiselbach and a group representing Vancouver sex workers the right to bring a suit challenging the prostitution-related provisions of the Criminal Code. Neither party was at risk of being charged under the provisions in question, the government argued. But Kiselbach and the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV) took their case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which last fall upheld the appeal granting them public interest standing to pursue their Charter challenge."
• Nay on say: "As companies around the world prepare for their annual springtime chat with shareholders, some Canadian boards may be sighing with relief. Unlike their peers south of the border and across the Atlantic, firms here can still choose whether to consult with shareholders about how much to pay their chiefs. And this voluntary regime is unlikely to change any time soon."
  
• That’s entertainment!? : "Digital downloading, MP3s, iPods, iPads, YouTube, Netflix, e-books — in just over a decade, the world has completely revolutionized the way it consumes entertainment. Music lovers are online instead of at the record store. Kindle e-book sales have overtaken paperback sales on Amazon. And the market for on-demand web television is growing. So what does it all mean for entertainment lawyers? A lot. And it starts with their evolving client base."
• Time for a new trade strategy? : "As Canada starts working on the second phase of its Global Commerce Strategy, trade experts say that the Harper government has to take a careful look at its strategy for negotiating trade agreements."
  
• The art of negotiation : "Negotiation is the most important skill people use all the time, says Charles Craver, who teaches the subject at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Yet few lawyers have been trained in the art of the deal. Here are some tips from Craver and three other experts on how to succeed (...)"
  
• Legal education: Two solitudes: "Few more enduring metaphors have been offered for the Canadian experience than the one coined by Hugh MacLennan in his eponymous novel. Whether it is used to describe relations between Quebec and “the rest of Canada”, or to capture the relative invisibility of the Aboriginal peoples to urban Canadians, or even to typify the divide between Bay Street and Main Street, there aren’t many formulations as good at instantly conveying meaning in our country than to speak of two groups sharing space, but living in communal isolation. That is why the most apt way to describe relations between the legal profession and Canadian law schools today is to say that, just like MacLennan's characters, we live in two solitudes."
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