So you want to be a criminal lawyer...

Frequently asked questions and infrequently heard answers

The Difficulty With Taking Advice: What a Vicious Mike Tyson Knockout Can Teach Law Students

Shakespeare was onto something when he wrote in Hamlet, "this above all: to thine own self be true."

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The Emperor's New Clubs

Once Upon a Time, there was an Emperor so fond of athletic pursuits that he spent all his vast wealth attending various sporting events around the world for many decades.

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The Definition of Theft in the #MeToo Era

This is the story of Joe and Jim Cortez who ran Joe and Jim's Fantasy Sports Memorabilia in Las Vegas for more than twenty-five years.

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Defence Lawyers in the Trenches Getting Coffee

I love Jerry Seinfeld´s show ´Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee´. Not only have I been a lifelong fan of stand-up comedy, but I think I have some insight into the concept behind the show – Jerry Seinfeld likes the interaction with his fellow comedians (and cars and coffee). Comedians tend to have a lot in common and get along and where they differ, it is interesting to sit down and talk about it.

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The Thin Line Between Success and Failure: What Sidney Crosby's 2016 Stanley Cup Can Teach Lawyers

In 2015, Sidney Crosby was going through the worst slump of his career. He had 15 points in 23 games and instead of being in his usual top 5 spot among the NHL scoring leaders, was ranked somewhere in the hundreds. Sports writers started to write him off as going through an inevitable decline that happens with age and following injuries.

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A Separation: Why the End of Peremptory Challenges is the Beginning of the End of the Commonwealth

When I was growing up, I don't think I ever met a single French-Canadian, but when the 1995 Quebec referendum unfolded, I felt a deep connection and solidarity with them and stayed up into the early morning hours anxiously awaiting the results from Montreal to make sure we were still going to be one country the following day.

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When Tradition Goes Wrong: A Reimagination of the Years 18 to 23

On September 28, 2019, Paul Magder, who owner a fur store and a fought a battle against the forced closure of businesses on Sundays in Ontario for decades, died. Upon his death, Magder´s sons reported that their father paid a heavy price for his advocacy and acts of civil disobedience by refusing to close his store on Sundays and that all the fines he had accrued over the years eventually pushed him into bankruptcy.

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Death Becomes Them: How Our Failure to Live With Death Led to the Covid-19 Shutdown

We need to talk about death, spelled D-E-A-T-H. Death is so often discussed by using euphemisms that it has become part of the many taboos that govern modern speech. For example, the origin of the word “palliative”, comes from the word “palliate”, which actually means to conceal:

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Why We Should Defund the Law Society of Ontario

By far the funniest spending scandal in recent history is the credit card spending scandal of the Ryerson Student Union. There is no doubt that the slate that won the RSU leadership ran on a platform of social justice, but within a period of nine months, they ran up a credit card bill of $250,000.00 on questionable expenses including alcohol, food, nightclubs, Casino Rama and hotels.

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Criminal Clients Don't Play Golf

To whoever said that “golf is a good walk spoiled” – I say amen brother! Before you read this post and think I am crazy, you have to understand that I am Jewish and Jews get irrational annoyances out of all proportion to the general population.

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