Breach of copyright over paywall raises tech neutrality questions
- Condominium Group
- Dec 30, 2007
- 2 min read
Breach of copyright over paywall raises tech neutrality questions
December 31, 2007
News that millions of dollars will be invested to educate the legal profession on the intricacies of insolvency and corporate restructuring work is a positive development, given the sophistication and specialization needed to work in this field, bankruptcy and insolvency lawyer Arthur O. Jacques and Toronto litigator Joel Watson tell Lawyers Weekly.
As the article notes, the founder and managing partner of Canadian private equity fund Catalyst Capital Group, Newton Glassman, has committed a minimum of $10 million to improve the sophistication of education for law students, lawyers and judges in this increasingly crucial field.
The first $2.5 million is being donated to the University of Western Ontario.
As Jacques, partner with Shibley Righton LLP — who spent years acting as court-appointed counsel for 10,000 Nortel Canadian Continuing Employees — explains, Glassman should be applauded for his generosity and desire to improve the capacity of Canada’s legal minds.
“This is a brutal field where the weak don’t survive,” he says.
He tells Lawyers Weekly that the perception of bankruptcy and insolvency lawyers has changed since he first entered the field 40 years ago.
“Everything is in the eye of the beholder. When I first got called to the bar and told people I was a bankruptcy lawyer, they looked at me like I was evil. That’s no longer the case,” he says.
“It has attained a degree of sophistication far beyond anyone’s anticipation. When you look at large scale insolvencies where labour forces are involved and attempts are made to keep them fully employed, (lawyers) are fulfilling more than a social policy, it’s an economic policy.”
As Watson, partner with Shibley Righton LLP, says in the article, over the last decade or so, lawyers have become very specialized and the bankruptcy and insolvency bar has become incredibly narrow.
“What you need as counsel is to be a commercial lawyer, and insolvency is just one of the stages, unfortunately, in the lifecycle of businesses,” he says.
“You have to understand the procedures of bankruptcy and CCAA as part of your tool kit to serve the commercial needs of your client,” he adds.
Watson tells Lawyers Weekly that there will likely be less insolvency-related court work for lawyers in the future, as businesses will expect people to be more efficient.
“If the object is to salvage as much value as you can, you don’t want to consume all that value through court proceedings and accountants putting in a trustee,” he says.
“You’re putting in people who will start to consume the value you have. The business as a going concern has to be run as a going concern. If it’s not, your recoverable is diminishing day by day.”
