Civil Law

“Ottawa Charter at 40” Panel Presents on Support for Personal Skills and Social Development

As suggested in my previous post introducing the October 2026 conference in Canada that reexamined the public health goals set by the Ottawa Charter in 1986, there was reason both for modest celebration and serious critical thinking about what has happened during the last 40 years.

In a morning panel on October 21, we were tasked with the 4th Pillar of the Ottawa Charter, focusing on “personal and social development.” The presentations ranged from detailed frameworks for implementing new health … Read the rest

Civil Law

How to Make Business Development Research More Useful for Lawyers

I’ve worked with lawyers who ask for a company research report before a meeting, receive a beautifully prepared document and then admit they only had time to skim the first page. I’ve also seen business development teams spend hours gathering information about a prospect without knowing exactly what the lawyer plans to do with it. Both situations illustrate a common challenge in law firm business development: we have access to an enormous amount of information, but we don’t always spend … Read the rest

Civil Law

The New Race for Power: What Ofgem’s Grid Reform Means for Data Centre Development in Great Britain

For companies seeking to build a giant data centre in Great Britain right now, the biggest bottleneck isn’t a shortage of cutting-edge chips, a lack of capital eager to fund the next wave of large language models (LLMs) or inference workloads, or the availability of software engineers who understand neural networks. The bottleneck is the electricity grid and associated infrastructure, which currently features a waiting list that can stretch comfortably into the next decade.

For technology companies trying to build … Read the rest

Civil Law

Smith v Fonterra: A Climate Change Litigation Development

The Supreme Court of New Zealand recently overturned strike-out decisions to allow climate change claims (involving a new climate tort) to proceed to trial.

Background

In 2022, Michael Smith, a Māori tribal elder and the climate change spokesman for the Iwi Chairs Forum, a national forum of tribal leaders, brought proceedings against seven corporate defendants, alleging that they were collectively responsible for one-third of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020-2021.

Mr Smith sought a declaration that the seven defendants … Read the rest