All About Information

I am a lawyer at a firm in Toronto, Canada called Hicks Morley. We’re a 90-lawyer human resources law and advocacy boutique, and my practice involves advocacy on behalf of our clients in a broad range of employment and non-employment matters. I also do a bulk of my work on files involving information and privacy law. My official bio is here.

This is my blog - a legal blog about privacy and access to information, the law of confidential business information and the law of production (including e-discovery). I am a former research lawyer and am still partly addicted to reading case law, so I’ll post summaries here regularly. I’ll also try my best to post an original thought once and a while.

My beautiful wife’s name is Seanna and we have a one-year-old old son who we’ve named Hugo Rabbit. Rabbit’s a surfing nickname. Seanna and I also both met as competitive distance runners back at Queen’s University, so we figured the name was appropriate on a number of levels. We have a semi-hairless cat named Buffalo.

My path to my current position has been interesting but far from straight. I actually left Hicks after articling in 1998. Seanna and I travelled for a while, lived in Maui (where I had established some good friends on earlier extended trips). If you go there to windsurf or surf, visit Ralf at Second Wind. Ralf’s the man. When Seanna and I came back to Toronto I worked at ExperiencePoint with Jamie and Greg - an e-learning/business simulation company that’s doing some leading edge things in the business learning space and then did some independent consulting work with a great senior OD consultant who had some good buiness in the pharmaceutical industry. I tried to pull off my consulting “gig” virtually, from Maui, but I ended up doing a lot more surfing than working, had some fun working as the test editor for SBC media’s Windsport Magazine, and eventually decided it was time to return to Hicks. Thankfully Hicks took me back, and though I miss Maui and the oftentimes hilarious bi-annual trips to Cape Hatteras with Windsport, here I am today.

I bring a lot of perspective from those years to my outlook on work and my practice. I love the intensitiy of law, but keeping the practice enjoyable, building good relationships with clients and colleagues and being creative is also very important to me. Professionalism and pleasure in work should never be separated from each other in my view.

I still am devoted to surfing and windsurfing, and we just bought a parcel of land in Halifax (where the people are amazing). In Toronto I go for year-round paddles on a paddleboard (like a surfboard but for paddling) and a stand-up surfboard. Once and a while I’ll surf the great lakes. I’m having fun as a surfer/lawyer here in Toronto.

The windsurfing photo (from Patterson Park in Kingston, Ontario) is courtesy of Dave Mody and I’ve previously posted photos here courtesy of Suzanne McNamee. The embedded YouTube vid. is by my good buddy Evan Walmsley. Although I am fully-identifiable, Evan posted it without my knowledge and consent. You are forgiven Evan, and thanks guys!