Heuristica Sponsors The Advocates’ Society Art of Questioning Program

Heuristica is pleased to sponsor the The Advocates’ Society Art of Questioning Program.

Questioning is not just a formality; it’s a critical opportunity for you to uncover key evidence and lay the foundation for a strong case at trial.

Designed for Alberta advocates, by Alberta advocates, this program will help you get the most out of the questioning process for your clients.

Join us on October 29th and learn how to utilize the questioning process to your advantage. Gain tips and strategies directly from judges and leading practitioners on gathering information, obtaining admissions, testing theories and assessing witness credibility.… Read More

Why PDFs Can Sink Your Case – Preserving Individual Emails the Right Way

Martin Felsky

Senior Counsel

September 15, 2025

The portable document format (PDF) was a breakthrough for the legal profession. It allowed lawyers to share contracts and pleadings in a consistent, easily readable format regardless of the software used to create them. For preserving the appearance of a document, PDF remains an excellent tool.

However, litigation is not only about appearance. It is about substance, history, and context. When a document, especially an email, is converted into PDF, critical metadata is stripped away. That metadata can include the creation date, transmission details, recipients, and other fields that may prove vital to a case.… Read More

Heuristica Congratulates Winner of Legal Research Award

Heuristica is pleased to congratulate Jamil Oueidat, the winner of the 2025 University of Calgary Faculty of Law Heuristica Discovery Counsel Award for Legal Research.

This $2,000 award is presented annually to an undergraduate law student who authors the best research paper in the Faculty’s Law 693 undergraduate E-Litigation course. Jamil’s winning paper, “The Promising Use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the Realm of Evidence” exemplifies how innovative thinking and rigorous research can open new possibilities for the courtroom of the future by exploring how emerging technologies like VR could transform the way evidence is presented in court.

Heuristica also congratulates the School, Dean Laura Spitz, past Dean, Dr.… Read More

Reconsidering the Presumption of Reliability for Digital Evidence in Canadian Law – A Cautionary Reflection on the UK Horizon Scandal

Martin Felsky

Senior Counsel

The Canadian legal framework for the admissibility of electronic evidence is grounded in a presumption that digital records generated or stored by a functioning electronic system are reliable. Codified in sections 31.1 to 31.8 of the Canada Evidence Act (CEA), this presumption was introduced in 2000 to accommodate the growing volume of digital records and to promote efficiency in legal proceedings.

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Rethinking eDiscovery – From Risk Management to Ethical Design in the Age of Generative AI

Martin Felsky

Senior Counsel

August 8, 2025

For the past decade, lawyers adopting best practices in technology-assisted review (TAR) have been guided by one overriding concern: defensibility. Their workflows were built to withstand judicial scrutiny as prescribed by the rules, case law and the Sedona Canada Principles.

That risk-averse approach serves its purpose. But it also entrenches a mindset that treated technology as a liability to be justified rather than as a capability to be unleashed. Today, generative AI invites us once again to shift our professional perspective from defensive compliance to proactive ethical design.

Beyond Defensibility: Toward Trustworthy AI Systems

In the world of generative AI, “defensibility” will no longer need to be treated as a constraint.… Read More