Here's What's New in Practical Guidance Canada – June & July 2025

Practical Guidance offers new tools to help Canadian legal professionals work faster and with confidence. This update covers recent additions across key practice areas — including law kits, playbooks, and checklists — all designed to support drafting, compliance, and client service.

Supporting Legal Professionals with Practical, Targeted Content

The legal landscape is constantly evolving, and Practical Guidance continues to grow alongside it. Over the past two months, we’ve introduced a wide range of new content across several key practice areas, focused on helping legal professionals work with greater speed, confidence, and jurisdictional accuracy.

Whether you’re drafting agreements, navigating regulatory changes, or training employees on legal policies, Practical Guidance delivers relevant, up-to-date tools to meet the moment.

Capital Markets & M&A: New Securities Law Kits for a Complex Regulatory Environment

To support Capital Markets and M&A practitioners, we’ve launched five new resource kits that offer curated collections of practice notes, precedents, checklists, and sample clauses. These kits cover topics such as takeover bids, convertible bond offerings, and public disclosure, while also addressing the growing importance of cross-border considerations with a dedicated US–Canada securities kit. Designed for ease of access, each kit helps lawyers quickly find the resources they need to advise clients, structure deals, and stay compliant in a complex regulatory environment. Find links to all the new law kits in the latest newsletter.

Employment Law Guidance That Meets the Moment

In light of recent economic shifts, we’ve developed a new resource kit to help businesses affected by tariffs navigate workforce-related challenges. This kit provides practical guidance on employment terminations, layoffs, insolvency planning, and fulfilling contractual obligations under financial pressure.

We’ve also expanded our collection of drafting tools, adding two new playbooks: the Employment Agreement Playbook and the Independent Contractor Agreement Playbook. These resources help users manage negotiations more efficiently, offering preferred positions, fallback language, and clause-specific insights.

In addition, the growing wave of pay transparency legislation across Canada has prompted the release of a national practice note and two jurisdiction-specific checklists — tailored to BC and PEI — to support HR and legal teams in achieving compliance. Review all the latest resources via the June/July newsletter.

Expanded Family Law Support for Western Canada

We’ve added 20 newly developed checklists to the Family Law module for Alberta and British Columbia, supporting practitioners who draft domestic contracts and litigation documents. These checklists are designed to reduce drafting errors, clarify best practices, and enhance confidence when working with complex family law matters in these provinces. Learn more about all the new checklists.

Deeper Tools for Intellectual Property and Technology Work

Lawyers working in intellectual property and technology now have access to a new Software as a Service (SaaS) Agreement Playbook for customers, which outlines negotiation strategy, risk mitigation, and fallback options for key contract terms. Additional tools — including a trademark audit checklist, a patent audit checklist, and new IP covenants clauses — give users structured ways to manage portfolios, safeguard rights, and align deals with client goals.

The addition of a Federal Data Processing Agreement precedent supports privacy compliance under both PIPEDA and Québec’s Law 25, complete with drafting notes on breach response and regulatory obligations. Check out all these resources in the latest newsletter.

Commercial Law: Better Tools for Negotiation and Risk Mitigation

We continue to expand our commercial law coverage with high-impact content designed to support real-world contract work. Recent additions include new practice notes and checklists on the evolving force majeure clause — a topic of increasing interest considering economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

To help Canadian legal professionals stay informed on broader regulatory trends, we’ve introduced the Presidential Executive Actions Tracker. With President Donald Trump now serving a second term, this tracker summarizes key U.S. executive actions in 2025, their legal impact, and any Canadian countermeasures. It’s a valuable resource for legal teams managing cross-border operations or anticipating policy shifts that could affect their clients

To support regulatory compliance in the consumer protection space, we’ve also added new checklists addressing influencer best practices and the Money Services Businesses framework, rounding out our content offering for consumer-facing organizations.

In-House Counsel: Resources for Risk, Compliance, and AI Governance

In-house legal teams now have access to 12 new checklists on contract risk management, covering key risk areas such as liability, indemnity, title retention, insolvency, and payment terms. These checklists are designed to help counsel proactively identify risks, allocate responsibility, and ensure contract performance when stakes are high.

In response to the heightened interest in AI use and compliance, we've also introduced a new AI in the Workplace Training Presentation. This ready-made tool provides a foundational overview of generative AI, outlines organizational AI principles, and explores potential risks, benefits, and consequences of non-compliance — all within a workplace context. It’s ideal for internal rollout as part of responsible AI use training

Additionally, a new practice note on cybersecurity compliance offers legal teams a comprehensive view of applicable frameworks, industry standards, and risk mitigation strategies in Canada — an essential reference for organizations operating in highly regulated or infrastructure-critical sectors.

French Content Tailored to the Quebec Market

Practical Guidance continues to invest in French-language content to support the unique needs of Quebec practitioners. In recent weeks, we’ve released new translations of core documents — including software development contracts and copyright licences — along with employment letter templates for terminations, re-employment, and warnings. Notably, we’ve also introduced new practice notes on reprisals in Quebec employment law and the judicial review process in labour matters.

All of this content is organized within the French Resource Kit, making it easier than ever for users to locate high-value materials adapted or translated specifically for Quebec. Learn more from the June/July newsletter.

Playbooks That Go Beyond Checklists

With the recent additions of new playbooks for employment, commercial, and real estate law, Practical Guidance now includes 10 full-featured playbooks across four practice areas. These playbooks offer much more than checklists — they include favoured clause language, fallback positions, and detailed drafting commentary, all tailored to the Canadian legal context.

Whether you’re working on a SaaS agreement, a sale of goods contract, or a commercial lease in Ontario, these playbooks are designed to help you draft faster and with greater accuracy — all while reducing the burden of repetitive legal work. See all the latest playbooks in the Practical Guidance newsletter.

Always Evolving to Meet Legal Needs

As client expectations, regulations, and workflows evolve, Practical Guidance remains focused on delivering the tools Canadian legal professionals need to stay ahead. We’re committed to updating and expanding our content every month, so you can work with the most current, jurisdiction-specific guidance available.

To learn more about these updates have a look at the June & July newsletter, or for a walkthrough of the latest content, request a live demo of Lexis+ AI^TM today.