A private correspondent has suggested to me that call centres that record incoming calls 'for quality assurance purposes' often store the recordings offshore, including in the US. The correspondent wondered if there was any concern that the information in the calls might therefore be subject to investigation or copying by US law enforcement under the PATRIOT Act.

Both the Canadian and the Ontario Privacy Commissioners have commented on allegations of special risk of having personal information in the US because of that statute. Neither have supported the concerns. A recent summary of the discussion is found in the Ontario IPC's . . . [more]

Robert Fulghum’s book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” is a collection of essays that demonstrate that the basic rules we all learned in kindergarten are all that is necessary to successfully navigate the adult world. The same can be said for legal marketing. The following legal marketing rules are adapted from some of the lessons contained in Fulghum’s “Kindergarten Credo”:

Share. What’s happening in your firm? What is the latest news in your area of practice, or in your clients’ industry? What current events could impact your client’s bottom line? It’s a world of content . . . [more]

For the thirteenth year in a row, Altman Weil, Inc. has surveyed Chief Legal Officers or CLOs on the issues of importance on the management and operation of their corporate law departments. These surveys capture current thinking of Chief Legal Officers and give lawyers in private practice a good indication of what corporate clients are think about and want from firms that do work for them.

Survey Findings

Corporate law departments report that they are re-negotiating outside counsel fees, shifting work to lower-priced law firms, increasing in-house capacity, opting for alternative service providers and using new technology — all to . . . [more]

Adrian Lurssen’s recent piece, “Are We Heading to a Post-Blogging World?”, made waves last month, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. In short, Adrian discusses the growing trend of writers foregoing their own blogs to publish under branded media platforms such as the Huffington Post. He cites the presence of a built-in audience and the ability to piggyback on brand reputation as answers to the problems of “how to be read” – reasoning that “how to publish” has never been easier.

Adrian is spot-on in his assessment of the value of developing a targeted readership. I . . . [more]

I attended the annual IT.CAN conference Monday and Tuesday in Montreal. I find the IT.CAN conferences are consistently high quality, and the best continuing legal education option for lawyers practicing in the tech space. Topics at this conference included things such as content convergence and the regulatory framework, legal issues surrounding cloud computing, social media, digital commerce and clean tech, advanced software licensing, an annual update on IP issues, privacy and anti-spam updates, health care IT, outsourcing trends, public sector IT issues, and cyber libel. 

While attendance was strong, and included (as always) many well-known IT practitioners, there is always room . . . [more]

Yes it is possible.

And from it follows increased access to justice, as night follows day.

Re-reading Richard Susskind's book "The End of Lawyers?" this weekend, I was struck by how straightforward it is.

Advocacy cannot be replaced by improved technology or outsourcing. It is like an element: it cannot be further reduced. Quality advocacy is the result of the proper analysis of facts, and preparation. It may be improved by experience, but the advocate must have dissected out what has to be proved, and must know the factual record cold. There are no shortcuts.

The client cannot expect to . . . [more]

Not only is Canada long overdue in its statutorily mandated review of PIPEDA, our federal privacy protection law, but it seems as though significant elements of the law may soon be undermined significantly, as the United States Trade Representative is reportedly pushing for strict limitations on privacy protections as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership that Canada recently joined.

Much has already been written about the copyright restrictions the USTR aims to foist on Canada and other signatories through the TPP. For Canada, these are particularly poignant, as they come right on the heels of Canada's long and hard fought . . . [more]

Everyone loves a good story. Numerous studies show that people are more likely to learn and retain information told in the format of a story, probably a vestige from the primary means of relaying information through most of human history.

So what about the story describing the imminent doom of the legal profession as we know it? Mitch Kowalski, who joined the Slaw team this year, just released a book this year which tells this tall tale.

Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century relates a fictitious account of an innovative and visionary law firm, Bowen, . . . [more]

It’s not hard to find those who argue that the end is nigh for legal and professional information publishing. The security and strength of “need to know” and “have to have” information appears to have diminished, with content seeming to be down to “prince” or an even more lowly status in the monarchical hierarchy. Those who argue in those directions do so effectively, showing how the Internet, changing profitability and competitive models and the shift in favour of workflow solutions render the publishing component no longer core. Informed commentators see the current fortunes of the main professional publishers, . . . [more]

Listening to law librarians at their recent annual meetings, it is apparent that online services are now seen in the same light as loose-leaf services. Both are sources of increasing consumer frustration that is triggering the cancellation of services that were once seen as essential to the practice of law.

The fall from grace

In their prime, online services and loose-leaf services were each seen as the panacea for all that was wrong in the world of legal research. Given the inflated expectations as to what each format could deliver, a fall from grace was inevitable.

It is hard to . . . [more]

Although it is now customary for outsourcing agreements to include extensive change management provisions, not all of them include “Mandatory Change” or “Directive” provisions. These are provisions that entitle a Customer to require its Service Provider to start work on a particular change on a priority basis and without compliance with the often extensive provisions that have been inserted into the outsourcing agreement specifically to ensure that the Service Provider does not start work on a change until there is a written agreement around all of the terms and conditions. The need for Mandatory Change provisions can arise, for example, . . . [more]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the need for firms to take a stronger look at risk management – in other words, to see risk management as much more than simply compliance with law society and other regulations. I suspect that many firms do not have a formal risk management role within the firm because they don’t believe there is much risk beyond compliance issues or that the role is not robust enough to warrant a special position within the firm.

Both of these viewpoints are incorrect, so let me bulk-up the risk manager’s role to include innovation to . . . [more]