Legal argumentation is — or can be seen as — a branch of the age-old discipline of rhetoric, latterly “informal logic.” After all, people have been trying to persuade each other forever, whether in connection with rules or not. Though most lawyers rely on law school training, the discipline of actual practice and intuition as the instruments to guide and hone their rhetorical skills, some might wish to think directly about the art of persuasion itself. In which case, the new Rhetoric & Communication Research Network (RCRN) within SSRN’s Humanities Network should prove useful.

Law is more directly . . . [more]

I too am at the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 in Chicago organized by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section. This has been my first time at this conference. A few things struck me immediately:

• this is a very different law conference; and
• everyone is extremely friendly.

I arrived on Wednesday evening during a reception before the LexThink.1 event that Jason Wilson wrote up for us yesterday.

I noticed that there was a group of people huddled around an easel and announcements about making guesses about the weight of a food truck. Huh? What were they doing? . . . [more]

Last night was Day .5 of the ABA Tech Show, and I have to give it up to Matt Homann, et al. for putting on a great show at the newly branded Lexthink.1. The billing for this event is twenty slides, six minutes, one topic, all on the future of law practice. Sure, the set up is no Battledecks, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. Even with all the preparation the format isn’t as easy as you might think, particularly when that slide changes and you aren’t ready to move on just yet. It’s designed to push . . . [more]

One of the puzzling things I have noticed about new lawyers is that they tend to come out of law school thinking like 50 year old lawyers – and not like the digital natives they are. In general they don’t seem to think like their peers who have pursued callings other than law. And that’s not a good thing. 

That seems strange to a digital immigrant like myself, who embraces things like a paperless practice and social media. We sometimes wonder why law students are not pushing us into this world and demanding new and innovative approaches, rather than the . . . [more]

Given that it is Law Student Week at SLAW, I thought it appropriate to dedicate this post to the OBA’s recent recommendations to the LSUC Task Force on the future of articling.

Scrutiny of all professional entry-to-practice criteria by the Competition Bureau and Ontario’s Fairness Commissioner requires the legal profession, and all other self-regulating professions, to carefully analyze their criteria and eliminate any elements that do not play a legitimate role in protecting the public.

In response to this scrutiny Convocation approved the establishment of the Articling Task Force to address concerns about the articling program, relating in particular to . . . [more]

This past week Dr. Michael Rachlis launched Doctors for Fair Taxation, calling for the top wealth earners in Canada to be taxed even further. Given that physicians are often prominent members of this tax bracket, the initiative attracted lots of attention.

Rachlis suggested to Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom that this could inspire a “Lawyers for Fair Taxation.” Walkom responded with skepticism, which to me was incredibly telling of the way that lawyers continue to be perceived in society.

The rationale behind Rachlis’ group is that income inequalities lead to poorer health indicators, and that the decline of . . . [more]

Last week I wrote on The High Cost of Cloud Computing Due Diligence, and asked readers what thoughts they had on how the burden of cloud computing due diligence could be reduced.

In his post on The Myth of Due Diligence, David Whelan questions the assumption that we should apply more strict due diligence requirements to the cloud than to traditional desktop-based software:

If due diligence is called for – and something is, whether it needs that name or not – then it should apply equally to the wireless routers, operating systems, and locally installed software within law

In my post here on 19 September, I railed on about the fork in the road of advocacy – one towards mediation, the other towards traditional court advocacy. I said, “Court advocacy is to mediation advocacy, as tennis is to cage fighting. Without an umpire.” My theme: although there is some overlap of skills, the two are sufficiently different that the advocate should concentrate his or her practice on one or the other.

In the Spring 2012 Advocates’ Journal there is an article by the Chief Justice of Ontario which lays bare the differences between court and mediation advocacy . . . [more]

Those of you who read the Globe and Mail may have seen in today’s paper the report by Jeff Gray, “Yes, Virginia, this is a rant from the bench,” reporting an edited version of what Justice David Brown had to say from the bench, Thursday, about Ontario’s paper-based document management system. I might not have called it a “rant,” which suggests a lack of control; rather, it’s a scathing and at times sardonic denunciation by a judge fully in control of his facts and his language. It concludes:

[17] If some may consider such criticism un-judicial in

In an unprecedented move that reflects a climate of judicial concern over the BC Justice Reform initiative, the three Chief Justices of BC’s courts issued a five page statement on judicial independence today. The statement was issued by Chief Justice of BC Lance Finch, Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the Supreme Court of BC and Chief Judge Thomas Crabtree of the Provincial Court of BC. The statement is entitled “Judicial Independence (And What Everyone Should Know About It).” In a previous post, I reviewed the BC Government’s launch of the Justice Reform Initiative which includes a Green Paper on . . . [more]

Statistics Canada released a report today, Legal Aid in Canada: Resource and Caseload Statistics, detailing information from 2010-2011.

The highlights of the report state that the federal government provided $112 million for criminal legal aid during this period, a decrease of 2% when adjusted for inflation, whereas provinces and territories increased their criminal and civil legal aid by 1% to $563 million.

A pdf version of the entire report is available here. . . . [more]