There’s a piece in the current Lawyers Weekly, “Commodification of contract drafting,” about some of the work that U.S. lawyer Ken Adams does. (The whole piece is on Adams’ site, page 1 and page 2, or here in a single page.) Much of the article deals with the obvious, such as the need for precision in expression and the dangers of using old-fashioned boilerplate. But three things caught my eye as being interesting.

First, Adams suggests that firms need rules when it comes to drafting contracts. The thought is that a firm style should be imposed where, presumably, certain . . . [more]

The latest issue of Law Practice Today (www.lawpracticetoday.org), the ABA Law Practice Management’s webzine was published today. This blockbuster issue has all sorts of great articles for the “suddenly solo” lawyer. This is new lawyer starting out as a solo because they didn’t get a job at a firm, or someone leaving a firm to continue a practice on their own. Many of the top names in law practice management have contributed articles to this issue: Dennis Kennedy, Jim Calloway, Andy Atkins and Mark Robertson.

Read the Law Practice Today “Suddenly solo” issue here.

Law Practice Today is the . . . [more]

The office of the Ontario Privacy Commissioner has released a document praising Gmail for making connection via SSL available for all communications through their website. “If You Want To Protect Your Privacy, Secure Your Gmail” [PDF] points out that when you communicate with your email server over a public wifi network, your communications are vulnerable to interception unless you encrypt them. SSL, or “secure socket layer,” is a cryptographic protocol in fairly common use — you’ll have seen it in operation if you do internet banking or make payments over the internet, and you can recognize . . . [more]

While our India readers are doubtless aghast at the Law Commission’s bold reforms on stamp duty – you can pay any transaction/court fee by demand draft/cash/postal order/banker’s cheque instead of through non-judicial stamp papers or special stamps – and at the breakneck speed of Indian Commissions of Inquiry – less than two months for a J&K fatality inquiry, and at Stalin’s announcement of a financial city – our North American readers will be puzzling over the implications of stories in today’s Evening Standard in London and the American Lawyer in New York. . . . [more]

You can follow the Sotomayor confirmation hearings online with live video. And for blow by blow commentary (by everyone and anybody) look at #Sotomayor on Twitter. . . . [more]

A sign of the times: for those who have been let go at work but feel too intimidated by the potential cost of a lawyer to seek legal assistance, comes the new service FiredWithoutCause to fill the gap. Have a read through the description below. I’m curious to hear from lawyers in the audience whether you see this type of service complementing or competing with your work?

From FWC’s social media press release (SMPR) from July 10, 2009:

FiredWithoutCause.com is a confidential online service that helps people understand their legal rights and maximize their severance package. The service provides:

• a 

The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to be associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court begin Monday morning. She will be on Capitol Hill undergoing questioning by the senators during the next week.

Of all the news outlets planning coverage, perhaps the most interesting is Associated Press. Their plan is to have live coverage via Twitter feed @AP_Courtside. They will be taking it a step further by taking questions and directions on coverage for their blog from their readers via Twitter, according to their blog post yesterday at Yahoo! . . . [more]

For a limited time, ABA Publishing is offering a special 20% discount on all ABA titles. Do your shopping before July 24, 2009 as this offer expires on that date. To get this special pricing order online and enter source code PEP9MJPM

The 20% discount applies to all ABA books and you can find a complete listing of them at www.ababooks.org. Non-ABA members get 20% off of list price. ABA Section members get 20% off the special reduced member price of any section they belong to, and 20% off the list price for books from sections they aren’t members . . . [more]

A small Canadian legal venture announced itself recently, going public in its very early stages. LexPublica, using the .ca domain so that the URL is lexpubli.ca, aims to be both a business and an online source for free legal instruments and information. At the moment LexPublica is only a blog, where the two founders, Martin Ertl (a McGill grad who has worked at Davis LLP) and Zak Greant, a techie, explain what they hope to do, which seems to be akin to what JD Supra is doing in having lawyers post their material for display and use by . . . [more]

As Calgarians head into the Stampede, today’s Globe and Mail notes that the partners at Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer have decided to make a donation to their local food bank rather than hold their annual Stampede party. Here’s the relevant bit:

Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP decided to forgo its usual glitzy party with more than 2,000 guests after it learned that the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank had recently seen a 50-per-cent jump in demand, but a decrease in donations and volunteers.

“The partners got together and decided, you know, it may be more appropriate this year instead of putting

Thanks to a couple of well placed FOI requests & investigative journalism by Robert Todd over at the Law Times, we now know that the DOJ spent over 24 million on outside counsel in 2008.

Below is a graphic clipped from the story showing those top-10 firms:

A couple of observations here. First, even if we acknowledge that this is only a list of the top-10, it’s hard not to notice a non-Canadian firm is was way out in front with 35% of the work delivered. And second, it seems odd that both Quebec and East Coast firms are . . . [more]

We’ve talked about virtual law offices before here on Slaw. Well here’s a fellow who has an office but perhaps doesn’t use it much:

click to see full image

No, he’s not in Alabama. He’s a lawyer in Ottawa who’s decided to make house calls — for those who can’t afford house counsel. Kind of the opposite of a virtual law office… . . . [more]