It’s a Tuesday afternoon at a law firm somewhere in Toronto. John is reading the Huffington Post on-line. He feels stuck. Unmotivated. With no pounding deadlines this week he just can’t get around to doing the important but not urgent work on his desk.

Tina in Vancouver is also stuck. She’s so stressed out and anxious about the deadlines she has to meet that she is frozen. Her inner dialogue is about how hopeless she is, and useless, and the worst lawyer ever, and under this harsh litany of criticism she is immobilized.

Frank in Calgary has some urgent client . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Protect Your Data by Putting a Password on Your Screensaver
Dan Pinnington

Activating a password-protected screensaver is a simple and very effective way to prevent an unauthorized person from rifling through the data on a computer or other device that’s been inadvertently . . .

Research

Finding Previous URLs
Shaunna Mireau

Today’s Tip is a story: I was asked to find what a particular web-available document would have read . . . [more]

In a news release dated today, the Law Society of British Columbia has announced approval in principal of three recommendations made in the final report of the Legal Service Providers Task Force, to wit:

• The Law Society and the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia seek to merge regulatory operations.
• That a program be created by which the legal regulator provide paralegals who have met specific, prescribed education and/or training standards with a certificate that would allow them to be held out as “certified paralegals.”
• That the Law Society develop a regulatory framework by which other providers of

. . . [more]

How do you use social media in conjunction with events, whether "live and in person" or online? The upcoming Twitter Moot always impresses me in how they have redefined an in-person event for the virtual space, holding the actual moot online–and publicly!–so that others can follow along and even participate. It changes the whole dynamic of the event.

How else can social media be used in conjunction with events–to plan them, promote them, engage people at the event or people just observing, how to "capture" or record the event, and how to allow everyone to learn from the event? Daniel . . . [more]

The December 2013 issue of LAWPRO Magazine focuses on the issue of cybersecurity and law firms. As a supplement to the magazine, practicePRO has added a number of model policies and articles to our Technology page. Written policies that clearly establish guidelines and requirements governing the acceptable use of firm technology can help reduce cyber exposures and give staff clear direction on what they are permitted and not permitted to do with law firm technology resources.

These resources and sample policies can be adapted to create polices for your firm. The model policies are also available in Word and . . . [more]

First as law students and then as lawyers, we repeatedly hear about the need for zealous advocacy. To take one example, the commentary to Rule 5.1-1 of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada Model Code of Conduct states, in part:

In adversarial proceedings, the lawyer has a duty to the client to raise fearlessly every issue, advance every argument and ask every question, however distasteful, that the lawyer thinks will help the client’s case and to endeavour to obtain for the client the benefit of every remedy and defence authorized by law.

The commentary also states “[t]he lawyer’s function . . . [more]

Let me say, up front, my post this week is a shameless promotion for the civil litigation program I am co-chairing at the OBA Institute on Thursday morning, 6 February 2014.

Those of you interested in the future of the civil trial, put it in your diaries.

The speakers include Justice David Brown, Justice Mark Edwards, Marty Teplitsky and Tom Curry.

Much has been written in the last decade about the “vanishing trial” in Ontario, and other jurisdictions. The newest generation of Ontario civil litigators may retire without ever having conducted a civil trial to judgment. The most common explanation . . . [more]

I recently had the privilege of attending the book launch of Roy McMurtry’s Memoirs and Reflections and it has stirred up many memories of my own.

Most people in the legal world will be aware of at least some aspects of McMurtry’s legal career extending over 50 plus years; litigation lawyer, Attorney General of Ontario, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court, and then Chief Justice of Ontario. But I have special memories of him from his years as Attorney General.

He was appointed Attorney General in September, 1975. In the spring of 1976, . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Rule of Law   2. Le Blogue du CRL   3. Kelly Santini LLP’s Employment Law Blog for the Suddenly Unemployed   4. Official Clio Blog    5. Canadian Securities Law . . . [more]

On December 4, 2013, the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Industry announced that Canada's new anti-spam law (CASL) will come into force on July 1, 2014.

Concurrent with this announcement, Industry Canada published its finalized Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations (ECPR) with respect to CASL. These regulations were released in response to concerns that its initial set of regulations imposed unnecessary and overly burdensome requirements with respect to the dissemination of commercial electronic messages (CEMs).

After further consultation, Industry Canada introduced a degree of increased flexibility in the ECPR by including, among other things, changes related to familial relationships, excluded CEMs, . . . [more]

It has long been an open secret that our articling system is deeply flawed. But is it unethical?

Articling today is a system that would be equally at home in Downton Abbey and in Booker Prize Winner Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

While I don’t think articling is inherently unethical, I do believe that it is inherently unequal and therefore creates an environment where unethical behavior is possible. Articling takes a vulnerable and powerless law student who is often carrying a significant financial debt and requires her to be at the beck and call of an experienced lawyer with largely . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada recently upheld in Katz Group Canada Inc. v. Ontario the decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal in finding that the Drug Interchangeability and Dispensing Fee Act Regulations, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 93, s. 9 and Ontario Drug Benefit Act Regulation, O. Reg. 201/96, s. 12.0. were not ultra vires. The regulations in question had the effect of banning private label pharmaceuticals in Ontario.

The facts were set out by Justice Abella as follows:

[3] The sale and pricing of generic drugs is provincially regulated. In Ontario, two complementary and intersecting statutes were introduced

. . . [more]