In my last column, I talked about staffing the marketing department and deciding whether you need to “rent or buy”. Almost any marketing function can be outsourced if attention is paid to maintaining relationships, but being clear about expectations is important from the outset.

The first step in getting the most out of a marketing consultant or agency is to be clear about why you’re hiring them. Law firms usually bring in outside marketing help for one of four reasons:

• Something needs to be done, but you’re not sure what 
• You know what needs to be done, but you don’t

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Laura Legge, O. Ont., Q.C., passed away on October 15, 2010.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Slaw.

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The Ontario Court of Appeal recently released its decision in Jaffer v. York University, 2010 ONCA 654, which reaffirms the proposition that the Superior Court of Justice does have jurisdiction over academic disputes that are grounded in contract or tort.

University administrators will find the ruling important in assessing their liability to civil claims, and students bringing civil suits against universities will find it useful in constructing proper pleadings.

Background

The plaintiff, Ashif Jaffer, had Trisomy 21, also known as Down’s Syndrome, and was accepted to York’s Glendon College in September 2006. Although attempts were made to determine . . . [more]

As we’ve recently seen here on Slaw, getting governments to cough up information can be a difficult proposition. But there’s some help for folks in Nova Scotia. The Right to Know Coalition is:

… a non-profit organization. Through advocacy and education, RTKNS encourages the use and development of freedom-of-information legislation to foster a better informed and more politically active electorate in Nova Scotia and to improve the quality of public and private decision making in the province.

RTKNS has been around for years but has somehow slipped under my radar and eluded Slaw’s attention. Our apologies for that.

The . . . [more]

My good friend Jim Calloway, practice management advisor for the Oklahoma State Bar Association, just added a fantastic post on his Law Practice Tips Blog.

Jim’s post, One Firm’s View of Client Expectations is about a South Carolina law firm that has decided to use its web site to make certain their potential clients have clear and realistic expectations about the firm before they even schedule an appointment. Check out the Client Expectations (Realistic or Unrealistic) section of their web page.

This page has statements I have never seen on a law firm’s website before: “We do not work . . . [more]

The International Competition Network (ICN) is a group concerned to encourage competition-friendly policy changes in member nations. Canada’s Competition Bureau is a member.

Founded in 2001, the ICN

…provides competition authorities with a specialized yet informal venue for maintaining regular contacts and addressing practical competition concerns. This allows for a dynamic dialogue that serves to build consensus and convergence towards sound competition policy principles across the global antitrust community.

Unlike the G8 and some other more shadowy international groups, the ICN has a secretariat, and thus presumable also collects and maintains files of its own creation. The website . . . [more]

First Member of Atlantic Canada's Mi’kmaq Community to be Appointed Judge

We southerners are rarely able to see the stars, let alone the true spectacle of the heavens, the aurora borealis. But never fear: the internet to the rescue. The Canadian Space Agency maintains the AuroraMax Project, which features a web cam pointed at the Yellowknife sky — after dusk, natch. So the insomniacs among us can watch live as the northern lights play up in the ionosphere.

Now, Yellowknife is currently on Mountain Daylight Time, 6 hours off GMT, with sunset at around 7:20 p.m. local time. If you’re not prepared to stay up to catch the best of . . . [more]

In conjunction with the release of his latest autobiography, The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Fry has produced a rather unique interactive iPhone app titled myFry. What really catches your attention about it is the app’s navigation system:

When I first saw it, I was immediately struck by its beauty. Its functionality, however, remained something of a mystery to me. The designer of the app, Stefanie Posavec, writes:

The app functions as a ‘visual index’ of key theme tags within the book, which have been divided into 4 major groups: People, Subjects, Emotions, and Fryisms (metaphors, similes, word play,

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Legal Project Management has certainly become flavour of the month. I will be co-chairing a full one-day conference on the topic (on November 1^st, 2010 in Toronto). This is the first Canadian event of its kind and the fact that the conference is organized by the Canadian Bar Association and has both law firm and in-house counsel speakers suggests that the idea of applying project management principles to legal services has broad support and interest across the profession.

But while the topic resonates for many lawyers (with its prospect for increased budgetary certainty and potentially better outcomes), my experience . . . [more]

The fall 2010 session of the Supreme Court of Canada began earlier this week.

Not everyone knows that electronic facta filed by the parties in cases before the Supreme Court of Canada are available on the Court’s website. This has been so for cases filed since February 2009.

For example, if you want to find out about the arguments of the parties in upcoming hearings of the fall season, you only need to click on the style of cause (party name) link for a particular case.

For example, today, the Court heard an appeal in the case of Information . . . [more]