Or, perhaps more importantly, where is your client’s stuff? Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a hot topic for a lot of businesses, and the legal profession is not exempt from its impact. It can be defined in a variety of ways and is part of what is commonly known as cloud computing. At its essence, you license access to software that is installed on a computer outside your office and you access it over the Internet. All of the data you enter into the software – e-mail, appointments, letters, depositions – is stored on that remote computer. SaaS services are accessed through . . . [more]

The professional services firm management guru David Maister, in the introduction to his latest book Strategy and the Fat Smoker, states as follows:

“In the last two-and-a-half decades, I have been trusted to see a large number of strategic plans from a wide variety of professional firms around the world, including direct competitors. What is immediately noteworthy is how similar (if not identical) they all are.”

Noting that the underlying ideas remain the same around the world, over time, and from competitor to competitor, Maister states that:

“Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but . . . [more]

Police don’t normally turn to witches and warlocks to find their fugitives.

Alfred Hightower was located in Canada by his IP address when American police subpoenaed Blizzard Entertainment to identify his World of Warcraft account. Questing, it seems, is not all fun and games when on the run.

See the story on the Ottawa Citizen. . . . [more]

A reputable legal researcher recently suggested to the chief executive officer of a legal publishing company that the day was coming soon when his company would be offering its secondary content for free on a kindle. Needless to say, the CEO’s response was “not any time soon”. As an aside, he noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to pay authors to write secondary content even now. He was frustrated by the growing market expectation that everything, including secondary content, would soon be available for free.

There is a growing assumption in the market that “someone else”, other than the . . . [more]

Herewith a few interesting tweets encountered by me and others during the past few weeks. We’re slow in picking up the threads because of the holidays, but we’ll be back on track now.

Please join us in sharing the best of Twitter: simply tag your tweets or retweets with #slawca.

• @citizenlab lecture at Google about how Internet censorship is rising – by jacobglick
• New President appointed for the Australian Law Reform Commission. Congratulations Professor Rosalind Croucher – by AusLawReform
• RT @saleemkhan [Canadian Association of Journalists] “CAJ battles libel chill” http://tr.im/HKfA – by conniecrosby
• RT @jordan_law21: 2 UK firms outsource

Hint.fm, the baby of a couple of IBM scientists, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (who are actually a couple) [UPDATE: actually NOT a couple; my mistake; see the comments], is a website about visualizing data. As we’ve talked about many times on Slaw, one method of trying to understand the current surges of information involves using data to construct visual Gestalts that our minds might ingest in a gulp. The fact that a picture is worth 10³ words is nothing new, of course; charts and graphs and diagrams have been around since before Babylonian geometry. What is . . . [more]

wherein (because it is a Friday) we peel the layers of the onion (in attempted homage to that Onion) and reveal the secret behind the recent prorugation of the Canadian Parliament. 

Is there also some connection to this and from appearances this?. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

Our story begins a number of years ago (not necessarily on Friday the 13th or otherwise). . . . [more]

Amongst the many pieces of legislation to come into force on January 1, 2010 is the Defamation Act 2009 in Ireland. The Irish Constitution at article 40.6.1 calls for blasphemy to be a crime “The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.” Conveniently enough; however, until January 1, 2010 there has not been a legal definition of what constitutes blasphemy in Ireland. So blasphemers in Ireland have been gotten off until now, kind of like how I’ve never had to shovel the highways here in Nova Scotia. . . . [more]

In a Nov. blog post, Hein addressed deficiencies in Google’s indexing of their content.

We provided the metadata for and allowed Google Scholar to crawl more than 1 million documents from HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. … Of these … they opted to only include about 50% of the content in the Google Scholar index.

[…]

While it is hard to pinpoint exactly what Google Scholar’s methodology is for adding documents to their index, we do know that they have left out some key documents from HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library.

Then in Dec., Hein addressed improvements to the indexing . . . [more]

I often wonder why it appears that only a small handful of people are regularly engaged in real discussions about what is happening with privacy in Canada. These discussions typically — at least in my experience — take place on blogs, tweets flying around the ‘net and regular submissions to parliament by organizations like the Canadian Bar Association. Security breaches regularly get coverage in the media but the creeping erosion of privacy in pursuit of crime-free neighbourhoods and safe travelling seldom gets much attention.

The proposed implementation of body scanners in Canadian airports is a major exception to this and . . . [more]

The Financial Post shared that Ford is planning to enable many of its new vehicles with web browsing capability. Oh, and a bunch of Touch like tools as well. There is a nod to safety:

The automaker also is incorporating the Twitter social network’s Open Beak application into Sync and is adding Pandora and Stitcher Internet radio and MapQuest.com’s online mapping information. Ford developed its own Web browser, which can be operated only while the car is parked, Mr. Kuzak said.

(emphasis mine)

The US Transportation Secretary is quoted in the article:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood testified Oct.

♫ What makes you think that you are invincible
I can see it in your eyes that you’re so sure
please don’t tell me that I am the only one that’s vulnerable
impossible…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by John Vesely, under the pseudonym Secondhand Serenade.

The State Bar of Arizona has issued one of the first Ethics Opinions on preserving client confidentiality when placing client documents for access over the Internet. Arizona stated:

“Lawyers providing an online file storage and retrieval system for client access of documents must take reasonable precautions to protect the security and confidentiality of . . . [more]