Free e-mail services from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others make getting up and running with an e-mail address a trivial effort. The unfortunate side effect of choosing to use a free email address for a law office – or any business for that matter – is that these free e-mail addresses are burdened with a negative perception: price sends a signal, and using a free e-mail service as a core part of your businesses front-office sends the wrong message.

Just a few ago, cost was a reasonable justification for solos and small firms to choose a free e-mail service. The . . . [more]

If you’re summoned for jury duty in Florida keep your thoughts on your civic responsibilities and leave your personal electronics at home.

Many of you have cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices. Even though you have not yet been selected as a juror, there are some strict rules that you must follow about using your cell phones, electronic devices and computers. You must not use any device to search the Internet or to find out anything related to any cases in the courthouse.
Between now and when you have been discharged from jury duty by the judge, you

. . . [more]

Today’s posting comes (almost live) from the Schulich Law School at Dalhousie University where Richard Devlin and the organizing committee managed what many would have considered impossible – made legal ethics interesting and relevant to a student audience. Dalhousie staged a lively well fought and provocative debate about the hottest current issue in professional ethics in Canada, the issue of Conflicts of Interest.

We at Slaw have had postings on the CBA Task Force Report on Conflicts of Interest and the Federation of Law Societies response.

Today’s Wickwire Lecture – named after F.R. Wickwire, a leading member of the . . . [more]

On Friday 5000 people across Canada attended the LEAF Persons Day Breakfast

I believe that a book without an index is not as useful as a book with a good index. 

A case headnote can provide a complete index to a judicial decision.

Headnotes are at risk because the full text of legal decisions without headnotes are now available free on the Internet from multiple sources. This free access has resulted in a dramatic reduction of print subscriptions to law reports.

Is there a need for headnotes? Headnotes tend to save time for a searcher by providing an index to a decision and by providing index material for digests. When a judicial . . . [more]

There’s a new kid on the block, the block owned by Google. A search engine named Blekko launched mere minutes ago and I think you’ll want to try it out.

Search engines come and search engines go, as we learned most dramatically from the case of Cuil. Bing may still hang in there, but it seems as though Yahoo! is in decline.

So how do you find a place in a world dominated by Google? You differentiate yourself by offering different sorts of results. WolframAlpha is perhaps the extreme example of this, positioning itself as a “computational knowledge engine.” . . . [more]

Most Slaw readers will have read from one source or another that a New York trial court has ruled that a child still four years of age can be sued for negligence. The child defendant was riding a bike with training wheels when she and her friend ran into an old woman, knocking her down; the fall broke the woman’s hip. (The woman died three months later of unrelated causes.) The story in the New York Times provides the basic facts.

The judgment, Menach v Breitman, is available as a photocopied image in PDF. I’ve OCR’d that judgment . . . [more]

Last week, the Working Group 7 of The Sedona Conference – “Sedona Canada” – issued a public comment draft of “The Sedona Canada Commentary on Proportionality in Electronic Disclosure & Discovery.”

As explained by Justice Colin Campbell in his Foreword, proportionality is not a new concept in civil procedure, but has become a critical practical imperative and conceptual ideal given the impact of electronically stored information on litigation. He says, “Civil litigation simply becomes cost-prohibitive and burdensome without early and careful attention to identifying key sources of potentially relevant data and ensuring that only potentially relevant and unique data is . . . [more]

Any lawyer with a busy practice regularly turns around and wonders where their day went. With Chrometa you can identify where you tend to use your time and evaluate if you can be more efficient while at work.

Chrometa will tell you which applications you use the most, such as your word processor, web browser, or e-mail program (i.e. Outlook), keep track of your breaks, and chart your productivity per hour during the day.

For those of us stuck with billable hours, it also allows you to record different projects related to specific clients.

It’s only available as a beta . . . [more]

Last week I covered the litigation from the Adscam controversy relating to journalistic privilege in Globe and Mail v. Canada. This week, the Federal Court released Canada (Attorney General) v. Chrétien relating to the Gomery Inquiry (pdf), the Royal Commission charged under the Inquiries Act with investigating the scandal.

From the outset, the inquiry was burdened with charges of bias and conflicts of interest. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien then sought judicial review of the inquiry of the Commission’s findings, which quashed the findings. The current appeal was an attempt to overturn this decision to quash . . . [more]

The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment have coordinated a new plan for reducing air pollution, according to this Communiqué, and also this Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat press release. The air pollution plan is based on the recommendations of a multi-party committee that included government, NGO, and industry experts. That report is not available, but may be soon. Check here, or sign up for their emails. The plan is “comprehensive” (though subject to provincial jurisdiction), will up air quality standards, and

[u]nder the new system, Canadians would have ready access to information about air quality

. . . [more]

The Uniform Arbitration Act (1990), in force in six provinces (and passed years ago in PEI but never proclaimed in force), sets out what were then modern rules for the conduct of arbitrations, with powers of arbitrators spelled out in default of agreement by the parties, and with restrictions on court intervention in the proceedings, as well as enforcement provisions. So far as I know, it works fairly well. (Ontario had a bit of controversy a few years ago about its application to family arbitrations conducted under religious law, and the statute was amended to better harmonize with family law . . . [more]