The Canadian Bar Association’s new Partnership Toolkit is a comprehensive collection of information aimed at lawyers trying to navigate the oftentimes confusing and difficult path to partnership. Lawyers will find a wealth of advice here in the form of self assessments, audio podcasts and articles in both web and PDF formats.

The site can be navigated in an interactive and animated menu style as well as a traditional series of links. Some of the highlights of the Toolkit in include:

• A self assessment questionnaire to help you decide if partnership is right for you.
• An audio podcast by two coaches

This post concludes a series of post on the subject topic:

• Presentation of the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Site Guidelines (21 Jan 2010)
• Presentation of the Working Group selection of principles included in the subject guidelines; principles 1, 2 and 3 explained (The Right Information for Specific Audiences, Empowerment, Timeliness – 17 Aug 2010)
• Presentation of Principles 4, 5 and 6 (Notification, Content, Security – 20 Aug 2010)
• Presentation of Principles 7, 8 and 9 (Bilinguism, Accessibility, Interactivity – 25 Aug 2010)

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome. . . . [more]

Most of us realize that merely deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from the hard drive or other storage media it resides on. (For some background on this issue see a post I wrote a while back.)

Given how we use digital devices today – both for work and personal use – we can’t just abandon this issue to our firm IT staff. Our personal computers at home, our phones, copiers, memory sticks and ipads all probably contain our own personal information, or personal or confidential information of others. We need to manage that not only while we use . . . [more]

What’s the best thing about Wikipedia? It’s a source that’s “good enough”. It’s an excellent way to get up to speed when all you really need is general or background knowledge. And the price point is so attractive! But would I rely on Wikipedia exclusively? Doubtful … and I certainly wouldn’t rely on it in an important situation without checking primary sources. 

Some wikis are now appearing as sources of legal information. I was fascinated to read the recent post on this site about the new tax wiki established by Professor Ben Alarie, of the U of T Law Faculty; . . . [more]

One of my favourite funny memories of time spent in Germany is of a moment in the square of a small town when a chant went up from among the layabouts that decorate these public spaces: “Johnson! Johnson! Johnson! . . . ” And, lo, here came Johnson strolling from behind some building naked as a jaybird. Hausfraus — it was shopping time — turned away, moved away, and this Moses parting the bourgeois sea, not acknowledging his claque, which kept up the chant, sauntered free. But as he approached the fishmongers, where I was watching from, (with some uneasiness, . . . [more]

A concern that I hear frequently from women lawyers is the lack of recognition and compensation for those partners – often women – who devote time to building up the human capital in their law firms. This includes time spent mentoring younger lawyers or working on the firm’s education, articling or associate development committees. When it comes to dividing up the partnership profits at the end of the year, it is typically only billable hours and collected revenue that counts and not time spent ensuring a stronger future for the firm. 

For many women lawyers, this is frustrating because mentoring . . . [more]

Yesterday the Twitter was awash with messages about this revolutionary new Gmail Priority Inbox. The beta version just arrived in my email, and have to say that I am already in love with it. Essentially what it does is bring new, unopened, important messages to the top, then lists those messages that are “starred” (which I have flagged with a star), and then lists everything else. It learns which are important messages over time depending on which are opened and which are responded to. In other words, its accuracy gets better over time.

This entertaining little video explains it . . . [more]

We care about print here at Slaw, though we’re the home of pixel-lex. Print is what we grew up with, even the tykes among us; it’s still the base for much of our professional primary sources; and though we love our tech — because ambivalence points both ways, after all — when it comes to reading the touchstone for comparison is always the printed book. So when one of the great publishers is heard to say that one of the great books is “out of print,” we pay attention.

It seems that the Sunday Times carried a story in which . . . [more]

Unforeseen circumstances have landed me in Campbell River, British Columbia for a few days. I’m trying to make the most of this detour by taking in whatever Campbell River has to offer. One of my better-spent days included a visit to the Campbell River Museum which has substantial displays devoted to the First Nations of the region, their history, material culture, place names, stories, and the colonization attempts by the Spanish and British. I know in general terms how that turned out – the British were the successful colonizers. And I know all to well what that meant for First . . . [more]

We didn’t get around to noticing the Law Library of Congress’ new blog In Custodia Legis, which explains its name and aim here.

Today, it featured a new post on the developments at Thomas to make legislative information more accessible. There aren’t a lot of comments yet, but it’s early days.

The high spots for me were on Social Media and a Legislative Map at the State level, which looks simple but is only simple to use.

Social Media Box

In addition to easier access to the Library’s social media, there is a new box to highlight ways . . . [more]

With the Law Librarian Conversations podcast settling into its new home at CALI (the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction), the new podcast Law School Tech Talk has now been started. David Dickens, Consulting Technologist at Pepperdine Law, is the host along with co-hosts and regular contributors: Jonathan Ezor (billed as “resident law prof”), Debbie Ginsberg (“Law Librarian”), and Ben Chapman (“another veteran IT guy”). They hope to cover all angles of law school technology.

From the email I received about the show:

We hope to have live shows for you about every two weeks; they should run 30 minutes, give

Before giving legal effect to any piece of information, people want to know whether the information can be trusted. What is this information? Where does it come from? How sure must they be of the answers to those questions?

At a basic level these are not even legal questions. They are not addressed particularly to the content of the information, though the content can help answer them. They are about the medium and not the message. They are questions of authentication.

Authentication questions apply to information in any form and in any medium. Electronic documents do not need ‘more’ or . . . [more]