At this year’s annual Canadian Bar Association meeting, two public figures in the Canadian legal world spoke out on a topic that is very oftendiscussed, but extremely difficult to assess whether any positive change is taking place: access to justice. Both the Governor-General of Canada and former dean of law at the University of Western Ontario, David Johnston and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin spoke at this year’s annual CBA conference.

This past weekend, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin discussed Canada’s access to justice (see a Globe and mail article here): according to the World Justice Institute, Canada places 9^th . . . [more]

When you’re a sole practitioner, you sometimes feel as though you always have to be on the job; never more so than when you first start out in your own office. The worry that you’ll miss the call or e-mail of that “potentially very important client” can be a powerful motivator to be near the computer or smartphone on a constant basis.

Here’s a secret: when that “potentially very important client” is looking for you, more often than not they’ll call back. Usually, the only people who think that lawyers need to be available all day/every day are other lawyers. . . . [more]

First to BC where a committee of the Law Society of British Columbia, under the chairmanship of Gavin Hume, has produced the best and most thoughtful piece on how to practice ethically and effectively using cloud computing. We’ve referred in the past to helpful work done by the Bar Association in North Carolina and the ABA’s 20/20 Commission – see Jack Newton’s posts from May and July, as well as Connie’s and Omar’s take on last week’s ABA discussion.

At the Canadian Lawyer, David Paul has a good tip sheet of practical advice on the intelligent use . . . [more]

Last week I wrote about the growing patent battle between Google and a wide variety of foes, including Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. These companies have a common enemy – Google’s Android – and are willing go to enormous lengths to hamper Android’s growing dominance.

Today, Google announced it has taken out a $12.5B insurance policy against the threat of patent litigation by acquiring Motorola Mobility. While Motorola Mobility has a considerable business in mobile phones (it makes the popular Droid smartphone line), Google’s announcement makes it clear the acquisition was all about the 14,600 granted and 6,700 pending patents . . . [more]

Gain-sharing, as a concept, appears to be falling out of favour in recent outsourcing transactions. Once considered an innovative concept for sharing saving made by the supplier of outsourcing services, it has proved unworkable, or forgettable, over the years. Gain-sharing clauses started appearing in outsourcing contracts at least as early as a decade ago. The principle is simple: if the supplier finds a way to save costs while providing the same service, it will share those savings with the customer.

Gain-sharing has a fundamental problem: the interests of the supplier and customer are not aligned. The customer is trying to . . . [more]

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto on Saturday, August 6, 2011. Panelists included Dr. Paolo Balboni, Director, European Privacy Association, Milan, Italy; the Honorable Julie Brill, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC; Stuart Ingis, Venable LLP, Washington, DC, and Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. The session was moderated by Saira Nayak, Nayak Strategies, Redmond, WA. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Introduction

Public.Resource.Org, a US non-profit started by Carl Malamud, among others, has launched a complaint against the Smithsonian Institution in a rather unusual way. The complaint is in behalf of Mindy Summers, “an artist who lives in a purple house in Vermont with her husband and two cats” and who copied and offers for sale photographs of vintage seed catalogs originally published on the Smithsonian website. The Institution sent her a take-down notice, claiming she had violated its terms of use, particularly because she was making commercial use of the images. PRO’s complaint is published on a special-purpose website named . . . [more]

At practicePRO we’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of fraud attempts against lawyers involving bad cheques. Mainly these are done by email (though sometimes its a phone call, letter, or even a visit in person) and no doubt all lawyers reading this will be familiar by now with the scenarios: an attempt to collect on a collaborative family law settlement, a commercial debt owing, or an employee injury settlement. The aim is always the same: to get a lawyer to run a counterfeit cheque through their trust account.

It sometimes seems like a hopeless task to put a . . . [more]

The “Great Encyclopedias” of Legal Research – Part II

This is the second of a series of posts that were prepared as the sequel to a request by Professor Daniel Poulin to explain the character and purpose of “Halsburys” and the “C.E.D.” to his seminar on legal information at the University of Montreal. The views expressed are the personal opinion of the author.

THE HALSBURYS MODEL IN CANADA

There are three encyclopedic black letter statements of the law that follow the Halsburys model in Canada. Two of them are well established in the market – the Canadian Encyclopedia Digest (Western . . . [more]

The Section of State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association (ABA) hosted a panel on cyberbullying at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

The panelists included James Hanks of Ahlers & Cooney, Grant Bowers, Legal Counsel for the Toronto District School Board, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist from New York with expertise in mental health, and Kathy Macdonald, from the Calgary police.

The panel discussed how changes in technology have created new ways for students to bully each other, creating new legal challenges for schools and communities. Regulating cyberbullying raises significant constitutional questions, especially in the U.S., . . . [more]

Well only as an intervenor.

According to a Press Release out this week, CanLII and the Federation to Defend Free Access to Law at the Supreme Court

CanLII and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada have been granted leave to intervene at the Supreme Court of Canada in SOCAN v. Bell et al., a copyright case to be heard later this year in which the Court will be asked to provide guidance on the meaning of “research” as a fair dealing user right under the Copyright Act.

While the facts of the SOCAN case relate to online . . . [more]

Okay, I admit, it is the dog days of August, so to speak. But it is a sunny Friday afternoon here in Halifax and that is a rare occurrence indeed lately and it does strange things to one’s mood. This news item caught my attention and stirred the things inside me that make me Canadian; it seems that there is internal strife brewing at our national institution Tim Horton’s. It is not good for the heart to see such strife within the family. But a lawsuit has been launched deriving from a decision made in the hierarchy of the company . . . [more]