The next and most important area for innovation in law firms is not in the way we bill time, structure compensation or in the technology we employ. It is in turning our attention to maximising the output of – in the words of Hercule Poirot – our little grey cells.

Achieving and sustaining excellence takes strategic and practiced use of our biological resources. Work life in the modern law firm is a marathon not a sprint. Developing practices to sustain our energy and maximise our mental effectiveness means we will get more value out of every hour at the office . . . [more]

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been using a new mail client for the Mac called Sparrow. It’s a beautifully-designed, simple and fast e-mail application. As most of us spend most – if not all – of our day reading, writing and responding to e-mails, an application that makes this a slightly more pleasant experience is worth mentioning.

Sparrow’s interface can perhaps be best described as “iPad meets Desktop” – its compact, minimalistic UI is reminiscent of Google’s own iPad-optimized Gmail interface, with a hint of Twitter’s new Mac app thrown in for good measure. Everything in the . . . [more]

Morally, legally, financially, environmentally: can we really create huge unprecedented risks in pursuit of our own comfort, and manage them successfully? I am coming to agree with Thomas Homer-Dixon that our destructive capacity has far outstripped our ability to manage or even understand it:

As our world has become more complex, we have, in fact, moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty. In a world of risk, we have data at hand that allow us to estimate the probabilities that any given system we are working with will evolve along certain pathways, and we can also

. . . [more]

Taco Bell has been the target of class-action false advertising lawsuit over the beef content of their tacos, summarized here in this video from the Associated Press. The Statement of Claim by California law firms Blood, Hurst & O’Reardon LLP, and Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles is available here.

Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal points out that most corporate lawsuits result in this approach to crisis management:

1) Say as little as possible; but . . .

2) Deny the allegations; and . . .

3) If anyone presses further, say “it’s corporate policy

. . . [more]

At the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Blog ACRLog, California Law Librarian Michael Ginsborg issues a call for united action on the part of libraries to protect themselves from anticompetitive practices in the publishing world. Ginsborg references Robert Darnton’s recent work in the New York Review of Books highlighting the extent to which libraries (and their users) are damaged by such practices. He also links to his own more detailed article in Spectrum, the American Association of Law Libraries’ topical monthly, where he looks at some of the current realities in the relationship between law libraries and legal publishers. . . . [more]

Analysis is a destructive process. It involves dissolving the whole so as to get at the constituent parts, something human beings seem to like to do. I know I was into it as a kid, “analysing” my bike, my radio, and pretty much anything that wasn’t a clearly solid lump. (Now putting it all back together was a different story. But that’s a different story.)

There’s legal analysis, of course. And then there’s fun breakdown. One good example of the latter is the separating out of the tracks that are combined to make our recored music. I seem to recall . . . [more]

Facebook, like bad weather, is everywhere. Nothing new there. What is new is how it’s appearing in the legal system. When Facebook is used as a tool for revenge it may lead to litigation. It can become a sword to undermine an opponent. It can even be a force for good for police and courts.

In a racy case being played out in the Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia Facebook was used as a sword to inflict pain that led to a high profile lawsuit. Then in the same case Facebook was used by the court to summons the inflictor . . . [more]

This is a follow-up post to a previously published Slaw post on a case in which two members of the Church of the Universe claim that the Ontario’s marijuana prohibition violates the freedom of religion protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Members of the Church of the Universe believe that smoking marijuana brings followers closer to God and use the drug as a sacrament.

I recently read on the Chaire en droit de la sécurité et des affaires électroniques blog that on February 1, 2011, the British police service has launched a website that allows their citizens to obtain statistics of crimes in their region and neighbourhood. It allows a person in the United Kingdom to track local crime levels.

Law librarian and colleague Susan Barker at the Bora Laskin Law Library has let me know that the new 5th edition of Legal Problem Solving – Reasoning, Research & Writing (LexisNexis Canada) is now out. She has worked with author Maureen Fitzgerald in updating this new edition and has let me know that purchasers of the book will receive a mini 36-page “insert” guide called The Ultimate Guide to Canadian Legal Research, which provides a nice overview of legal research (I have seen the mini-guide but not the new edition).

I have always liked this book and use it . . . [more]

Many years ago I took an excellent time management course for lawyers that was put on by our local Continuing Legal Education Society. The instructor had many good tips on how to manage a busy lawyer’s day. I went back to my office filled with enthusiasm that finally I was going to feel a sense of control over my life. I diligently experimented with many of the suggestions from the course. However, despite my best efforts, I did not manage to successfully implement a single one of the instructor’s recommendations.

My assistant was less than pleased when I tried to . . . [more]

As readers may recall, a few weeks ago a delegation of Sikhs, invited to the Quebec National Assembly to make a presentation to a committee, was turned away by security when they declined to surrender their kirpans. Subsequently the Parti Québécois tabled a motion yesterday respecting kirpans, and today Quebec’s Liberal government has said it will support that motion.

The motion put forward by the PQ is rather more narrow than has been reported in the press, which speaks simply of “a ban”; it reads as follows:

Que l’Assemblée nationale appuie sans réserve la décision prise par sa Direction de

. . . [more]