The august Royal Canadian Mint, birthplace of the lovely golden loonie (but not the snappy new plastic bills) and soon to be the graveyard for the penny, is moving to take metal out of the coin equation altogether. They’re now promoting a plan to implement the MintChip, a system for exchanging value via electronic devices with ease and security:

MintChip brings all the benefits of cash into the digital age. Instant, private and secure, MintChip value can be stored and moved quickly and easily over email, software applications, or by physically tapping devices together.

Wisely, perhaps, the . . . [more]

On March 26, 2012, the Attorney General of British Columbia announced that special prosecutor lawyer Peter Wilson has been given expanded powers to lay charges against polygamists in the province.

. . . [more]

I have been thinking lately that there is a certain similarity between how I observed the Crown operating in the lower courts in the 1970s and how I have observed the Crown working at the highest levels more recently. Let me explain and offer some brief biographical account.

I first started to do a certain kind of paralegal work – what would later be called “Native Courtwork” – making a connection between a Native person accused of an offense and a lawyer willing to represent the accused (and often doing much of the factual research) at Akwesasne, the Mohawk community . . . [more]

Google just officially announced that they are working on Project Glass – think of it as augmented reality heads up display glasses that works like a smartphone. This concept has been bandied about for a long time, but may be closer than we think.

I’m sure it will take a while before the mainstream legal software vendors will provide compatible software. And for those of us who have avoided glasses through contacts or laser surgery, the thought of wearing glasses again is not compelling. But the contact lens version might take a while longer.

But think of the possibilities. 

Face . . . [more]

In my last column, I talked about “working the room”. Attending events is an important part of for business development for lawyers. I focused on how to open conversations, rather like delivering your opening line in a play. But opening the conversation is only half of the skill needed for working a room; the other half is closing a conversation gracefully so that you can move on.

Let’s revisit the reason why you’re attending such an event. Working a room is work: you’re there to develop business. But business development is a process; don’t expect to walk away with . . . [more]

The Canadian Legal Information Institute — CanLII — has just introduced a refinement to its search and citation tools where legislation is concerned. Now, in the case of legislation for which CanLII provides a table of contents, when you consider a specific section or subsection, you’ll see a link to a popup that will offer you a link to cases citing that specific provision and a further link to a perfectly formed citation for that specific provision. As you’ll see in the graphic below (click on it to enlarge it), the number of citing cases is given in the popup, . . . [more]

A friend sent me an ad from an airlines magazine, promoting Toronto as a place to visit. In tiny print (white on gray background) at the bottom, it says ‘Toronto is a trademark of the Toronto Convention and Visitors Association.”

Can this be?

Can none of us use the name of the city without the say-so of the Association? Can no one else advertise the many attractions of Toronto without its approval?

So far as I can see from the official trade marks register, the Association does not own “Toronto”. It owns a few marks that involve a design . . . [more]

A service level agreement (SLA) is a critical part of any outsourcing contract. SLA defines the boundaries of outsourcing project in terms of the functions and services that the service provider will deliver and identifies the service standards that the service provider must meet. A well-drafted SLA accurately sets expectations for both parties and provides guidance for measuring performance to the defined targets.

Although there is no hard and fast rule governing how many measurements the parties should include in each SLA, it only makes sense to measure what matters to customer. Customer may tend to think that the more . . . [more]

In my new role as in-house counsel for a business with operations across Canada (and as a Quebecker), I’ve been doing a lot of explaining about la belle Province. My American colleagues are used to dealing with a Federal version of our provincial labour codes that applies (generally) in a uniform manner across all of the United States. In Canada, as we know, labour relations are provincially regulated and accordingly, differ from one province to another (save for federally regulated employees). However, the laws of Quebec are different from other provinces and allow for easier access to unionization and . . . [more]

♬ I want a new drug 
One that does what it should…♬ 

Lyrics, music and recorded by Huey Lewis.

On Monday April 2, 2012, Dr. Frank Fowlie, the Internet Ombudsman, Kari Boyle of MediateBC and your humble scribe did a presentation for the University of British Columbia law school. It was entitled: ODR Around the World and was meant to be an introduction into the emerging field of Online Dispute Resolution and how it is changing the way that people could resolve their disputes using internet technology.

During the presentation, I asked the students to reflect on . . . [more]

Our primary goal when we started posting bad cheque fraud warnings was the protection of LAWPRO-insured lawyers, most of whom reside in Ontario. An unexpected result has been the huge response from lawyers outside Ontario.

Of the nearly 2,300 emails we’ve received from targeted lawyers since January 2011, almost half have come from outside Ontario. We have had reports of fraud attempts from every province and territory in Canada and almost every U.S. state. In addition, we have had reports from more than twenty countries, including: Mexico, Argentina, the UK, Germany, Turkey and Australia. We keep track of the location . . . [more]