Do the wills you are drafting for your clients deal with their digital assets? Does your will deal with your digital assets (personally and for your practice)? I’m guessing that your answers to both these questions is “No.”

My good friend Sharon Nelson did an excellent post on this hot topic on the Ride The Lightning blog. Until recently, lawyers just didn’t think about digital assets. This needs to change as lawyers and clients alike all have significant and growing online presences. It can be very difficult and time consuming for family members and estate trustees to deal with digital . . . [more]

The last time you purchased insurance or made a contribution to your RRSP, did you think about how long you might live? According to recent statistics, Canadian men live just over 78 years on average, while women live about 83 years. Men are expected to spend 88.8% (68.3 years) of their life in good health, compared to 86.3% (70.8 years) for women.

Most people know that how long we can expect to live depends heavily on genetics, weight, smoking status, lifestyle choices and luck, but you may be surprised to know that where you live can also be a contributing . . . [more]

Today is Observe National Stress Awareness Day. As lawyers, we know stress all too well. Ehow.com has a list of five things you can do to reduce stress in your day-to-day life.

1. Prioritize your life. Our lives are stressful because each day is jam-packed with things to do. The list of things to do never seems to end and only carries over to the next day. People tend to do the least important things on the list first and then feel as if they haven’t accomplished enough in their day.

2. Don’t worry if you don’t get through . . . [more]

Last week The Delimiter ran a story about the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) criticizing Australian organizations for their preference to host cloud data within Australia’s borders:

A number of US companies had expressed concerns that various departments in the Australian Government, namely, the Department of Defence, The National Archives of Australia, the Department of Finance and Deregulation, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the State of Victoria’s Privacy Commissioner had been sending negative messages about cloud providers based outside the country, implying that “hosting data overseas, including in the United States, by definition entails

Should you put a disclaimer on your re-tweets (or on your Twitter profile) that your retweeting does not necessarily mean your endorsement of the content of the message so distributed?

Here is an article suggesting that disclaimers are not a bad idea. Associated Press has recently warned its journalists about this, and suggested that a mere disclaimer may not be enough. The article goes into blogger endorsements under the recent FTC policy on that topic too.

Can readers of your retweet figure out when your ‘no comment’ is an ironic dismissal of the content, rather than a neutral retransmission? Would . . . [more]

CALL/ACBD’s 50th annual conference is only weeks away. The CPC, our volunteers and the CALL Executive are looking forward to welcoming you to Toronto’s Royal York Hotel, and to the many events we have planned. I’ve already raved about the program and the social events. This conference also offers a few innovations which I hope you will enjoy.

CALL/ACBD launched a new website earlier this year, and the 2012 CPC was the first group to use the new conference templates. Feedback on its usability and structure would be very welcome, and will go into our report to the Executive and . . . [more]

To have a country governed by the rule of law and not the rule of man requires that the law be known. As few communication networks are as efficient for disseminating information as social media networks, it should not be that surprising that Twitter, Facebook and other networks can very effectively serve that objective.

Twitter and Facebook will not and should not supplant the role of government and the courts to make the law known, but even the law makers themselves can and are making increasing use of social media to augment their efforts.

#TellVicEverything

Before adopting too pious a . . . [more]

We may not be the most wealthy nation in the world, or have the most powerful military. But when it comes to the legal influence of our constitution on other countries, it seems that Canada tops the list.

This Tuesday we celebrate the Charter’s 30th anniversary, and there is plenty to rejoice about. The New York University Law Review is publishing an article in their upcoming June issue which mathematically calculates the relative global influence of the constitutions of different countries, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms surpasses even our American neighbours. The finding is so surprising in some . . . [more]

Seems the US DoJ thinks so. If you’ve ever wondered how publishers can charge more for an ebook that for a print version, this is part of the answer. Here is a good roundup of recent coverage. With three of five defendants already having settled, the interest seems to have turned from the question of whether there is price fixing, to the rationale: what strategies are open to publishers in the face of Amazon’s stranglehold on distribution? The obvious answer, as an alternative to breaking the law, is to abandon print-based business models, and pull a Louis CK. . . . [more]

This weekend near midnight on Saturday, will mark 100 years since the unsinkable ocean liner hit an iceburg on its maiden voyage and sank; which around these parts is a big deal. The magnitude of the event was so great that it resonates 100 years later. This event has entered our popular conciousness as it is common to hear of something that did not go well, that it was a disaster of “titanic proportions”; in a way the sinking of the Titanic has become the standard by which disasters are measured. Have you ever felt that you were “arranging . . . [more]

I’m having that deja blog feeling, but even if this app has been featured on Slaw before, it can’t hurt to bring it around again. I’m talking about a simple little time waster called Kick Ass. It exists as an iOS app, but you might find it more useful in its bookmarklet form, because the simple point of the “game” is to destroy websites, element by element.

You find yourself on a website that needs some… adjustment. Perhaps it’s an ad, perhaps it’s an irritating blog post or — hard to imagine — a headshot that just doesn’t . . . [more]