At a recent gathering of the profession, while bemoaning the lack of demand for legal services, the pathetic state of the economy and begrudging the increasing power of clients, one discussion centered around metrics – financial and performance-oriented measures. While we are all familiar with the usual billable hour, collections, matter profitability, and so forth, this discussion provoked me to think about some of the more unfamiliar and unorthodox, but vital metrics that I believe law firm management should be looking at. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the late father of modern management, Peter Drucker, reminded us . . . [more]

A Globe and Mail article by Adriana Barton, reporting on a study featured in the Economist, discusses how physical looks might actually be a liability for female job-seekers. And this, despite the numerous studies that have shown that attractiveness aids in job advancement.

The researchers sent out fake resumes with a photo attached to 2,500 vacancies; those with pictures of beautiful women were less likely to get an interview. Those with pictures of handsome men were, in contrast, more likely to get an interview. These researchers came to the conclusion that this turn of events was in large part . . . [more]

My family and I are very busy riding roller coasters this week. We got on a plane very early last Friday. Due to some unfortunate loss of power to the jetway, our flight was delayed leaving Edmonton for over an hour. Of course this meant a missed connection to our second leg of the journey.

Delay is a concept that comes up in litigation. Parties argue that a delay prejudices their client or that a delay is necessary to promote fair adjudication of a matter.

I was reminded that delay can sometimes mean an unexpectedly good time in a city . . . [more]

The debate over the merits of facilitative vs. evaluative mediation never seems to end, but is it an artificial distinction in the mediation of commercial disputes?

A recent article in the Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal suggests that it is.

The author, Troy Peisley, a mediator and arbitrator with more than 20 years experience in commercial litigation and forensic accounting, argues in favour of “blended mediation”, which combines the facilitative and evaluative models and employs a “mediation matrix” to evaluate both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the dispute.

It’s an interesting model and seems equally relevant to the realities of . . . [more]

How do you assess how you are really doing? You need to look at much more than just billable hours. The key is cash flow management: You must understand what monies are coming into your practice, and where money is flowing out. Most modern law office accounting systems can give you reports that will give you a much better understanding of the cash flow of your practice. On a monthly basis, you should review the following ten reports from your accounting system:

#1 – Overall and projected monthly billings: What are your overall monthly billings, measured against your projected billings? . . . [more]

Today the Google Doodle celebrates Eadweard Muybridge, the British photographer who:

is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip. He went on to make many studies of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not break down as separate movements.
Wikipedia

So head on over to Google and put the horse through its paces. . . . [more]

“[To compete with Bloomberg Law’s BNA coverage and now Lexis’ Law360 coverage, Thomson Reuters] will have to do better than its [current legal news website, newsletters, and blogs] to ratchet up the synergy between legal current awareness and legal research.”
Hodnicki, It’s Official, LexisNexis Has Acquired Law360 (March 20, 2012).

To believe the Crowd, the legal publishing giants are in a race, chasing after all the undulating streams of current legal reporting and writing either through acquisition or search enhancements. I suppose it is vital for them to be focused in this way, as current conventional wisdom is . . . [more]

The OBA Civil Litigation section is putting on a session bearing this title on 30 April. Here is how the topic is being described:

The legal marketplace is changing. Lawyers and law firms face increasing pressure to control costs in litigation and must adapt to provide superior results for a lower price. Learn about the trends, tools and techniques that will help you meet client expectations, deliver extra value, minimize overhead and maximize your bottom line.

Topics to be covered are : unbundling, outsourcing, advocacy referral and methods of using technology to do more with less. New ethical quagmires and . . . [more]

Would the public tolerate giving judges discretion in the sentencing of murderers?

Are online child pornography offenders likely to commit offences involving sexual contact with children?

Are job training programs for people leaving prison useful?

These — and another four — interesting questions get addressed summarily in the current issue [PDF] of Criminological Highlights, a publication of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. Although criminal law is a specialty practised by relatively few lawyers, given the present federal government’s interest in crime, it might not be a bad idea if more of us educated ourselves . . . [more]

The world has always had innovators and inventors. According to Wikipedia the oldest known tools used by humans are 2.5 to 2.6 million years old. In the late 1800’s Benz and then Daimler produced vehicles with an engine. Henry Ford manufactured cars in the United States and his fortunes really took off when he started producing black Model T’s on an assembly line. General Motors started offering colour choice and an annual model change, which forced Ford to change. And so on. From earliest times there have always been those who have had new, interesting, innovative ideas. Where do those . . . [more]

The inaugural UCLA Cyber Crimes Moot concluded today, with participants from across the U.S. and an international judging panel. Yes, my participation in the preliminary and final rounds of the event is what qualified the event as internationally judged. The winners this year were from GW School of Law, and their coach was none other than Orin Kerr.

The competition focused on a fact pattern based on the 2010 case of United States v. Warshak, dealing with the unconstitutional search and seizure of e-mails under the Stored Communications Act, and whether they should be excluded as evidence . . . [more]