These days all sorts of things are connected to the Internet, even if they are not traditionally thought of as communications devices. We have looked at “devices” such as cars, pacemakers and dolls. We have looked at legal issues such as privacy, defamation and evidence.

The Internet of Things is a gift that keeps on giving … legal questions. Here are a few more examples of what can, and thus will, go wrong.

I. Alexa and the parrot:

Alexa is Amazon.com’s digital assistant. It responds to voice commands and voice inquiries. It will find out information, . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. R. v. Jackson, 2018 ONSC 2527

[6] But, Mr. Jackson, this case is also about how the criminal justice system treats African Canadians. I have been asked to do something about changing the law. So I have had to think about this. I will apologize in advance, because this discussion will take some time. It will involve a lot of legal . . . [more]

Can I teach Legal Project Management in thirty seconds? Of course not.

But I can teach the single most important question a project manager must ask: What does success look like?

In the book that defined this field (titled, for some reason, Legal Project Management), I focused a critical chapter on the need to define “Done.” Having spent much of the past decade teaching lawyers around the world to manage their projects, I’ve come ‘round to a different – and I believe clearer – way to frame that definitional issue: What does success look like?

For a certain subset . . . [more]

Next year will be year 30 since I graduated from law school. It will also mark 15 years since I began teaching law. What is perhaps most remarkably similar about both experiences is how little curriculum design and teaching methods have changed over the course of this time. Sad to say (and even harder to admit) is that law school is often neither rigorous in its methods nor very engaging the content it offers.

The format of a typical course, from a student perspective, is to read through a punishing amount of turgid prose found in judicial decisions, passively listen . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research, writing, and practice.

Research & Writing

Oh, With the Verbing!
Neil Guthrie

Professor Frink says this on The Simpsons, but don’t you do it. In simple terms, a verb is an action word. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a good verb available to express a particular action, so it may make sense to adapt a noun or some other word. This is often fine, but often not. Herewith, some of the . . . [more]