Tinker Toys have been around for over 100 years. I loved them as a kid. Maybe you did too.

Over the past few weeks I’ve encouraged audiences at a couple events to look at them as the fundamental building blocks of their professional aspirations and opportunities, as well as the ideal gateway to understanding the potential of innovative technologies. More than merely a collection of spools, connectors and dowels, Tinker Toys provide limitless ways of imagining how to take on challenges and get things done.

Look at this picture, and think of the tinker toys as the fundamental elements of . . . [more]

As an arbitrator, it is a nerve-wracking and somewhat fearful experience to have an award challenged in court. I’m glad to say it isn’t a common experience for me (knock on wood), but it happened recently.

I was relieved to read the judgement – skipping straight to the last page to see whether I had got things right or not. (Do judges do that, I wonder.) The court said I had – big sigh of relief – but it prompted me to think about what what courts expect from us as arbitrators. It was a reminder of some essential things . . . [more]

Following CanLII’s multiple announcements in the last weeks and months, we wouldn’t blame anybody for failing to see the big picture from these individual pieces. I thought I would use this column to recapitulate and give some perspective.

Individually, the steps we took in the last few years can be seen as merely incremental, but the overall result is that CanLII became a radically different beast, for the better of course. This post strings together these individual announcements with the objective of presenting a clearer picture of what CanLII has become, and to show its the increased potential.

Let’s start . . . [more]

1. Ask for help

The best time to seek help is as soon as you get stuck. Just like the nose on our face, it is incredibly difficult for us to see the thinking traps and habits that slow us down much less do anything about them. Asking for help is a sign of strength. Going it alone is just going to make your life tougher.

2. Get involved in their communities

The thriving lawyers I know are involved in their communities. This can be such activities as coaching soccer, singing in a choir, or sitting on the board of . . . [more]

The City of Toronto owns over three million trees and wants Toronto to be known as “the City within a Park”. The Canadian Women’s Foundation has invested over $40 million in over 1,200 community programs and women’s shelters across Canada, to help women escape poverty and violence.

How do I know these things? Word of mouth. I’m on the board of an organization that receives funding from Toronto Parks & Recreation. The representative who comes to our board meetings is enormously talented at telling us interesting stories about the work of her department—stories we want to repeat. When I was . . . [more]

In the movie The Man with the Golden Gun, the Solex is a revolutionary device that is meant to solve the 1973 energy crisis. After killing its British inventor, an elite assassin steals the Solex to sell it to foreign powers. James Bond is dispatched to find the assassin and recover the precious device. Because this is a James Bond movie, as a matter of course, there’s also a laser.

Solex also stands for SolrCloud Lexum plugins, the latest iteration of the search engine Lexum deploys in all its products.

Lexum has used a wide variety . . . [more]

My last column gave a few tips on preparing for and responding to lawyers’ resistance to new technology. This time around, I’ll write about common lawyer personas – archetypes, if you will – and how to identify and interact with them.

The Brain. “Introverted” is an understatement for these lawyers. They’re rare and highly unique, completely happy to dive face and eyes into the law every day. They rarely interact with, well, anyone, really, preferring to stay in their offices among their books, papers, and databases. They are highly valuable, as their brains are ever-expanding databases of legal knowledge, . . . [more]

What makes a great law firm? How can one quantify just how great a firm is, and compare it to its competitors? Last time in this space I suggested that legal service value has four elements (full paper here):

• To the extent that a firm gets good legal results for its clients, it has effectiveness value.
• To the extent that the firm’s fees are low and easy to pay, it has affordability value.
• The more the firm’s practices minimize clients’ time and stress costs, the more client experience value it has.
• Finally, if the firm’s work

There are a lot of lawyers. No really, there are a lot of lawyers. What is it that makes you unique, stand out or differentiate from the rest? That is what your clients want to know and how new clients learn about you.

Personal branding is one of the most important parts of building your professional persona. We are all distinct in our own ways. Finding out what makes you unique and having an ability to forge your own path will ensure that you are not just another lawyer.

Personal branding can be about the way you dress, your approach, . . . [more]

I was asked recently to speak (via webinar) to a group of lawyers in Christchurch, New Zealand, as part of the New Zealand Law Society’s “Stepping Up” course. This program, which other legal regulators should emulate, requires any lawyer wishing to practise law as the equity owner of a law practice to learn about business fundamentals, client care, trust accounting, and so forth.

On this particular occasion, the theme of the Stepping Up course was “leadership,” and so I prepared some remarks on that topic. But one thing I was especially asked to think about was how “leadership” . . . [more]

Bitcoins are digital currency – and yes, lawyers are beginning to accept them from clients. They are also known as virtual currency or cryptocurrency since cryptography is used to control the creation and transfer of bitcoins. They use peer-to-peer technology with no central authority or banks. The issuance of bitcoins and the managing of transactions are carried out collectively by the network

Cryptocurrencies are created by a process called mining – by becoming a miner of cryptocurrencies, you make money (not much unless you are a major league miner). We won’t go into all of the technology that is used . . . [more]

Canada’s Anti-Spam legislation (CASL) is a complex, onerous and ambiguous legislative system. The ambiguities were identified in a constitutional challenge that the CRTC acknowledged but ruled did not go to the point of undermining the legislative regime. Parliament’s 5 year review obtained considerable consultation identifying numerous compliance issues arising from the uncertainties that the law creates. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology report did identify a number of items where clarification would reduce the uncertainty with respect to the interpretation of many of the law’s provisions, as well as to avoid overly burdensome costs of compliance The government . . . [more]