Lawyers want to find information quickly. I often hearken back to now-increasingly dated LexisNexis workplace productivity surveys – 2008 and 2010 – for data on this need. Desktop search periodically raises its profile as one of the tools that lawyers can use. Vivian Manning and Catherine Sanders Reach have both taken a look at some of the tools commonly discussed in legal circles and they provide a good short list of products to review.

We had a recent need for a simple tool to roll out to a small group of researchers and decided to take a look at desktop . . . [more]

I was poised to write about change when I found Kate Simpson’s post: The Speed of Change. I agree with her that ‘change’ is the buzzword du jour and I have been encountering the word almost everywhere. Recently I listened to the keynote speeches and attended a track on change at Computers in Libraries 2014 and I took a MOOC about Library Advocacy which stressed that libraries need to change the way they do their advocacy. I want to share some of what I have learned.

My focus here is on change in libraries, which are viewed by non-librarians . . . [more]

I live in Whitehorse, Yukon — Canada’s “top left hand corner”. Recently I was in Toronto on a business trip. When making the travel arrangements, I scheduled my departure for 24 hours after the end of my meetings so I could hook up with a few of the people I know in that great city. So, instead of departing Toronto late on a Friday afternoon and being back in Whitehorse that evening, I left on Saturday afternoon leaving the enjoyment of 7 hours of flying time to a Saturday night. This 24 hours, I thought, would give me plenty of . . . [more]

Do you want a sure-fire way to predict when something is going to go terribly wrong? I do. There is a way but it’s not a crystal ball or Ouija board. The answer is in Forbes contributor Paul B. Brown’s article… The One Sign Something Is About To Go Wrong… And What You Can Do Before It Does. The legal profession is changing rapidly, and the ability to spot and adapt to these changes is invaluable.

Brown was asked for a formula to predict success…

While I haven’t found a foolproof formula to predict success, I know I have

Slaw has been a great source of information about a wide variety of creative initiatives to address the need to improve access to justice and bridge the implementation gap. I believe we need to proceed on at least two tracks simultaneously:

• seeking out and learning from new and existing initiatives around the world and
• stepping back to create and experiment with brand new things

My last post on the Social Lab approach encourages this two track approach by encouraging deep research and by creating a “container” within which a variety of different initiatives can be designed, tested, tried, modified in . . . [more]

Prospective employers and recent law grads identify ethics and professionalism as crucial competencies for new lawyers. In a recent article Professor Neil Hamilton summarized various empirical studies showing that legal employers rank “integrity, honesty and trustworthiness” as a crucial quality in a prospective lawyer hire, regardless of the type of legal work for which the lawyer is being hired. Similarly, new graduates view professionalism as one of the most important skills for the new lawyer. In his article Hamilton notes a survey by Canada’s own Federation of Law Societies in which lawyers who graduated between 2007 and 2012 indicated that . . . [more]

In the past, traditional diplomatic protections and customary international law seemed to provide inadequate and uncertain protection for foreign investments. In the middle of the twentieth century, countries in need of investment by citizens of other countries, and countries whose citizens had resources to invest and a willingness to invest in foreign enterprises, devised bilateral investment treaties (BITs) or traités bilatéraux d’investissement (TBIs) to protect the rights of foreign investors on terms the enterprises in need of investment could accept. By promoting investment by citizens of one country in enterprises in a different country, BITs solidify diplomatic ties between the . . . [more]

Ten years ago the Canadian government launched a public inquiry to look into whether the actions of Canadian officials had contributed to the torture and other grave human rights violations that a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, had experienced while he was illegally imprisoned in Syria for a year in 2002 and 2003. How deeply disappointing, therefore, that ten years on we seem to be losing ground in addressing one of the most distressing revelations coming out of that inquiry: the insidious connection between shoddy, even unlawful, intelligence-sharing practices and torture.

Maher Arar had been arrested in September 2002 by US . . . [more]

What is the purpose of retirement? Some say it is to stop doing what you have to do and then start doing what you want to do.

But what if you are now doing what you want to do? Those lucky people say that retirement has no attraction for them because they are already doing what they want to do. Some say they love their job.

Apparently more and more people are continuing to work rather than retire. The American Association of Retired Persons reports that in the 65 to 69 age group, that 32% were still working in 2013 . . . [more]

Interest is returning to the potential of expert systems or knowledge-based systems in law. This is in part due to the increased capabilities of machines at a time when the business of law is undergoing dramatic change. It comes with the obligatory “us vs them” talk of lawyers work being taken over by machines that learn. While I have always found the binary thinking of computers attractive compared to some legal reasoning, in this case, an either/or approach is too blinkered.

Hence, I recently tweeted rather cryptically for the sake of brevity: Tools, like lawyers, imperfect alone, hence need each . . . [more]

Branding is an often misconstrued word. Yes, it refers to the visual expression of your firm – the logo, colour palette and images. But more importantly it refers to an idea, a unique message that is capable of resonating with your target audience. It’s about understanding what makes your firm distinctive and how you can look and sound appealing to your audience in an authentic way. This marketing jargon may sound all well and good but you should still ask – what makes a great Canadian Law Firm brand?

The great Canadian Law Firm Brands

Recently, Acritas, a UK based . . . [more]

Once upon a time, I represented a client (rather than managed the project) when I met with a senior project manager new to an in-progress project. He informed me that our job together was to “manage the client’s expectations.”

“No,” I replied, “our job is to meet the client’s expectations. Are you saying we didn’t set them correctly in the first place?” Given that the project already underway, he was telling me subliminally either that he thought the project was about to fail or that his predecessor had screwed up.

The difference between setting and managing expectations is more than . . . [more]