A hitherto senior colleague, a mentor in legal publishing, speaking more allegorically than in truth, I imagine, recalled a difficulty that his wife allegedly suffered. Although an intelligent, urbane and charming person, she did not find herself always comfortable with some of the duties of the corporate spouse, particularly when it came to institutional dining. Her heart would sink at the prospect of an evening trapped between two crusty old judges with whom she had little in common. Her tactic, it was said, in trying to maintain conversation when it did not flow naturally, was to use alphabetic sequence to . . . [more]

Four weeks ago I was in Abu Dhabi, at the annual meeting of the Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum. The Council on Rule of Law, which I chair, issued a report on the fast increase of governance outside purely state structures that is aimed at dealing with complex transnational issues such as human rights, labour standards, the environment, cybercrime, health, and corruption. Situations where the state is not enough. There’s a lot of that kind of governance around when you start looking for it and it will increase. Many examples of transnational, multi-stakeholder governance flounder. Why? At . . . [more]

I recently met with my elderly mother’s Accountant who had a Financial Planner in attendance. When I told them of my legal IT consulting work, they were almost sympathetic as the lawyers they knew were averse to the use of databases. This was in stark contrast to themselves, and most members of their profession. Their view was that lawyers were archaic in their information management practices.

It is not just referral sources who are speaking up, clients are also losing patience with lawyers, with one corporation, KIA Motors developing a test of their IT skills.

Although I am not privy . . . [more]

It’s getting down to the final few weeks of December. As some Slaw readers might remember, my year-end focus is on two activities: 1) the Clawbies, and 2) forecasting trends and making predictions about where the Internet is heading. 

(If you’re interested, you can look back to see how successful (or how terribly wrong) I’ve been in prior years. Here are my crystal ball attempts for 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.)

So without further ado, these are the trends that I see emerging in 2014:

1. Biometric Authentication Finds a Market

Other companies unsuccessfully tried . . . [more]

We don’t know whether the lawyers who worked in the PMO during the Duffy debacle – Nigel Wright and Benjamin Perrin – engaged in unlawful or unethical conduct. What we do know, though, is that two men with stellar public reputations, one (Perrin) described as a “hero” by Hillary Clinton (here) and the other (Wright) as a man “of good faith, of competence, with high ethical standards” by Jason Kenney (here), became embroiled in a public relations debacle – investigated by the RCMP, disavowed by the Prime Minister and publicly castigated for their potential involvement in . . . [more]

Some people just seem to have all the luck. Born into the right family, went to the right schools, landed the right job, works with the best clients and they make it all look easy. Maybe it shouldn’t be chalked up to “luck.” What else could it be? Huffington Post contributor and author of Embrace The Chaos, Bob Miglani writes… 21 Reasons Why Some People Get So Lucky in Life. He realized that some people… “Became ‘lucky’ because they think differently and take certain actions.” Below are several of the reasons that I think are particularly applicable to lawyers: . . . [more]

Yes, Wikipedia

A recent encounter I had with German tax law was quite revealing. A claim had been made by the German tax authorities for the payment of a gift tax on a transaction in Canada that took place more than a decade ago. A computer trace of some kind by the German tax authorities had recently brought the matter to light and resulted in a demand for the payment of back taxes by a Canadian to the German government based on incomplete information.

Recognizing my serious limitations in tax matters of any kind, I approached a highly regarded member . . . [more]

In April I wrote a column in which I posed the question “Are lawyers paying enough attention to privacy?”. Based on some high profile privacy breaches and extensive discussions with practitioners that I have met and worked with in the past, my unfortunate conclusion to the question was, no. As I mentioned in the previous post, I believe that this state of affairs largely arises from the deep history of protection of confidentiality within the legal profession and the mistaken notion that protection of confidentiality equals protection of privacy and ensures compliance with the relevant legal requirements that surround the . . . [more]

With around 7,500 exhibitors from over 110 countries, the Frankfurt Book Fair is the publishing industry’s biggest trade event in the world. I found myself there this past October, mostly hanging around the “Digital Innovation” track. This for two reasons: we (Lexum) are in the business of helping publishers look good on the web and there was a beer stand conveniently located not far from the stage to help fight the jetlag.

The premise of the courtship between an IT service provider and a publisher is quite straightforward. Publishers want to sell more of their books by repurposing . . . [more]

Have you considered how to best use your marketing department? Do you come to them once an idea has been flushed out and expect them to deliver on the concept without the background information? Or do you employ them early in the process, let them help you define the problem and then develop a solution? If you are part of the latter group I applaud you. Unfortunately most lawyers and law firms are in the former category.

There are many reasons why your firms marketing department has a good or bad reputation. A good marketing department is engaged early and . . . [more]

As the courts in Canada continue to struggle with difficult issues relating to the enforcement of arbitration agreements and the enforcement of arbitral awards, it is worth looking at how courts in other common law jurisdictions see the relationship between the courts and arbitration.

The Hon James Allsop, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, gave a very thoughtful address at 2013 Clayton Utz University of Sydney International Arbitration Lecture (29 October 2013).

Like others, he sees serious problems with the trend in many countries toward “over-elaborate, over-lawyered, and slow and costly [arbitration] hearings. …[R]ecalcitrance and excessive demands for . . . [more]

The CBA Legal Futures Initiative has sparked a lot of great discussion and writing over the past few months about innovation. Monica Goyal has bound up a lot of the must-reads on this topic in one simple post on Slaw as a precursor to a Tuesday Twitter Chat organised to discuss innovation in the legal sector. A summary of that CBA Futures chat is worth reading here if you missed it.

What struck me reading this summary is that if we want innovation in our industry, we need to actively support and foster innovation as other industries do.

Mitch Kowalski, . . . [more]