No one loves progress (status) reports. They take time to write. The writers believe they’re unread.[1] And as one wag put it, they mostly demonstrate the lack of progress.

The problem with these reports is twofold. One aspect, of course, is that the intended recipients are busy. The other is that the reports contain little to no information the recipient can act on, other than perhaps taking frustrations out on the project team.

Consider the sign pictured here, on one of the floating bridges across the lake into Seattle. It tells me what I’m about to be charged for . . . [more]

A refuge remains for the printed page. Herewith the tale:

Ross Davies, one of my culture heroes, has published a fascinating article which goes by the salubrious title “The Increasingly Lengthy Long Run of the Law Reviews: Law Review Business 2012—Circulation and Production” in Volume 3, No. 2 of the Journal of Legal Metrics (2013). Professor Davies is an accomplished scholar at George Mason Law School who produces excellent scholarship in the usual mode for a legal scholar. But it does not stop there. He also has an endearing fixation on the mechanics of legal information and a love of . . . [more]

Running a small business successfully is tough – in any industry. In British Columbia approximately 98% of businesses are classified as small business, so those of us in B.C., and several other provinces actually, we’re in good company. The challenge, though, is producing high quality work while positioning yourself, and your business, for long term success.

You want to make smart business decisions and invest your time and financial resources wisely. Some firms will ponder marketing for a while before they begin, while others take a “let’s throw everything at them” approach.

Here are some of the most common questions . . . [more]

Law firms are spoiled for choice when it comes to cloud computing services. You can place any or all of your practice technology somewhere other than your office. The maturing of the cloud world, and the seemingly endless proliferation of open source software, create additional options. If you are on the fence about where your information lives, these may push you over.

A challenge of using cloud or hosted Web services is the same kind of change that occurs on your desktop. Companies shut down products, change their business model and start charging for something that was free, or go . . . [more]

I’ve spent a lot of time over recent months thinking about alternative business structures and how to think about regulatory liberalization.

Except in very limited circumstances[1], only lawyers[2] can have an ownership interest in a legal practice whether organized as a partnership, a limited partnership or a professional corporation. As a practical matter, only legal and strictly ancillary services can be offered to clients by a legal practice.

Individuals and small businesses are overwhelmingly served by lawyers in sole practice or in small firms. Lawyers sell their time to clients. Time is measured in billable hours. The . . . [more]

The Defendant in a US patent litigation matter (Aker Biomarine AS, (“Aker”)) recently fell short of meeting the threshold requirements for obtaining permission to conduct a deposition and obtain documents from third parties in Quebec (the University of Sherbrooke and a Quebec Research Center). The US Plaintiff/patentee Neptune Technologies & Bioressources Inc. (“Neptune”) successfully opposed the overly broad Letters Rogatory Request. This recent case provides a clear illustration for US clients of what can easily go wrong when LR Requests are not initially vetted by Canadian counsel – before the US court issues the LR. In a broader context, this . . . [more]

Lawyers are frequently asked to predict the outcome of litigation.

Predictions are important in many other fields such as economics, politics, the weather and earthquakes.

The future performances of employees and athletes are regularly the subject of prediction. Predicting the performance and character of persons is very difficult. Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister of Singapore when discussing the appointment of ministers stated “despite all the psychological tests, we could never accurately assess character, temperament, and motivation”. See Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights ….. by Allison and Blackwill (2012).

In the field of politics the polls sometimes fail . . . [more]

One way of stimulating justice innovation is to organise a competition. As I write, the 2013 HiiL – Innovation Justice Awards and the Human Rights Tulip are open for pubic online voting for one more week (see http://www.innovatingjustice.com/awards). By the time this column is published the jury will be deliberating about the winners and on 11 December we will have the award ceremony. This is the third time the HiiL – Justice Innovating Justice Award has been awarded. And each consecutive year a growing number of fantastic initiatives and ideas that strengthen justice delivery reach innovatingjustice.com, with an extra . . . [more]

Most legal libraries subscribe to a number of online services, so library users frequently have to search multiple electronic resources as part of their legal research, and trust that they have not inadvertently missed any relevant resources. Researchers need to know what electronic products they have access to, what materials these products contain, and how to best to search them. Other challenges related to online research include the duplication of resources (some materials can be found in multiple online services) and cost containment.

University libraries have been dealing with precisely this problem for a while now. Discovery tools (such as . . . [more]

The patent infringement action between Bell Helicopters and Eurocopter has been a topic of discussion among patent lawyers since the trial decision was released in January 2012. The Federal Court of Appeal recently dismissed the appeal and cross-appeal (Bell Helicopter Textron Canada Limitée v. Eurocopter, 2013 FCA 219) in a lengthy decision covering many hot topics in Canadian patent law.

While the decision has a number of interesting issues, including utility and sound prediction, I will focus on the award of punitive damages.

In general, punitive damages may be awarded when the defendant’s conduct is “in exceptional . . . [more]

I remain indebted to peer review. Sure, I’ve been called a dilettante. Had ideas dismissed as half-baked. Had the floor swept with the derivative nature of my work. Been chastised for treating data as singular. And then the self-inflicted wounds of my own careless error. But having suffered from what appears only at first glance to be the slings and arrows of outrageous peer-review, I stand by this process.

I will defend a career’s worth of the anonymous and thankless work of reviewers who have provided the concerted kind of attention that I undoubtedly needed. It has made me, such . . . [more]

SLAW contributor Mitch Kowalski was in Australia speaking as a “legal futurist” on our national radio legal show, The Law Report, while here I am writing in a Canadian publication.

The old “Prophet in a foreign land” phenomenon was evident particularly when telling Australians about the only two law firms in the world to have been publicly floated — both Australian.

I did a similiar thing by bringing legal IT visionary Peter C Hart out to Australia from Canada in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The great thing about bringing an overseas expert is that they get attention. Though . . . [more]