There are a lot of great resources for primary law online, both free and fee. However, to get legal analysis and cutting edge thinking on current legal topics there are also some great resources for free online. Bar associations are a great source (of course!) but here are some others that have great content. You just have to know where to look.

Lexology
Lexology (aka ACC Newstand) brings together articles submitted by major commercial law firms. Register and then search the site or set up custom RSS feeds to be delivered Outlook or your feed reader. International in scope, the . . . [more]

At any given time there are many trends in the legal industry. Current topics include everything from alternative fee arrangements to e-discovery to virtual law firms. Some topics die away without much fanfare whereas others stay around and eventually take hold. My focus today is on social media at the highest level, which is definitely part of the latter group.

Social media is here. It is here to stay and you need to be part of it to ensure a growing practice.

That said you don’t have to do everything and you will want to be realistic about your goals. . . . [more]

Have you ever felt like there aren’t enough hours in the day? In professional life it just seems like a given.

Whether you are a working parent with kids at home, or have aging parents to care for, or even an energetic dog who requires long walks daily, or a combination of all three (lucky you!), or a whole different set of responsibilities, chances are you feel stretched a lot of the time.

The truth is that our prosperous professional lives are full to overflowing. This is a good problem to have. And it is also a kind of suffering. . . . [more]

Unless you’ve been completely disconnected from international economic news, you’ve heard about the fact that, for four years now, Canada and the European Union have been negotiating “the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in order to bring their trade and investment relationship to a new level”. As explained on the EU’s website:

CETA will cover the key issues relevant to a modern trade and investment environment, from ambitious new market access opportunities to clear rules for European and Canadian traders and investors.

Of course, one of the key issues relevant to a modern trade environment (or . . . [more]

We are several years into the social media era now. As social channels mature the major platforms are ramping up integration of paid advertising options into their systems. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube all offer paid tools to promote your posts, updates, tweets or videos to audiences beyond those with whom you are already connected. In short, significant advertising dollars are starting to go social. A question few in the legal industry have yet asked but that will increasingly need to be considered is whether paid social media advertising makes sense for your firm, and if so, how best to . . . [more]

The issue of lawyer civility—or lack thereof—continues be a hot topic this fall, with the Groia matter reaching its way to a Law Society Appeal Panel hearing on September 9 and 10.

Many arguments have been advanced both in favour of and against creating formal regimes to monitor and sanction lawyer incivility. For example, the disciplinary panel that originally heard Mr. Groia’s case suggested in its reasons that regulating lawyer civility is necessary to protect the proper administration of justice, trial fairness, and public confidence in the justice system. Others, including myself and fellow Slaw columnist Alice Woolley, have questioned . . . [more]

In June of 2013, the CBA Legal Futures Initiative issued a report entitled “The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues” (the “Report”). For those who have not read the Report I highly recommend a reading. The report breaks down a wide variety of trends and issues that are important for all those within the profession to be aware of. While there are many important discussion points raised in the Report, the one issue that stands out to me however, is that of competition within the legal marketplace.

The issue stands out for me as one requiring further . . . [more]

BC’s Civil Resolution Tribunal Act, passed in May 2012 (not yet in force) sets the stage for an ambitious new tribunal that embraces modern notions of technology and access to justice.

The Civil Resolution Tribunal, expected to launch in the Autumn of 2014, will be North America’s first online tribunal. It will provide an alternative to court for people seeking to resolve small claims and strata property (condominium) disputes in BC. Users will have access to a full array of online tools to help manage and resolve their disputes fairly, quickly and cost effectively.

Online dispute resolution (ODR) processes . . . [more]

… am an Information Addict. Information overload, also known as infobesity or infoxication, is a constant in my life. How about yours? Both conferences I attended this summer had sessions on time management, organization, workflow, productivity; topics that are directly related to how well we cope with the amount of information in our lives and the work that we produce using it. So I know I’m not alone on this island.

My quandary exists in that I want to get the most out of both my professional and personal life. Each feeds the other, and yet it is extremely important . . . [more]

Whenever there is an auto insurance claim, insurers must determine fault. If you are found to be at fault for a claim, the insurer will consider you an increased risk and use this information to increase your premiums. If you are not at fault, the claim will not directly result in an increase of your premiums. This probably makes sense to most people, but you may be surprised to learn that things are a bit different when it comes to home insurance claims.

Assume you make a claim to repair a roof damaged by a hail storm, or your expensive . . . [more]

Over the years I have seen dozens of contracts with dreadful arbitration clauses.

They are generally found near the end of the agreement, with the other so-called “boilerplate”. One often wonders whether the lawyers even read them before the contract was signed. Almost certainly, the business people didn’t. One consequence of this neglect is that, if and when the clause must be dusted off and used in a dispute, it may not work as intended. And unworkable arbitration clauses tend to give the process as a whole a bad name.

There are 7 essential elements of an effective arbitration clause. . . . [more]

I’m (re-)reading Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf following last month’s enlightening set of sessions at ILTA on why we need to find new ways of doing things. Whether it was legal project management, change management or application and software development, ILTA was full of ideas about re-imagining and simplifying the very traditional processes at our firms.

By adopting processes that are faster, leaner and with more feedback loops, both this book and the ILTA sessions suggest we can turn those massive boil-the-ocean stalled projects into that which entrepreneurs and innovators already know well – the Minimum Viable Product . . . [more]