Having seen both ends of the spectrum from working with seasoned QCs to wide-eyed, gum-chewing articling students, over almost two decades, I’ve whittled down a long list of advice to ten of the most fundamental tips. Getting these underway early in your practice, where many senior lawyers, who lacked marketing support early in their career, didn’t know the best way to build a successful practice, will give you a significant boost.

Here’s my roadmap for summer students, articling students and the early years of your legal practice:

1. Building of a great reputation starts now. How you are perceived matters . . . [more]

You’re probably wondering what presents LexisNexis are doling out at this time of year.

Well being LN it’s the surprise that they usually roll out at yuletide for a percentage of their employees: the wonderful state of unemployment.

This time though they’ve decided to roll Christmas according to reports on Above The Law and The Dayton Daily News.

Here’s what Marc Osborn their spokesman told the Dayton Daily News this past week.

LexisNexis continuously reviews its needs, operations and other factors to identify what resources and services are necessary to optimally support our customers and improve business operations. As

The issue of the degree of protection for the privacy for personal information of an employee stored on devices (usually information technology tools such as laptops, smart phones, etc.) of the employer has been considered by the Courts. The Supreme Court in R. v. Cole[i] addressed such a case. In R. v. McNeice[ii], the British Columbia Court of Appeals had the occasion to add their own thoughts in a similar case in which they applied the Cole principles. McNeice further illuminates the considerations in such cases.

It is noteworthy that the examination of the protection for the . . . [more]

Across Canada, this year has brought severe storms, floods, wildfires and other catastrophic weather. As people in Calgary, Toronto and other hard hit areas try to rebuild their lives, most of them expect that someone should help them pay for the damage. Oil-rich Alberta has promised $1 billion to support the first phase of recovery and reconstruction. (The actual cost is likely to be much more.) But most people, in most places, need to rely on insurance when disaster strikes. What will happen when they cannot get it?

For the last decade, property insurers have been leading business voices about . . . [more]

Recently I had the great opportunity to attend two seemingly opposite conferences addressing the duality my professional life has taken on. Going directly from one to the other, I became aware immediately that lessons learned from one could be applied to the other: the similarities and differences very illuminating to problems both sets of professionals are experiencing.

One of the great things about my position as the Executive Director of the Toronto Lawyers Association is that I’ve been introduced to a whole new galaxy of professionals … the people that make up the Canadian Society of Association Executives. They are . . . [more]

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to business development for lawyers. The challenge for any writer tackling the subject today is how to add value in a field already saturated with publications. Peter H. Freeman, the author of the ARC Group’s latest publication, Secrets of the Masters – The Business Development Guide for Lawyers, has successfully produced a fresh and practical guide that will make a worthy addition to every law firm’s library.

As a coach of lawyers I immediately appreciated Freeman’s approach to the subject matter. Here is my top ten list of what . . . [more]

There is a perceived reluctance to use private dispute resolution (either mediation or arbitration) to resolve intellectual property (IP) disputes.

One reason is that IP rights (patents, trademarks and copyright) are statutory monopolies, granted on a national basis. Therefore, rights holders must look to government authorities and national courts to establish and enforce these rights.

However, the most valuable IP rights are commercialized internationally, so national enforcement and dispute resolution is very costly, time-consuming and inefficient. IP litigation is also public and potentially fatal to confidential information and trade secrets. That’s why there is a compelling case for both owners . . . [more]

Blogging these days is as natural as breathing. Everyone has a blog. My firm has a blog. You’re reading this column on a blog. Heck, if the television shows my children watch are to be believed, even dogs have blogs. So, it takes something fairly special to attract the cynical interest of an over-blogged lawyer such as myself.

Enter Legal Aid Ontario’s (LAO) new blog – the first ever by a Canadian Legal Aid plan.

The blog bills itself as “stakeholder communication meets social networking” and is seeking to walk a fine line, catching the essence of a . . . [more]

In March of 2009, the Canadian Bar Association BC Branch (CBABC), with funding from the Law Foundation of BC, launched the Rural Education and Access to Lawyers Initiative (REAL). This initiative was the first of its kind in Canada to recognize the importance of ensuring continued access to legal services in small communities and rural areas and to highlight the challenges that these communities were and continue to face. The Initiative was established as a coordinated set of programs to address the current and projected shortage of lawyers in these communities which was brought about by the aging of the . . . [more]

Sending highly confidential or personal information via unencrypted email is like sending a postcard. There are many places that postcard goes before it reaches its recipient – and can be read by anyone along the way. Regular email is sent via plain text, and if you watch Google’s “Story of Send” you can see how many touch points a Gmail message has from the time you hit “send” to the time it gets to your recipient. Email can be intercepted by sniffers or read while saved on remote servers. And that is just the beginning.

Your “deleted” messages are likely . . . [more]

If you are currently considering a new website, you may want to build it for the mobile generation, and you will want to include responsive design. All websites – including law firm sites – are seeing an increase in mobile traffic. Mobile users require unique usability and it is anticipated that in the near future, mobile devices will account for nearly half of your website’s visitors.

Responsive design is a technology aimed at crafting sites that provide an optimal viewing experience – easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling – across a wide range of . . . [more]

Blendtec makes amazing blenders, a fact well understood by millions of YouTube visitors that have seen the blenders make soup or dust out of iPads, glow sticks, bic lighters and many other objects one would not normally place in a blender. No matter your needs or level of sophistication, you can be sure the Blendtec product will deliver on its core promise.

So what is the “will it blend” question for a free, online legal research tool like CanLII? And is there a single answer to the question or are there many?

Common need, diverse practices

Regardless of the level . . . [more]