There’s something about the end of the year that provokes reflection and goal-setting. In the past few weeks, I have met with several of my staff to discuss next steps in their careers. In most situations, making the move into the next level of professional practice requires some learning. Managers can be a great sounding board and advocate for staff looking for new experiences. These questions came up again and again in my conversations with staff, and may be a useful frame for other managers and employees as they work together to develop a career strategy.

What is your goal? . . . [more]

This column is an unintended and rather abstract follow-up to my last column entitled “Self-Represented Litigants Are Not Things” on the need for reformers to better consider the unique “real life” perspectives of lay litigants when redesigning justice system rules and processes. (It also marks the first time that I have written a column using the first person singular— a monumental occasion for me in overcoming anal retentive tendencies and long-misplaced notions of “proper” writing style.)

My involvement in the upcoming Vilardell v. Dunham appeal and extended reflection on the difficult task of facilitating fair and efficient resolutions to messy . . . [more]

The Internet was invented by a state agency (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA) for military reasons. By design its communications divided into nodes that were intended to be self-sustaining rather than dependent on central control. The Internet initially spread outside the military through academic communities used to free speech. Its explosive growth was based on readily understood free browsers on the World Wide Web – browsers largely supplied by the private sector, whether for profit (Microsoft, Apple) or not for profit (Mozilla Foundation).

The wild west

As a result, it seemed reasonable, not to say . . . [more]

There’s a tendency for all of us working in legal publishing to think of printed books when we think of secondary sources. Even when we know we’ll publish online as well as in print, our choice of format (or information design) is still strongly influenced by our familiarity with print.

Over the years, we’ve certainly changed our thinking about the format of primary law. We now expect statutes and case law to be available and easily searchable in large databases, with noting up and other features added. And although some have lamented the wane of the bound law report, we . . . [more]

I suppose it could be like setting up a start-up with their first set of corporate records and related legal documents. There’s a nervous excitement in the air of what’s to come. The possibilities. The probabilities.

What’s not to love? For me, the only thing better than branding a start-up business, is getting invited to rebrand an existing mature firm whose current brand is gasping for air and no longer really … sorry to say… visually relevant. In fact, most of the tired brands don’t say much or stand for anything. In reality, most legal brands are developed without much . . . [more]

The Uniform Electronic Materials Act (UELMA) is slowly making that trust more of a reality in the United States. The Act was drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL or Uniform Law Commission) and was approved by them in July of 2011. As of now it has been adopted by two states, Colorado and California, and is under consideration in four more. The Uniform Law Commission’s summary webpage on the Act has up-to-date information on the progress of it in the states and much more A good summary of the origins and drafting of it, . . . [more]

The Canadian generic pharmaceutical industry has recently been successful in invalidating several brand name drug patents on the basis of “The Promise” doctrine. Eli Lilly would like to put an end to this, using Canada’s international treaty obligations under NAFTA.

Can you see the difference?

In the mid 2000s one could start to see Canadian patent cases “turning” somewhat. Before this, the general sense was that a mere scintilla of utility was enough to obtain a patent. However, if the patentee made an explicit and unequivocal “Promise” of a certain use or result, recent cases have held the patentee to . . . [more]

Among the many things altered by the Internet is the sense of what it means to make things public. The world is simply a much more public place, in the sense of what is made visible and accessible, whether image or text, whether from your neighbour or an organization on the other side of the globe. For my part, I have been fascinated by and involved in what this means for the research and scholarship that universities produce. One element of this new public quality involves the publishing of data on new scale. The fifteenth-century emergence of the printing . . . [more]

When a party to a proceeding says that they “want their day in court”, an oral hearing is usually what he or she is contemplating. Just ask Conrad Black: Conrad Black v. The Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, 2012 FC 1234. (For commentary on the other aspects of the decision, see here and here.

However, in most cases there is no automatic right to an oral hearing. Procedural fairness does not require an oral hearing in all circumstances. In Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1999] 2 SCR 817, the Supreme Court stated . . . [more]

This has been quite a rule of law year. One peak was in August 2012, when the United Nations General Assembly devoted its first-ever opening debate to the rule of law and adopted a Declaration on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels. As Juan Botero, director of the World Justice Project poetically described it to me: “193 government leaders walked up to the podium and said rule of law is good. And that is good.”

It is. But it could have been better. In March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report called Delivering Justice . . . [more]

Tablets are becoming a commonly discussed, if not applied, technology in law practice. 33% of respondents to the American Bar Association’s 2012 Legal Technology Survey used tablets for work. Or, rather, they used them but not particularly with specific legal technology. The most common uses were Internet, e-mail, calendars, and contacts. In short, lawyers are using tablets similarly to how they might use their smartphones.

This data interested me because my own brief experience with a tablet was pretty much the same. Like the majority of survey respondents, my Android-powered tablet is personal and not supplied by my work. 91% . . . [more]

Almost two years ago, I wrote an article on eBooks and their application to a legal library. One trend I have noticed since then is that publishers now appear to be differentiating between “eBooks” and “online books”. “Online books” are those books that are available purely through databases or online platforms, such as Carswell’s eReference platform or CCH Online. By contrast, the term “eBook” is used to refer to books which are available in ePub (or other electronic formats) and which are intended for electronic devices. Licensing varies but generally online books are rented while eBooks are “owned” (subject to . . . [more]