The Time of Humans

Libraries used to spend hours searching for missing books. We lose books when they get misshelved, mislabeled, mislocated, forgotten in offices, homes, or stolen. When I worked as a searcher, I found satisfaction in figuring out different ways to find lost books and finding them. However, I also know the emotional toll of looking for so many books and more often than not, finding very few. Or discovering that a patron has torn out a chapter from a book or removed contents from a looseleaf binder because they did not want to pay for copies or . . . [more]

While putting together the Sinch Online Legal Services Conference (SOLSC) for March 2013, it was obvious that the potential speakers had grown dramatically over the last year or so. However, legal IT consultant Ron Friedmann commented in June 2012 that there has been less than expected online legal service activity since the previous update of his list of online legal services. He said:

About one-half of the firms that offered online services in 2006 no longer do. About an equal number of firms, however, have since created online services.

A reason we have different views of activity may be that . . . [more]

How many times have we heard a person exclaim, “I just want my day in court!”? Often, this is in response to what that person considers to be an insulting settlement proposal or as a result of frustration over delays in resolving a conflict.

Just what does that person mean by their “day in court”? I suggest that it is not as simple as we might think. The phrase “day in court” conjures up different mental images depending on one’s background and the situation.

The traditional definition focuses on a person’s right to be heard in a court hearing or . . . [more]

Canada is a high latititude country. Even those who live in Ontario’s “Southwest” are awfully far north compared to our American friends who live south of the Mason-Dixon line. Being a Nordic country has many charms but it also means that for many weeks of the year on either side of the winter solstice (December 21) it’s cold and dark everywhere in Canada. In the morning, kids go to school and parents go to work in the dark. In the late afternoon or early evening when everyone returns home it’s dark again. During this period, from November until January, the . . . [more]

Recently the Law Society of Upper Canada announced a dramatic change in the admission requirements for law students.

The current 10 month articling requirement remains an option. But for students unable to find an articling position they will be able to qualify for admission by taking an eight month program composed of four months of classroom study plus four months of unpaid “co-op work” at a law firm or sole practitioner – see The Globe and Mail article, November 30, 2012, by Kirk Makin.

From the Law Society Gazette:

On November 22, 2012, Convocation approved a three-year pilot project

. . . [more]

In November of 2012 I attended the Distinguished Librarian Award ceremony of the Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley (LAUC-B). The beautiful Morrison Room in the Doe Library was the setting for this biennial event. This lovely reading room, with its muted lighting and its wooden shelves filled with volumes of great fiction, is permeated with the essence of learning and the life of the mind. The two honorees were Lillian Castillo-Speed of the Ethnic Studies Library and Marci Hoffman of the Law Library. Each of these women has a remarkable career, but since I know Marci well, . . . [more]

It’s become my December routine. First, get the Clawbies season started: check. Then, turn my attention to legal web trends and predictions for the upcoming calendar year. Now, yes, I am the guy who told you in 2012 that Twitter was going to become a Facebook acquisition, so you know I’m not afraid to take a shot in the dark. (And that I’m going to have a little fun in the process.) No guarantees that I’ll be that creative this year, but your mileage may vary.... So, let’s see what law firms might have coming to them in the new year.

Ab Currie, currently Chief Research Advisor and Principal Researcher: Legal Aid and Access to Justice, in the Federal Department of Justice, is leaving the Government of Canada to join the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) as the Senior Research Fellow. CFCJ is Canada’s leading non-governmental independent think tank devoted to research and policy development on access to civil justice and civil justice reform. Dr. Currie will also hold a visiting appointment at the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, where CFCJ is currently housed. He will be fully engaged at the CFCJ by April 1, 2013.

Ab Currie, originally . . . [more]

Sherry’s desk is covered with stacks of paper. Her in-tray is overflowing. She has a pile of filing that she can’t seem to get around to giving to her assistant. John next door is fighting fires on his files again. He is delivering a CLE next week and hasn’t even prepared the outline yet. He’s already told his wife that he is going to be in the office again all weekend working on the darned presentation.

Does any of this sound familiar? It does to me, I have been in both Sherry and John’s shoes, but these days I keep . . . [more]

Robert Fulghum’s book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” is a collection of essays that demonstrate that the basic rules we all learned in kindergarten are all that is necessary to successfully navigate the adult world. The same can be said for legal marketing. The following legal marketing rules are adapted from some of the lessons contained in Fulghum’s “Kindergarten Credo”:

Share. What’s happening in your firm? What is the latest news in your area of practice, or in your clients’ industry? What current events could impact your client’s bottom line? It’s a world of content . . . [more]

For years, when interviewing candidates for library / information positions, I would ask about their entrepreneurial skills or for examples showing their entrepreneurial tendencies. Some got the question immediately , while others just looked confused. Thinking back, it could have been me, the way I posed the questions. Stereotypically, the term “entrepreneur” doesn’t come up in a typical library job interview. Dictionary.com defines an entrepreneur as “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” What I was trying to implant into my library were exactly those elements of bold . . . [more]

Over the past year Linkedin has made a number of changes to what information they showcase on both personal bio and company pages. The underlying intent of the redesign seems focused on two things: 1) increasing user engagement and 2) making the pages more visual and less text-heavy. Here is a brief recap of the most relevant changes for lawyers:

Personal Bio Pages

Skills + Endorsements

Skills and endorsements are the most notable new feature in the redesigned bio pages. Linkedin now asks you to list a handful of skills or areas of expertise. Others can then “endorse” you for . . . [more]