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]

This is about how and when to use SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). The graphics part of SVG is easiest to explain. SVG is a format for images, like JPEG, PNG, or TIFF. The SVG difference is that, instead of capturing the image with a camera or scanner, you define it with words.

This is where the word “vector” comes in. A vector consists of a distance and a direction. The simplest example of a vector is probably “from point A to point B.” Real estate lawyers will relate vectors to metes and bounds descriptions in surveys, e.g. “Commencing at the . . . [more]

Written with Meredith James

It’s a horror story – the beautiful glass-walled building you may work, shop or live in are killing millions of migratory birds. Many SLAW readers are likely familiar with the distressing thud of a bird breaking its neck or wing on those lovely glass panes, often at night when building lights are left on.

At least 1 million migratory birds die in Toronto alone each year due to collisions with buildings. The birds become confused by reflections and lights in urban areas and fly into windows at full speed. Often killed or badly injured, they fall . . . [more]

With all the international law firm mergers currently taking place, marketing departments around the world will be scurrying to remake their firms in the new image. An international merger is a greatly magnified version of the procedure that takes place in all law firms when new lawyers join the firm. HR is preoccupied with payroll, benefits, and insurance. Facilities is scrambling to find a place for the new lawyers near their practice group—often causing the domino effect of multiple moves. IT is getting the new lawyers’ computer and phone systems set up. And that’s in firms big enough to have . . . [more]

The Great Encyclopedias of Legal Research

This is the fourth of a series of posts on the major encyclopedias of legal research in Canada that were prepared following a presentation to a seminar on legal information at the University of Montreal.

THE JURIS CLASSEUR MODEL

Joining the list of Great Encyclopedias of Legal Research in Canada is the new Juris Classeur Quebec, a series of encyclopedias modelled on those in France and Monaco. By way of an explanation to the uninitiated, it can be said that a Juris Classeur encyclopedia serves much the same purpose for a legal practitioner . . . [more]

When we examine the glass ceiling that keeps so many women lawyers out of partnership and managing partner roles, we usually look at all the external factors that can impede a woman’s career – lack of mentoring, challenges with business development, family responsibilities, unconscious bias – to name just a few.

Chief amongst these external factors is how society defines power in very male terms. A powerful person is often seen as demanding, aggressive, decisive, self-confident, solitary and not collaborative. If a women exhibits many of these characteristics she risks being judged unfavourably and not someone whom many people, male . . . [more]

Let me start by saying I don’t condone shoplifting. Seen as a mere nuisance by some, the ‘five-finger-discount’ is a petty crime that exacts a heavy toll year after year on retailers – be they big box chain stores or mom and pop corner varieties. The cost is initially born by the store-owner but ultimately passed along to lawful consumers by way of increased prices to account for the overhead costs of security and the loss of inventory.

Many shoplifters are doubtless serial offenders with a pathological disrespect for the lawful property rights of others. However, in my experience having . . . [more]

The United Nations working group for online dispute resolution (ODR) of cross-border electronic commerce transactions (UNCITRAL Working Group III) met in Vienna early in November to continue its work on procedural rules for ODR. This effort has been underway since 2010 and should be nearing completion, but the approach taken by the working group has drawn some criticism from those concerned that its focus is too narrow and its proposed rules will be ineffective.

Professor Vikki Rogers, Director of the Pace Institute of International Commercial Law, one of the facilitators of the 2010 colloquium that put ODR on the UNCITRAL . . . [more]

There are many MS Outlook add-ons that mimic functionality that is already built into the application. Though Techhit’s SimplyFile http://www.techhit.com/SimplyFile/ would seem to fall into that category since MS Outlook has a strong rules function and has added the “Move” group in the Home tab, it is actually amazingly useful despite some overlap. SimplyFile is an “intelligent filing assistant for Microsoft Outlook” and costs $50US. So, is it worth it?

Files, folders and rules are the boon and curse of the MS Outlook organizational structure. Why? Lawyers use folders and subfolders to keep client and matter correspondence filtered from the . . . [more]