The course reader, that photocopied bundle of readings for a course, and now its more recent iteration, the digital e-reserves, have proven to be hot spots for “fair use” legal entanglements with copyright law in the United States. In the 1990s, the big cases were Basic Books Inc. v. Kinko’s Graphic Corporation (1991) and Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Service (1996) which put an end to royalty-free photocopying for class use of copyrighted materials, for, the courts rule, the course readers were being sold for a profit and were competing against the original books (with 5-30% of the . . . [more]

When certain aspects of life become accepted practice, part of the texture of everyday life, one tends to forget that they are there at all. They become part of the wallpaper. One forgets that putting them in place involved massive effort, and that things may not always be the same. To stretch my metaphor to the breaking point, someone might come in and paint over the wallpaper. It is important not to take for granted those things which we should cherish. Access to information is just such a phenomenon. The point was brought home to me this year.

Each spring . . . [more]

Some tribunals routinely tape record proceedings while others consistently prohibit it. And within those tribunals that allow tape recording of proceedings, practices on the use of the tape or transcript also vary. It is pretty clear in law that administrative tribunals are not required to record the proceedings, unless required to do so by statute: Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 301 v. Montreal (City), [1997] 1 S.C.R. 793

Administrative tribunals were designed to be less formal than courts, yet the recording of proceedings is a hallmark of the judicial process. Why do some tribunals routinely tape proceedings and . . . [more]

Since I seem to be the only tech author who hasn’t yet shared his list of “must-have” SmartPhone apps for the lawyer on the go, I thought maybe I’d go ahead and give you mine. Of course, you’ve seen these plenty of times so I’ll try to focus on the ones that might be a little less obvious. You’ve been told a million times about QuickOffice, Evernote and Instagram (and if not, you might want to check those out too).

The apps I’m going to talk about are for Android, but unless I note otherwise there is also a version . . . [more]

Passion… We tend to think that you either have it or not. But for a firm? Yes it can be cultivated with some intent. Fast Company ran an article by Paul Alofs… 8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture. Alofs’ rules are written for companies, however could have great impact on law firms as well.

1. Hire the right people. Hire for passion and commitment first, experience second and credentials third.

I know this seems counter intuitive for lawyers who are building a firm. Credentials are usually first, right? Well, what if you tried Alofs’ rule, . . . [more]

Life is good. I have two great kids, I have been married to the man of my dreams for almost twenty years and I have a lot of happiness and laughter in my life. Life wasn’t always so peachy and I often feel that I have lived two completely different lives.

I was the black sheep in my family, but not because I was causing trouble or getting into things I shouldn’t have. When I was growing up, I woke up and went to bed to the smell of beer. I use to hide anything valuable and worried that things . . . [more]

It’s a fundamental marketing decision for many law firms: How much content should we publish outside our website? For many years, the answer always seemed to be: none. Firms tried to serve and address every audience and every interest in one location. The predictable result was an incredibly cluttered website, both in its message and in its presentation.

The law firm website was never intended to be a single-subject, single-audience, publishing powerhouse. Fortunately, many firms have realized this and have wised up. Over the last decade, we’ve seen the rapid transfer of “commentary” from firm websites, pushing that content . . . [more]

Cloud-based Practice Management Systems (PMS) roll on as an increasingly alluring option for law firms. Packages such as CLIO and Rocket Matter have attracted serious investment this year, while adding features standard in their more mature desktop rivals, such as document merge. Other PMS available in the marketplace are also surprisingly powerful. ActionStep, for example, started life as a workflow engine, but has grown into a full-feature PMS.

For those in smaller firms who are reluctant to let “strangers” manage their server, I remind them that I would certainly prefer to occasionally lose access to my data, than to . . . [more]

It’s not hard to find those who argue that the end is nigh for legal and professional information publishing. The security and strength of “need to know” and “have to have” information appears to have diminished, with content seeming to be down to “prince” or an even more lowly status in the monarchical hierarchy. Those who argue in those directions do so effectively, showing how the Internet, changing profitability and competitive models and the shift in favour of workflow solutions render the publishing component no longer core. Informed commentators see the current fortunes of the main professional publishers, . . . [more]

In Tunisia they are working to build the law of the future. Law that does not oppress, that is fair and not applied capriciously, and that is applied even-handedly. The challenges are enormous because the law most people in Tunisia know is not like that.

I was in Sousse, the third largest city in Tunisia, and was being driven up a hill, down an asphalt road that looked slightly nicer than the one we just got off, and not just because it was lined with lights that looked as though they had been taken straight from a centre ville Paris . . . [more]

[ français / English ]

Pour toutes sortes de raisons, il est temps d’une grande refonte de la présence Web d’Éducaloi. En effet, nous travaillons depuis plusieurs mois à refondre le site Web d’Éducaloi tout en travaillant également à refaire l’image de marque de notre organisme qui existe depuis l’an 2000. La mise à jour de notre image de marque vise à s’assurer que le grand public et le milieu juridique comprennent mieux qui nous sommes et ce que nous faisons. Aussi, elle vise à augmenter la notoriété d’Éducaloi dans la population québécoise. Ces deux grands chantiers se font en . . . [more]

The future of loose-leaf legal publications is a recurring theme here on Slaw. Ruth Bird, Susannah Tredwell, and I have each written about this topic over the last couple of years. So the tweets from the recent CALL conference proclaiming “Death to Loose-leaf” really caught my attention.

The tweets expressed the need for different formats and the hope for different content (commentary only), different format (bound instead of loose-leaf, or online with links to primary law). One alternative identified was commentary only plus research training for users in updating legislation and case law. Unbundling commentary out of loose-leaf . . . [more]