Although these days most lawyers and law firms have some form of website, the ability of those sites to not only attract visitors, but to prompt those visitors to take action (fill in a contact form, call the firm for a consultation, etc.) varies widely. That may be due in large part to how easy the site is for web visitors to use, known as “usability.”

People read and consume information differently online than they do offline. For example, people tend to skim or scan web content; they’re looking for specific information. Rarely do web visitors read large quantities of . . . [more]

Have you ever thought about how your choice of vehicle impacts your auto insurance rates? Most people assume that expensive cars cost more to insure than budget friendly choices, but is that really true?

How much you pay for your auto insurance relies on a number of factors. This includes your driving record and where you live, but for most people, the biggest factor is the model and year of the vehicle you drive.

Auto insurers use the Canadian Loss Experience Automobile Rating (CLEAR) system to determine the odds that a type of vehicle will be involved in a claim, . . . [more]

One of our current cases deals with a question that is critical to everyone in the waste business: can biased sampling make a waste “hazardous”?

Approvals typically require waste management companies to manage wastes based on “representative samples”. Thirty years of guidance documents, and several cases, have also held that waste must be characterized as hazardous, or not, based on “representative samples”. The US Environmental Protection Agency noted, since 1986, that inaccurate and imprecise sampling can cause a solid waste to be inappropriately judged hazardous.

The Ministry of the Environment, like the US EPA, defines “representative sample” as . . . [more]

I worked for several years as in-house counsel helping develop title insurance in western Canada. When I joined Assist (Alberta Lawyers’ Assistance Society), an organization whose purpose is to help lawyers with personal problems, a colleague commented, (tongue-in-cheek) that I would still be providing lawyers something they think they don’t need. As Executive Director of Assist, it has been my experience that lawyers are increasingly aware of the importance of seeking help for personal problems and before problems turn into crisis.

Assist has been focussed on increasing awareness in the hope every lawyer knows that there are free, professional and . . . [more]

I have been prompted to write this column by several recent posts on Slaw: Gary Rodrigues’s column “Reality Check: Fact, Fiction and Case Citations”, and more recently, Susan Munro’s “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Neutral Citation”. With the new fall term just beginning, and thousands of first-year law students across the country entering upon legal studies; and with the student editors of the McGill Law Journal preparing yet another new edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (incredibly, the 8th since its first appearance in 1986), I thought it an . . . [more]

This week Microsoft shipped the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) build of Windows 8, the next version of their flagship operating system. This is the build that Microsoft is sending off to have burned onto DVDs and installed into new computers. In about 60 days you’ll be able to walk into your favorite electronics store and buy a box with Windows 8 in it.

Like a good technologist I promptly got my copy from MSDN (the Microsoft Developers Network) and set about installing it on my desktop to give it a good workout. In the interests of full disclosure I should . . . [more]

Stop marketing. Stop all the events, sponsorships and advertising. Stop updating your website, the firm blog and lawyer bios. Stop all the busy work that is often necessary in legal marketing.

If you don’t, you (and your lawyers) are at risk of not making adequate time to zero in on critical business development activities that bring in new work. The marketing function exists to build your reputation, raise your profile, establish credibility and generate interest. It will also help to identify where relationships stand and perhaps even the needs of your clients and prospects. And this is where marketing passes . . . [more]

I’m always surprised when people or businesses delude themselves into thinking they can be the best at everything, that they can excel at whatever they do and don’t need help from others, even if others are the experts. Perhaps it’s part of the “believe in yourself” culture that focuses exclusively on self rather than on teamwork or, more likely on greed, the idea being that profits can never be shared. More generously, maybe, in part, it’s because of human nature, fear and the practical experience that it’s difficult to make money when having to share the pot among too many . . . [more]

Lawyers who work on international matters may face the challenge of taking their client information across borders. In fact, any lawyer using a laptop may find herself balancing productivity with the risk of unintentional access to client data while on the road. One way to avoid this is to use a clean laptop. The concept has been mentioned on Slaw before (see here and here, for example) but how do you create a clean laptop?

One method that is mentioned is to use a second laptop, one that is installed (or re-imaged) with a clean operating system on . . . [more]

You only get one chance to make a first impression, as the saying goes. A recent study has confirmed that first impressions are persistent and can be difficult to overcome. The opening statement of the adjudicator and of the parties at the beginning of a hearing is that first impression and will often set the tone for the entire proceeding.

In crafting any communication, the first question to answer is, “who is your audience?” In many cases there are primary and secondary audiences. For an adjudicator, the primary audience is the parties to the dispute. The secondary audience for the . . . [more]

Is that the sound of your life being eaten away by the trojan called work, infiltrating our personal time via portable devices? Or is it the sound of forgotten files? Hopefully, it is you conveniently dealing with work on your terms.

Lawyers have had a long list of tools to help with getting things done. One of the first was the ToDo button, the brainchild of Peter Hart of Legalware with his Project Modeler in 1986. Inspired by this, it became the trade marked Do button in another Practice Management System (PMS).

Now there is no shortage of ToDo tools . . . [more]