One of my closest friends is a senior litigation partner at one of the largest law firms in Australia. She has always worked part-time through an arrangement with her firm where she works more than full-time during hectic trial periods and then will take a few weeks or a month off during the various school holidays. I have always admired her tenacity in making this work despite some pushback from her partners when she first started this arrangement eighteen years ago.

Recently, she remarked to me that flexible work arrangements were now common at the large national and international firms . . . [more]

In the thesis I’m in the midst of writing, about burdens of proof in litigation between First Nations and the Crown pursuant to s.35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, I argue that the Crown invariably takes a position that denies any meaning to the guarantees of Aboriginal and treaty rights in that section, contrary to numerous Supreme Court decisions.

I’ve just come across a statutory example of the same sort of conduct in the Proceedings of the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, from May 31, 2010, almost two years ago.

In 2088, Parliament amended the Canadian Human Rights Act ( . . . [more]

The scholarly journal is a form of publishing valued for being tradition-bound rather than path-breaking. The Philosophical Transactions of the 1665, which saw the very launch of this genre in England, is not all that far removed from the Philosophical Transactions A and B today (volumes 370 and 367 respectively). Certainly, in the early years, editor Oldenburg may have handled peer review with less formality, the references in an article may have amounted to referring to a letter from a friend, and the cover may have immodestly referred to its content as that of the ingenious. Yet for all of . . . [more]

One thing that became obvious at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was that lawyers are embracing tablet devices like the iPad in great numbers. Some people claimed that iPads even outnumbered laptops at the event. I’m not sure if that claim would have stood up to a head count but it was certainly plausible. The little tablets were everywhere.

So, fine, if you’re thinking about bringing a tablet device into your practice I have some advice for you.

Connectivity

There’s no getting around it – most tablet devices are barely useful without some kind of Internet connectivity. You can’t . . . [more]

Probably the most interesting thing happening in the BC legal world just now is the Justice Reform Initiative launched by the BC government back in early February. The review is chaired by Geoff Cowper, QC, of Fasken Martineau. The terms of reference for the initiative are ambitious. According to the government’s press release: “He [Geoff Cowper] will identify the top issues that are affecting the public’s access to timely justice and what can be done to ensure the efficiencies already underway have the desired impacts while respecting the independence of the judicial system.” The chief justices of the BC . . . [more]

I got the heads-up from a Brazilian law librarian colleague about a significant opinion published on April 12, 2012. I decided to use the opinion for a kind of case study in how to find cases in English translation. The Supreme Court of Brazil ruled that pregnant women carrying fetuses with anencephaly can legally abort them. The Court’s press releases describing its votes and reasoning are here and here. They’re in Portuguese, which I can make out since I know Spanish, but Google Translate helps give the gist in English. Also, because abortion is a hot issue worldwide, there . . . [more]

Any Smartphone in a Storm

There is no perfect smartphone for lawyers. In fact, the most important part of the smart phone is probably the phone part, since it enables you to keep in contact with your clients, your office, and other parts of your life. Once you’ve established that baseline – your phone is a phone – then it becomes a matter of very personal choices. It’s not about who has market share, it’s all about you. This has always been true for solos and smaller firms, but choice is even emerging at larger law firms. Most of . . . [more]

It’s easy and sometimes entertaining to note the negative or bizarre aspects of the major international law publishers but ultimately it is more interesting to identify areas of achievement. Far from the only one, but one such example is the work and evolution of what is now Bloomsbury Professional, based in the UK but increasingly recognisable around the world.

For me at least, it’s hard not to admire the business and the people involved in it, though I have to admit to a bias, though not an interest, in its favour. I consider a number of the people in . . . [more]

Daniel Kahneman’s new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, synthesizes his life’s work as a psychologist. The book is about the systematic errors that limit human judgment.

The six-chapter section on overconfidence is particularly instructive for lawyers in helping them to assist clients to make better decisions and to make better decisions themselves. It appears that excessive optimism and overconfidence are part of the human condition. In fact, an expert’s subjective degree of confidence in his or her predictions is irrelevant to the performance of the expert.

Research has shown that, while computers are better than humans at solving problems . . . [more]

For more than 17 years I’ve worked in legal marketing, I’ve been keenly listening to clients about how they choose their lawyer, what irritates them and why they leave. I read surveys, attend public and private panel sessions that profile clients and their preferences, and I interview clients at every opportunity.

If you’re in a business, such as law, which centres on attracting and keeping clients, your marketing — and all other business strategies — must be informed and guided by client preferences. If you’re not understanding, responding and anticipating their needs, you will never reach your full potential. Start . . . [more]

When the discussion turned to rebuilding the British House of Commons in 1943 (after its destruction on May 10, 1941) Winston Churchill in a simple but profound way stated, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” He had fixed ideas about what the rebuilt House of Commons should look like – exactly like it was before. He was opposed to the semi-circular chamber which was popular in continental Europe and the U.S. (and Toronto City Hall) and in his view was poorly suited to party politics. His theory, based on his own experience, was that changing political . . . [more]

Lawyers probably work in one of the most stressful environments that exist. If they are in private practice, they have the stress of working to provide their clients the information, advice and services that the client is looking for when the client wants it. If they are in-house counsel or in the public sector, they have employers, bosses who want information, advice and strategy when they need it, not on the lawyers’ schedule. As well, lawyering is such that sometimes there does not seem to be any clocks and everything else can be put aside including family, friends and one’s . . . [more]