When people lament the deteriorating state of access to justice in Canada and the unwillingness of cash-strapped governments to address the issue in meaningful ways, their focus often shifts to the role of lawyers in ensuring the delivery of critical legal services. Many observers, including Canada’s Chief Justice and Governor-General, characterize the role as a professional responsibility tied to the collective privilege of an effective monopoly on legal work. Others point to the lack of any moral or practical imperative in the equation, and characterize the role as more of a professional expectation. Given that most but not all Canadian . . . [more]

My fellow slaw columnist Jordan Furlong has written a number of articles over the past few years about the shortcomings of legal education (the latest of which is here). The New York Times has also added to the debate with a recent article entitled “What They Don’t teach Law Students: Lawyering”. One of the themes floating around has been to partially return law school to its roots as a vocational school.

I had the occasion to think about some of these ideas recently when a move to Australia led me to requalify as a lawyer in a different system. . . . [more]

Many firms and lawyers alike still approach marketing as a task on a to-do list. Get carpets replaced, schedule articling student interviews, get a marketing speaker for the associates…

Marketing is not any singular item. It’s not holiday cards, a website, client lunches, or even a marketing speaker. None of these activities could stand alone and generate much of anything worthwhile unless your firm is the only gig in town. For the same reason that when you meet someone for the first time, it’s unlikely they will immediately send you work. You need to develop a relationship and find multiple . . . [more]

You can’t have missed the recent coverage of the housing and governance crisis in Attawapiskat. The story certainly captured my attention. I’ve been watching news of the situation travel over the Internet.

Social media played a key role in the coverage of this story. What particularly interests me is that the quality of some material published about Attawapiskat through social media is as good as or better than high quality legal information available through traditional legal publishing channels. And this caused me to consider again: what is the role of social media in legal publishing?

I first became aware of . . . [more]

We are just preparing the 2012 Online Legal Services Conference. It seems that in the last year or two the legal, business and technology planets have aligned to produce a surge in interesting web-based projects hitting our legal shores. Far from overnight inspirations, many seem to have been nurtured for years. Often the result of pain experienced by lawyers, or their clients.

When such projects ferment for so long, their depth can be surprising. They start out providing solutions to real problems the legal entrepreneur has experienced, but are enriched by feedback from numerous sounding boards.

Another observation is . . . [more]

Last summer I wrote an article that was scheduled to be published in the Law Library Journal. The article, like Gaul, was divided into three parts. Each of the three was edgy. The first was a reflection on the end of scholarly bibliography as a mainstream intellectual activity. The second was an overheated rebuttal of a piece on the nature of Law Librarianship that the eminent Professor G. Edward White had written in the Green Bag a few years back. The third part consisted of me pontificating on the future of academic law librarianship in the United States. In that . . . [more]

Uncertainty… is a lawyer’s discomfort. When I sit down with clients and ask them to “project how many cases this business development initiative could produce,” they squirm in their seats. Then they say… “It depends on… I don’t know if… It’s hard to say.” It happens every time!

As lawyers, you are trained to find the certainty and the precedence. You want to know the answer before you ask the question. That is what makes you good lawyers. But, it is also what makes you lousy business development planners and strategists!

Strategizing requires that you: make educated guesses, take leaps . . . [more]

by Cheryl Canning*

I was recently engaged in a discussion about the importance of resiliency in the workplace. The topic intrigued me. I had never really thought of resiliency as something that would be a necessity in the workplace. In my mind it was more about the ability to cope with personal crises. Through a series of recent events however, I came to appreciate its importance in all aspects of life, and I have developed my own theory as to how to build up one’s resiliency. My theory has not been tested or proven through scientific study. It is . . . [more]

Recently, Slaw introduced Talklaw, a calendar of legal conferences and events. This reminded me of an annual legal conference that doesn’t get talked about much outside of Manitoba, the Isaac Pitblado Lectures.

Non-Manitobans are not likely to be familiar with Isaac Pitblado. As stated in the biography from the Pitblado Lectures published papers:

At the time of Isaac Pitblado’s death, the Hon. Richard S. Bowles, the President of the Law Society of Manitoba, said about him:

The Law Society has lost its most respected and beloved member. Canada has lost one of its most able and distinguished sons.

Teaching a seminar not long ago, I commented that texting while driving was a clear example of the failure of multitasking. A very bright senior lawyer said, “But sometimes you have to.” (Even her workaholic colleagues looked askance at that!)

No, you don’t have to. Ever.

You know it’s a bad idea, right?

It’s easy to recognize in this example that a texting driver is dividing her attention, paying attention sometimes to the cars around her and attention at other times to her smartphone. Perhaps the text message does require only part of her attention (though even that’s unclear, according . . . [more]

[ français / English ]

Bâtir une stratégie d’utilisation des médias sociaux n’est pas de tout repos si l’on n’a pas les moyens d’engager des experts pour nous aider. En partageant l’expérience d’Éducaloi, j’espère pouvoir être utile à d’autres personnes ou organismes qui sont en réflexion quant à l’utilisation des médias sociaux.

Il y a maintenant deux ans, Éducaloi a décidé de se lancer sur les médias sociaux. En une seule journée de juillet 2009, nous ouvrions une page Facebook, un compte Twitter et une chaîne YouTube.

N’ayant pas les ressources disponibles ni la possibilité de répondre aux questions juridiques . . . [more]

Let’s take the opportunity to make a few Law Tech resolutions.

Resolution #1 – I will test my backups!

Backups are crucial and you don’t want to find out whether they worked or not when you really really need them. So in addition to checking periodically to make sure your backups are actually running (You *DO* check don’t you?) you should actually test your backups from time to time.

How? Create a dummy file – just a Word document will do – and put it in your file system. Call it “Backup Test” or something like that. Let your backup . . . [more]