As we launch into a new year, I’m looking forward to seeing what marketing tools are adopted by lawyers and how changes in technology change the way lawyers do business. Here are four trends I think are worth watching in 2012.

Social media engagement and integration

Law firms and individual lawyers have becoming more active on social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and now Google Plus. As participation increases, law firms will need to become better at integrating their social media activities into their overall marketing plan, cross-linking each of the firm’s activities with one another to help increase . . . [more]

Most Canadian law firms of any significant size have written parental leave policies. What many firms lack are written guidelines to assist women lawyers leaving and returning from maternity leave. As these leaves can be lengthy (up to 12 months) reintegrating back into law firm life and ramping work back up is a very daunting prospect for most women lawyers. There is often a feeling that you must figure this out on your own with no clear understanding of the firm’s expectations. This feeling of isolation can make returning from maternity leave one of the most difficult times in a . . . [more]

In most provinces as well as nationally, rethinking access to justice for meeting the legal needs of Canadian families is a central policy agenda item. Law reform commissions as well as self-standing initiatives such as the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters have made this sort of rethinking a priority for moving forward. One of the most innovative new approaches is a multidisciplinary approach to meeting family justice needs. This approach stresses both the diversity of the legal needs of Canadian families and the fluidity of those needs. Sometimes, among professionals, there is an . . . [more]

Last November, Lexum proceeded to survey the users of its Supreme Court of Canada decisions web site (scc.lexum.org/en). The results of such surveys are rarely shared; they can indeed have high commercial value or simply be embarrassing. The ones communicated here are not embarrassing and they are, at times, surprising. At least, they were not the ones Lexum was expecting. For instance, respondents are less eager to access legal content on mobile platforms than Lexum had initially assumed and their appetite for social web-related services appears much more limited than anticipated. In a more foreseeable way, respondents confirmed how the . . . [more]

More and more lawyers are using video to differentiate themselves. Video provides potential clients the opportunity to learn more about a lawyer than what is written in the biography. Hopefully through the video, potential clients will feel a connection with the lawyer and want to make the initial contact.

So videos’ are good. They are also time consuming, can be expensive and aren’t right for everyone.

I recently completed a number of videos for a lawyer including his biography. The intention was to give the potential client a slice of information and leave them wanting more. Screen time was limited . . . [more]

John is bored. His firm just hasn’t been busy this month and instead of the usual big transaction work all he has are small bits and pieces of corporate matters. Even though none of it is complicated he just can’t get down to doing any of it and is wasting time surfing the net instead.

Terry is deadline driven. Every day is about putting out fires and meeting last minute deadlines. He knows he should plan ahead and get to his projects done before the last minute but he has gotten use to the adrenaline rush and just can’t get . . . [more]

Social Media – networking and sharing of breaking news, gossip, pictures, videos, music, and just about everything else – has become a part of daily life for many people. Social media sites house this information about you, your firm, your clients and their businesses. Even if you don’t actively participate in social media, the information can be vital in fact gathering and monitoring. Let’s look at some of the available tools to make that happen.

Social Media Search

For researching what people are doing, saying, and revealing about themselves, searching social media sites is imperative. Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, . . . [more]

For many members of the general public seeking to understand the law, Wikipedia is the first and perhaps only stop. Others may go further and eventually come across equally accessible but considerably more reliable sources – online or otherwise. In any event, there is often a gulf between where the general public goes to understand the law and where the understanding is available.

Based on observations of a little experiment in contextual-linking, small efforts can go a long way toward bridging that gulf.

Contextual-linking is different from promotional or advisory linking such as is found on the “links” page of . . . [more]

The Strategic Planning Society recently posted on their Linkedin site the seemingly straight-forward question: “What is a good definition for vision?”

Now please keep in mind that this question is being posed within the fraternity of those who have fostered and perpetrated the belief that every organization should have a vision and that the organization’s leader should be a “visionary” – the originator of such a vision. A flurry of responses came from a community who hold titles like Strategic Planning Manager, Senior Resource Planning Manager, Head of Planning and Control, Senior Manager Strategy Solutions, Strategy Execution Advisor, Managing Partner, . . . [more]

Back at the end of the last millennium, the Centre de recherché en droit public (CRDP), along with colleagues from the Centre de recherches informatique et droit (CRID) and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) obtained a research grant from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Consumers to develop what would become the ECODIR (Electronic Consumer Dispute Resolution) ODR platform.

Launched in Brussels in October 2001, the ECODIR platform was well received by the various stakeholders: consumer associations, professional associations, industrial groups, the public sector, the European Commission, etc. The technical aspects of the . . . [more]

It’s not news that social media has taken the web by storm. At the time of writing, six of the top ten websites in Canada (by my count) are social media sites according to the Internet ranking site Alexa.com. And as people spend a greater percentage of their online time within these social environments, it is becoming increasingly necessary for businesses of all stripes – law firms included – to devote more resources to establishing and maintaining a meaningful presence in several different places on the web.

The battle for supremacy between the dominant players in this space – Facebook, . . . [more]

Before I embark on a brief exploration of whether clinical legal education can provide a solution to two difficulties facing the legal profession in Canada today, I must first make a disclosure. I am a big proponent of clinical legal education and as the incoming director of an excellent clinical program at the University of Victoria I have witnessed first hand the numerous benefits that this manner of education can have to students, the profession and the community as a whole. This experience allows me to approach this discussion not only from the perspective of a lawyer and consultant who . . . [more]