You’ve probably seen the movie by now, and you might even have read the book; in either case, you’ve likely seen the clear potential for the application of Moneyball principles to the legal market. Several smart observers (and one not-so-smart) have already seen it and written about it, including Paul Lippe, Patrick J. Lamb, Lisa Salazar, and the good folks at Lawyer Metrics and the Harvard Business Review. I recommend all these articles to you and encourage you to adopt the “thinking differently” approach that they embody.

For myself, I want to write what will . . . [more]

If I offered you a free means of advertising your name, profession and contact information every time you sent an email, would you leap at the chance? Surprisingly, many lawyers don’t.

I’m referring to the email signature—an electronic version of your business card that you can attach automatically at the end of an email message. It’s a neat and tidy way of letting everyone know your name, your firm, your contact information and anything else you care to add—every time you send an email message. Many lawyers still send emails without an automatic email signature. At best, this is a . . . [more]

“People don’t leave jobs they leave leaders.”

This comment came at the end of a training session with leadership coach Troy King and it stuck with me. In all the discussions I have sat in on, overheard and read in the legal press about the retention of associates never have I heard this idea put forward with such blunt clarity.

I take everything Troy says with consideration. As a Master Certified Coach, and Canadian Coach of the Year in 2010 he is pretty much a Yoda of the coaching profession. I decided to call Troy up to learn more about . . . [more]

The new library of Osgoode Hall Law School is open, even if not yet quite finished. We’re still waiting for some of the furniture to be delivered and the rare books reading room (Canada Law Book Rare Book Room) is still under construction. I’m crossing my fingers that the missing pieces will be in place for the official opening of the new Ignat Kaneff Building, home of Osgoode Hall Law School, on October 16.

But there’s much more to a good library than well-designed facilities, access to good resources and helpful staff. One of the essential ingredients of any successful . . . [more]

While the US government deals with having less A’s these days it’s been AAA (August Acquisition Action) in the world of legal publishing.

We’re not sure though whether we should adding a plus or minus after those three A’s.

Law Librarians News readers will know that we’ve touched upon this subject in our last two editorials

Usually we see acquisition and deal season in the world of legal publishing happen either post Easter or in September to combine with the Partridge hunting season (Sep 1 – Feb 1) in the UK.

But for reasons we haven’t yet deciphered August 2011 . . . [more]

Namespaces are used in XML to avoid the problems caused by what would, without the use of namespaces, be latent ambiguities.

A long time ago, in a place far away, there were two ships called “Peerless”. The plaintiff in Raffles v. Wichelhaus (1864), 2 H. & C. 906 (LLMC), 159 E.R. 375 (Hein), 33 L.J.N.S. 160, claimed he had a contract with the defendants for the delivery of some cotton to the defendants in Liverpool “ex Peerless from Bombay” (a.k.a. Mumbai). The defendants claimed they had refused to accept delivery from the Peerless which had sailed . . . [more]

The police cannot force someone to talk and then use the answers against them; can environmental regulators do so?

The courts have always allowed them to. In 1969, the Ontario Court of Appeal convicted Strand Electric [1968 CarswellOnt 291, [1969] 1 O.R. 190, [1969] 2 C.C.C. 264] of failing to maintain a scaffold in good condition contrary to the Construction Safety Act. The only evidence against the company was an oral statement made by its supervisor to a government inspector, a statement that he was required to make under the Act. The Court ruled that since the Company had a . . . [more]

In his book, Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D. discusses many factors that affect how persuasive you can be with others. Cialdini was also one of the authors of Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, co-authored by Noah J Goldstein and Steve J. Martin.

Lawyers can use these persuasive techniques to help them increase the percentage of inquiries or initial consultations that turn into paid client engagements.

People like people who are like themselves; they hire people that they know, like and trust. In your initial consultation, you need to build up the . . . [more]

The newspaper reported on the Labour Day weekend that September is one of the busiest months for family lawyers. Tense spouses see the kids back to school and finally call their lawyer to initiate legal proceedings that were put on hold over the summer.

Most of us are conditioned to think of the Tuesday after Labour Day as the start of the New Year. For years, the return to school meant new teachers, friends, courses, crayons and even new clothes. January 1^st, stuck in darkest winter seems to be the wrong time of year to think about fresh . . . [more]

The past two months have seen a flurry of innovative activity in the corner of the legal technology world that concerns free access to law and open legal information. Here are some developments that seem noteworthy:

Open Legal Educational Resources

New, free, and open versions — in ePUB and .mobi formats — of U.S. federal court rules have been published, jointly by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School and CALI, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction. This is the latest addition to the ePUB-based open legal publishing endeavor that John Mayer describes in this recent post. . . . [more]

In the various provincial election campaigns across the country, there is little attention being paid to the funding of the civil justice system. Among elected officials, the dominant paradigm is one that sees funding of the civil justice system as an obligatory expense for the government. The costs appear unlimited and ever increasing. The challenge within this paradigm is how to minimize this expensive item while still meeting their basic obligations. The results are evident in court delays, the ever increasing number of self-represented litigants, increasing restrictions on access to legal aid, and a myriad of unresolved civil disputes in . . . [more]

Studying or writing about your peer group can be a daunting and sometimes professionally hazardous task. For evidence of this, consider well-respected consultant and legal futurist Richard Susskind whose early work “The Future of Law” was met with considerable skepticism and even derision in some legal circles.

Despite the hazards, inherent in such an endeavour I could not help myself recently but to accept such an assignment that tasked me with the performance of an analysis and the development of a framework for the engagement of consultants in an industry in which I myself am a consultant. The task for . . . [more]