Nothing marks the beginning of the year like RRSP season and a plethora of mutual fund ads boasting performance with imagery that suggests you could be sailing a fancy yacht as a youthful retiree. 

Don’t get me wrong, the possibility of excellent investment performance and becoming the captain of your own expensive yacht sounds great, but many of these ads overlook the significance of the fees associated with mutual fund investments. It suggests to me that companies that don’t emphasize the competitiveness of their fees have something to hide.

You may have heard a few years ago that a study . . . [more]

Lawyers frequently lament to me that they wish they could focus on the practice of law, rather than being perpetually barraged with new and un-billable marketing and technology demands. There is a palpable longing for the halcyon days when such a pure life was allegedly attainable. The fundamental approach to marketing in the golden age — still deeply rooted in many lawyers’ DNA — was “Do good work.” 

Full-stop. Put another way, the prevailing ethos was “by one’s expertise shall ye be known.” Smart lawyers excelled. Smart lawyers who also happened to have a way with people were superstars. 

Against . . . [more]

The relative size of library collections was once a source of pride for institutions, a tangible means of measuring their scholarly worthiness. In the 1990’s this gradually started to change, as the growth of collections continued well beyond the ability of the libraries to house all their books, either on open or rolling stacks. Libraries started to plan off site storage for the lesser used collections, and often collaborated via consortia arrangements to afford the construction and ongoing maintenance costs of the storage facilities. In some instances ‘last copy only’ schemes were devised to avoid duplication, and the methods of . . . [more]

Introduction

Some call it flirting. Others call it harmless fun. When minors are involved, however, the police and district attorneys have had another word for it – child pornography. If you haven’t guessed it, we’re talking about sexting. Sexting is defined as the sending or receiving of sexually-explicit or sexually-suggestive images or video via a cell phone or the Internet. Most commonly, the term has been used to describe incidents where individuals take nude or semi-nude images of themselves and then send those pictures to others. Yet, despite the widespread and often breathlessly erotic media coverage of teenage sexting stories, . . . [more]

And by Nkasi Adams

[Here at the University of Saskatchewan I have the pleasure of supervising graduate students working in the areas of Canadian Aboriginal law and international Indigenous rights. Last year Nkasi Adams, the first Indigenous woman to graduate from law school in Guyana, joined us at the University of Saskatchewan to pursue an LL.M. focussing on the tensions between Indigenous peoples’ rights and international measures to deal with climate change. I’m happy to have her provide most of the ideas and information for this month’s column. It’s something we don’t know enough about here in the north. . . . [more]

As an active participant in the eLawyering task force of the American Bar Association, I have volunteered to compile a list of the types of regulations that inhibit the growth of virtual law practice. In a world plagued by access to justice issues, these regulations add to the cost of operating a virtual law practice and can make it economically unfeasible to do so, particularly for solos. I am not advocating the wholesale demolition of ethical rules but I would like to point out areas of regulation that need to be rethought in the modern context, as they are impeding . . . [more]

So, congratulations on the merger and keeping a lid on the news until recently. I didn’t see one leak of this news. It’s quite a feat keeping the media at bay. I know; I’ve worked on two mergers. They get one whiff of merger negotiations and they pounce on your most vulnerable chatterbox. I would bet you had plenty of partners who were DY-ING to tell the story. Those of us on the marketing side of law… well, we like a little drama and plus, we can be controlling too.

Media can be relentless. They try all points of entry . . . [more]

It is widely recognized by educational institutions that associations provide a very positive influence in the lives of students. Other than making students feel as though they are not alone in what can be a stressful environment, being a member of an association has many advantages, such as making valuable contacts and meeting other people who obviously share the same interests.

The Black Law Student Association of Canada (BLSAC) is an association that is committed to supporting and enhancing the academic, professional and networking opportunities for Black law students. As Omar Ha-Redeye, a fellow Slaw member, once said in a . . . [more]

Dear Dr. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission:

I was recently a guest at your launch in Ghent of the European Commission’s OpenAIRE initiative. You spoke eloquently and forcefully about how OpenAIRE is providing infrastructure for “open access” across the European Union, and how it represents a strong stand for both mandating and supporting open access to research funded by the European Commission. You, indeed, made it seem the only sensible way for research to progress in this new century.

It was deeply stirring to see a continent-wide embrace of open access. The Open Access Infrastructure for Research . . . [more]

We’ve discussed Google Scholar on SLAW before. Google Scholar allows you to search legal opinions and journals for free, and while the coverage is primarily American, there are a significant amount of Canadian materials available. Not everything in Google Scholar is available in full-text; in some cases only the citations are included.

Google Scholar supports most of Google Search’s advanced operators (e.g. “phrase search”, + and -). It also allows users to limit their searches by date with the caveat that “that some web sources don’t include publication dates, and a date-restricted search will not return articles for which Google . . . [more]

It would not be a gross generalisation to say that many in the legal profession in the UK would wince at the idea of young people being taught to use the law as a tool to manage their affairs and claim their rights. Common reactions may well focus on the old adage that “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”, or the absurdity of young people needing to know anything about the law. But, in these gloomy economic times when young people’s (particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds) debts spiral, their advice and support services downsized or removed, and . . . [more]

Our firm recently launched a LinkedIn Campaign for Lawyers which encouraged all lawyers to create and maintain a profile on LinkedIn. Hicks Morley has a company profile on LinkedIn that contains the profiles of approximately 80 members. While a company account is beneficial to set up as a way to gain access to these profiles, the real marketing benefit comes from the exposure of individual lawyer profiles.

LinkedIn was chosen as the primary social media marketing tool for the following reasons:

• Business oriented professional online directory 
• Key resource for subject matter experts, referrals & new clients
• Ability to connect with