Knowing as much as you can about a client, prospect or industry is fundamental to being successful, yet many lawyers jump at an opportunity before understanding what that opportunity truly is. By putting time into research, the insights gained often reveal keys to a successful strategy.

As marketers, we often speak with lawyers who feel there is a new target client or market that is ripe for business development. Their feelings may be based on a hunch, what other firms may be doing, or information that has been shared with them. They want to jump right in, speak to people . . . [more]

Bringing people-centered justice to all will fail if we wait for people to come to the door of a law office asking for help. Justice must be made as accessible as possible by going out to where people live or spend much of their time. The rural mobile law van operating in the Wellington County and North Halton area just west of the City of Toronto is so far showing success in expanding access to justice in a rural area by extending that proactive offer of service, making legal assistance at least more accessible than before. A six-month pilot project . . . [more]

I teach a class at the University of Arizona College of Law called, Foreign, Comparative and International Legal Research. In my class, I discuss with the students the different ways in which this type of advanced legal research is dependent on constantly moving variables and components. Beyond a handout of the top five sources to consult, I instead strive to make the students understand that they need to create a research strategy, keep track of changes on foreign and international law, and consult a significant amount of non-legal information. All of this needs to be done while always evaluating . . . [more]

It seems almost trite to say that we are living in strange times. One ‘emergency’ seems to follow another. Indeed, as normalcy recedes in our memories we now seem to have trouble determining if the strange events we confront really are ‘emergencies’ or just some kind new normal.

In Ontario, special measures made under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.9, to address the worldwide pandemic have been in place for almost two years. Under the British Columbia Emergency Program Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 111, not only have similar COVID measures been introduced, but . . . [more]

Why We Wrote This Article

The President of Sensei Enterprises, co-author Sharon Nelson, is a woman. She is involved with multiple groups and associations of women lawyers. For two years, she has been hearing that women suffered more than men during the pandemic and that they have “lost ground” professionally. So . . . along with her co-authors, who are accustomed to a woman leader, we set out together to learn and report on what has happened to women lawyers in the last couple of years and what they now want for their professional lives.

Life Pre-Pandemic was No Bed

These days, I’m being asked to do a lot of presentations and training on law firm leadership. People with a marketing background tend to gravitate toward this area because so much of what we do focusses on helping to improve the leadership skills of the lawyers we work with – be if for practice groups, client teams, or simply to improve management of their own practice.

I’ve been focussed on this for years, but it’s taken a while for law firms to get here…to understand how critical strong leadership is. Back in my days in a national firm, I created . . . [more]

The recent findings of an international trial monitoring panel in the case of United States v. Donziger reveal the failure of a New York court to ensure a fair trial in accordance with international law and human rights standards. As the panel concluded in their extensive report, critical changes are needed in laws, rules, and courtroom procedures to ensure that the methods of US federal courts match their longstanding mission to uphold the rule of law.

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In September 2020, an international group of legal academics and practitioners (which include the writers of this article) convened to examine . . . [more]

In 2018, the Patent Act was amended to expand the scope of the “Prior Use” exception to patent infringement. This exception declares acts not to be an infringement of a patent if a person had done the same act prior to the claim date of a patent. Basically, if someone is doing something prior to the filing of a patent, they can continue to do what they were doing. In the recent Federal Court decision, Kobold Corporation v. NCS Multistage Inc., 2021 FC 1437, the Court had the first opportunity to consider the amended prior use exception.

Prior . . . [more]

On January 4, 2022, the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) Panel on Canada’s Dairy Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) released its ruling.[1]

The Panel Decides—Both Sides Claim Victory

The Panel ruled that Canada’s practice of reserving 85-100% of dairy TRQs for processors violated Article 3.A.2.11(b) of CUSMA. The United States claimed victory, correctly pointing out that the Panel had accepted the U.S. argument on the central issue. As per USTR Katherine Tai:

This historic win will help eliminate unjustified trade restrictions on American dairy products and will ensure that the U.S. dairy industry and its workers get the full . . . [more]

How to Be a Good Litigation Junior is the title of a CLEBC full-day conference every two years.

This year as I prepared for my presentation, I couldn’t help but think about what I might say if I was invited to a similar conference aimed at senior lawyers: “How to be a Good Litigation Partner.”

Many well-meaning, kind and ethical litigation partners have some blind spots when it comes to their leadership.

Leadership is a learned skill that develops with attention and effort. There are so many books and courses on leadership because it isn’t easy. It is all about . . . [more]

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is continuing to hold discussions on a proposal for a waiver of intellectual property rights clauses in its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that bear on Covid-19 patents, such as medications and vaccinations. India and South Africa first proposed the waiver on October 2, 2020. It was a time within that first year of the pandemic amid great anticipation of Covid vaccinations on the horizon. The waiver represented a hope for a more equitable roll out of preventative treatments for fighting this scourge, without the usual access barriers posed by intellectual property . . . [more]

“The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.”
– Seth Godin, Author

I have been thinking a lot about value lately. For so many of us, work is busier than ever and our social calendars are finally starting to fill up again. But, as legal marketers, it can sometimes feel like you are doing everything in the world but, accomplishing virtually nothing at all. How does one maximize and demonstrate their value? How can a law firm provide meaningful value to . . . [more]