“Someone should <do something>!”

“Someone should <change something>!”

“Someone should <fix something>!”

I’ve uttered these phrases. Maybe you have as well. You’ve certainly heard them said.

So many of the challenges and opportunities we see could be realized if only “someone” would do the thing that opens the door, addresses the negative, or creates the good.

So who is this “someone,” and what’s preventing them from acting?

Whether are talking about the practice of law or the business of law, the administration of justice or access to justice, the making of law or the application of law, the “someone” in . . . [more]

Last May my colleague Ivan announced four upcoming major milestones in Lexum’s plan for getting started with legal Knowledge Management-as-a-Service. Early this summer we reported the transformation of Lexbox into a private document repository allowing you to search your own material straight from the CanLII website. Later we integrated our citator to insert links pointing to public legal information cited by your documents, as well as an alert system for tracking updates to this material. We are now ready to announce the latest development in line with this strategy: Lexum and Clio have partnered to facilitate the integration . . . [more]

It all started out well. Like most years, in the fall of 2019 we looked at the strategic plan for the firm, growth opportunities and developed a targeted approach and budget for 2020. As we roll into the fall of 2020 planning is different. Mentally this has been a year like no other in recent times and as a marketer it is one where we have constantly be making adjustments to our plan.

With the benefit of hindsight, planning for 2021 will look different. Our master plans, our insight and our playbook will change. There are annual items from previous . . . [more]

We lawyers, adjudicators, and mediators are normally quite resistant to change. Dealing constantly with conflict, we seek comfort in the dispute resolution processes we know.

So it’s still surprising to me to see how quickly the “dispute resolution industry” has adapted to the new reality of physically-distanced dispute resolution imposed by the COVID pandemic.

Will we ever want to go back to the old way of doing things?

In the spring there was a flurry of tutorials on how to do online dispute resolution. Many people struggled to learn how to ZOOM. Those who had been advocating and doing online . . . [more]

Those of you of a certain age will remember the song “What Kind of Fool Am I?” That song was about love, but for Pete’s sake, why is it that some lawyers keep insisting that they won’t use MFA (multi-factor authentication)?

Thanks to our good friend Ben Schorr (who works at Microsoft) for sending us an August 7 Microsoft update on why multi-factor authentication is so critical. It is short, sweet and should be read by anyone who has resisted multi-factor authentication (and there’s a lot of you!).

From the post:

“When you sign into your online accounts –

I’m fascinated by project failure.

First, I believe we learn more from our failures than our successes. Success usually has an element of chance, of circumstances cohering… or at least not pulling out the rug. Yet in looking back (e.g., at after-action reviews/project debriefs), we rarely recognize the extent to which what-didn’t-happen played a part in our success.

Second, failure stories are often mesmerizing, especially big failures. They frequently read like thrillers, with plot twist after plot twist conspiring against the heroic project manager. Actually, at least half of them read more like lampoons, with the project manager anything but . . . [more]

Imagine for a moment that starting tomorrow, every lawyer in the world could be hired at no charge. They’re not working for free — maybe Jeff Bezos has decided to subsidize every lawyer’s income for some unfathomable reason. Basically, anyone can hire a lawyer for whatever they need at no cost.

Consider this, and then ask yourself: Would this make access to justice better, or worse?

Are we likely to see more cases filed, or fewer? Court backlogs grow, or shrink? Go a little further and ask: Do you think you’d be able to hire a lawyer at all? Or . . . [more]

Q: Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?

A: Anywhere it wants to.

I was recently interviewed by the South China Morning Post [SCMP] with respect to Premier of China Li Keqiang’s comment this May about China and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership [CPTPP]. A short article written with a quick turn-around time for publication does not allow those interviewed to provide an in-depth response. It is a good piece and gives an accurate snapshot of my “at this moment” view that now is not the time for China’s entry into the CPTPP.

But of course, that was . . . [more]

The Labour Day weekend typically finds professors feeling melancholy: the four months of our summer term, which we use primarily for research and writing, attending conferences, and graduate supervision, are again drawing to a close. We know that the next eight months will be focused on the equally important work of teaching, academic planning and governance, so our next opportunity to think deeply about our scholarship is a long way away.

Yet, since many of us are unabashed nerds, we are perpetually excited about the beginning of a new school year, replete with ambitious plans for our courses and keen . . . [more]

At the end of July, after months of lockdown, my first trip outside The Netherlands was to Tunisia. Just before I flew over, the prime minister tendered the resignation of his government. That meant possibly another minister of justice; the fourth in a little over two years. Much as I believe in democracy, it felt a bit much. With a deep sigh I reconciled myself with the fact that we needed to start developing our ministerial relationship all over again. In most post-revolution and post-conflict reconstruction environments frequent changes of ministers of justice and, with that, senior civil servants, are . . . [more]

At CanLII, we have a number of programs that provide opportunities for writers to publish their work. Most recently, we have been working to develop content from scratch through initiatives such as a collaborative manual on BC litigation and our call for book proposals. It’s through these projects where we have taken on a whole new and exciting aspect of publishing: editing. 

Editing is complex and exists on multiple levels that can happen in succession or at the same time, and can range from general to specific. There are also several types of editing, from developmental to proofreading. Overall, . . . [more]

This is Part 2 of a two-part piece focusing on how family lawyers and mediators can participate in and support the Youth Voices Initiative.

In Part 1, I described the foundations of the Youth Voices Initiative, overseen by the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab, which aims to improve the well-being and resilience of children and youth who are experiencing parental separation. I tried to connect the dots between the child rights provisions, Adverse Childhood Experience research, the importance of child voice/participation and the family justice system. Out of a human-centred design process emerged a story-based concept which the . . . [more]