In June of 2013, the CBA Legal Futures Initiative issued a report entitled “The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues” (the “Report”). For those who have not read the Report I highly recommend a reading. The report breaks down a wide variety of trends and issues that are important for all those within the profession to be aware of. While there are many important discussion points raised in the Report, the one issue that stands out to me however, is that of competition within the legal marketplace.

The issue stands out for me as one requiring further . . . [more]

Whenever there is an auto insurance claim, insurers must determine fault. If you are found to be at fault for a claim, the insurer will consider you an increased risk and use this information to increase your premiums. If you are not at fault, the claim will not directly result in an increase of your premiums. This probably makes sense to most people, but you may be surprised to learn that things are a bit different when it comes to home insurance claims.

Assume you make a claim to repair a roof damaged by a hail storm, or your expensive . . . [more]

What happens to highly successful women lawyers and corporate executives and managers who decide to stop working and stay at home with their children full-time? Do they miss their successful careers? Do they feel they made the right choice for them and their families? What happens if they want to return to work ten years later when the children are older or their husbands have lost their jobs?

These questions were explored in a recent lengthy New York Times magazine article that revisited twenty-two women who were profiled in 2003 and labeled as the “Opt-Out Generation”.

Each of these women . . . [more]

Is there something women know about health and fitness that us guys don’t? I’m referring to the fact that for every running and racing walking event I enter, there are always more women than men. Sometimes a lot more.

At last summer’s inaugural Lululemon-sponsored “Sea Wheeze Half Marathon” in Vancouver, over 80% of the 5,900 participants were women. You might say “No kidding, what guy wants to go in a race sponsored by Lululemon?”

But the Lululemon half marathon is just the tip of a North American, if not a world-wide, phenomenon that has seen an explosive increase in the . . . [more]

Where are courts heading? Three things are converging that are likely to cause seismic shifts in the way they function. It’s a pity that those shape and run courts don’t seem to be aware.

First, there is a financial crisis; acute and big. Everywhere – the Eurozone, the US, Canada, Australia – government budgets are being cut and court budgets are not being left out. “If you think 2013 was bad, you don’t want to see 2014” a senior official of the Dutch Ministry of Justice recently told me. The message from the ministries of finance: do more with less. . . . [more]

Is there a reason some lawyers are scared at the idea of Legal Project Management?

Actually, I’ve heard numerous reasons since I wrote the book introducing the subject:

• It will take away our autonomy.
• It will introduce too much bureaucracy.
• Legal work doesn’t follow a formula.
• I don’t understand it.

To the lawyer who once offered that last explanation, I thank you for your honesty. What we don’t understand can be scary, intimidating even. But in Legal Project Management everything is exposed, shared, open, and available.

As for the other reasons… I’ll get to them in a minute.

Dark Rides . . . [more]

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to business development for lawyers. The challenge for any writer tackling the subject today is how to add value in a field already saturated with publications. Peter H. Freeman, the author of the ARC Group’s latest publication, Secrets of the Masters – The Business Development Guide for Lawyers, has successfully produced a fresh and practical guide that will make a worthy addition to every law firm’s library.

As a coach of lawyers I immediately appreciated Freeman’s approach to the subject matter. Here is my top ten list of what . . . [more]

In March of 2009, the Canadian Bar Association BC Branch (CBABC), with funding from the Law Foundation of BC, launched the Rural Education and Access to Lawyers Initiative (REAL). This initiative was the first of its kind in Canada to recognize the importance of ensuring continued access to legal services in small communities and rural areas and to highlight the challenges that these communities were and continue to face. The Initiative was established as a coordinated set of programs to address the current and projected shortage of lawyers in these communities which was brought about by the aging of the . . . [more]

Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book “Lean In” urges women to develop greater confidence by moving past internal barriers and leveraging their strengths to move into positions of greater responsibility. This is easier said than done. How do you increase your self-confidence and capitalize on your strengths to do this? How do you overcome inner barriers or external biases if you are not even aware what they are? The answer is through leadership training.

Leadership training is one of the most under-valued and misunderstood opportunities for lawyers – especially women lawyers – to advance their careers. While lawyers regularly take courses in . . . [more]

The recent floods in Calgary and Toronto have brought considerable attention to the water damage coverage and exclusions of most home insurance policies. Water damage represents approximately 40% of all eligible home insurance claims, and costs the Canadian insurance industry just under $2 billion annually. While most home insurance covers water damage, there are two significant situations excluded in a standard policy: flood and seepage. 

A flood, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, is defined as water flowing overland and entering your home through windows, doors and cracks. This is surface water on what would otherwise be dry . . . [more]

Ask most firm leaders to identify those business CEOs that they most admire and they would probably list a small group of highly entrepreneurial names that would include Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Warren Buffet. Ask why they admired these particular individuals and you would probably hear about the individual’s self-confidence, decisive boldness, the originality of their strategic direction, and contrarian beliefs. However, if you now inquire into what strategies these leaders were themselves advocating in their own firms, the answers you would receive would be depressingly unlike those of the leaders they admire.

To make this point . . . [more]

If you’ve flown to Europe or Asia, you know that the flight path, viewed on a “normal” map, looks far longer than it should. The plane flies what appears to be thousands unnecessary kilometers on a route that curves up near the North Pole, rather than flying in a straight line.

Appearances are deceiving, as you probably have realized. The earth is not flat, and that so-called normal map, usually a Mercator projection, greatly distorts distances at higher latitudes. Trace a route from Toronto to Tokyo on such a map, and it appears to pass about 700 km south of . . . [more]