The debate on distractions and thinking made it into the US presidential race last week. During his visit to England, Barack Obama was overheard speaking with British Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

According to Obama, “the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking.” I’d imagine it must be more difficult for the President of the US to set aside time to think than it is for even the busiest lawyer, but it’s positive that this is getting broader recognition. Maybe a backlash really is . . . [more]

For those of you that thought having two Simon’s here at Slaw was confusing, get ready for take-off! This week Slaw is ecstatic to welcome three new weekly contributors – David Bilinsky, David Canton, and David Fraser. If you’ve followed Canadian law blogs over the past couple years, none of who will need much of an introduction. But, we’ll do it anyway…

David Bilinsky is the Practice Management Advisor and staff lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia. His impressive CV includes such items as being Chair of the Editorial Board for Law Practice Magazine, . . . [more]

Summer got in the way of the last few Fridays, but I’m back with something completely irrelevant, as ususal. This week it’s numbers. Numbers that make no sense to anyone with the exception of two people in the world. So why would we want to pay attention to something so…cryptic?

Because it’s all about secrets, the sort that spies have. And about numbers stations that are still today used to broadcast shortwave messages to those spies.

All over the world unlicensed broadcasts occur at various points on the shortwave band, most at rigorously regular times, some at apparently random times, . . . [more]

LinkedIn, the social networking site sometimes known as “Facebook for professionals”, continues to grow more than a year after Steve Matthews wrote about it. There are now over 20 million members.

The folks at LinkedIn recently commissioned the experts of clear explanations, Common Craft, to explain how to leverage LinkedIn in our professional lives. The result is this video:

For more ideas on how LinkedIn is used by various groups, there are additional customer success story videos on the Official LinkedIn Channel on YouTube. This is the Mergers & Acquisitions video:

No Law video yet. For an . . . [more]

Can’t believe I am only just noticing this. The stellar law school blog Law is Cool is not just a blog, but also a podcast! They periodically put out audio with interviews and discussion targeted at law students.

I just listened to the recent Episode 10 discussing the 7 Year Law Degree with Jordan Furlong; using a law degree for alternative careers with David Aylward, founder and director of COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance; and access to justice and the Justice on Target program with Minister Chis Bentley, the Attorney-General of Ontario. Kudos to this episode’s . . . [more]

Les lecteurs du journal du Midi La Provence s’amuseront par le cas d’un criminel accusé qui est invité à servir de juré dans sa propre procès:

Un Aixois doit comparaître en septembre devant la cour d’assises, il est suspecté d’avoir commis un meurtre . . . [more]

We’ve mentioned Carall’s ((Note that the website at http://www.carallnet.org/ appears to be defunct and isn’t operating)) annual conference before but they’ve scored a coup at their Jamaica conference this year in getting both the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Senator Dorothy Lightbourne and the Chief Justice of Jamaica Zaila McCalla to speak about the importance of law librarians, as well as difficulty attracting graduates to the legal system.
. . . [more]

To our Canadian readers, colleagues, friends, and fellow Slaw-yers, have a terrific Canada Day!

This beautiful photo of the Canadian flag is by Ian Muttoo and made available under Creative Commons. . . . [more]

I’ve been getting a daily blast of legal-tech news from Lexology, having ticked the IP, IT etc. boxes and those for Canada, the U.S. and U.K. Today, there was a single item under the “Canada” banner: “Employers need to be careful to avoid waiving the protections of written computer and email policies” from the firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, a name I’m not familiar with — but then I’m not exactly up on them all. The telltale was the mention of the 9th Circuit Court and then “the Ontario Police Department.” Ah. No . . . [more]

End of the month and time to clean out the Fillip Folder on my machine — which means it’s a six-pack today, apropos for (what should be) the long weekend, perhaps.

1. FontStruct
I worked at a university for a great many years, and I eventually discovered that most of the faculty had no eyes. For them the visual world was purely a source of information, primarily in the form of text. All else was ornamentation, something that others might add on at the end — if there was time or an obscure need. The best illustration of this, for . . . [more]

Havemercy, a book created via online collaboration on LiveJournal between two 21-year-old women in Victoria and New York, is now on sale. This 400-page book, after being written online in only 18 days, caught the attention of a senior editor at Spectra, the science-fiction imprint of Random House’s Bantam Dell Publishing Group. It offered a $30,000 advance to the two authors, and secured world rights to the book in English. And it all started with an online thread between the 2 women, discussing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Article from The Globe and Mail . . . [more]

Keeping clichés out of your writing is not easy. I’m sure that my hasty blog posts are peppered with the pesky things. So I ought to be more generous than I feel towards writers whose wheels slip into the ruts; but at least I keep my tsk-tsks to myself. Nearly always. Except today — when I want to carp about two phrases that have fallen into use. And use. And use.

The two candidates for exile from the language are “send a message” and “going forward” in all their variations.

As do all clichés, I suppose, these hackneyed phrases create . . . [more]