One of my continuing Slaw quests is to prove the axiom that everything has a legal connection. While this bit of proof is not exactly a new item it is timely, in some parts of the country at least. In a move that strikes me as something that is somehow quintessentially Canadian, Quebec has mandated by law that all passenger vehicles must be equipped with winter tires. The Highway Safety Code, R.S.Q. c. C-24.2, s. 440.1 states:

Between 15 December and 15 March, the owner of a taxi or a passenger vehicle registered in Québec may not put the

What is it that Slaw does not do, lawyers do only discreetly, and everyone else does pretty much all the time?

Advertise, of course. And what’s one of the big names in that trade?

ساعاتجي.

Saatchi, that is. Well, Saatchi and Saatchi, actually: brothers Maurice (the Baron) and Charles (Mr. Nigella Lawson). This isn’t about their careers in advertising, however — though that’s an interesting tale all in itself. No, it’s a fillip about a small portion of the home page of Charles’ Saatchi Online site, which is an offshoot, so to speak, of his Saatchi Gallery of contemporary art. . . . [more]

Conventional wisdom is that law firm web sites should contain a list of major deals the firm has worked on. I’ve always thought that was wrong – but didn’t really understand why until this morning.

I attended a TechAlliance breakfast club seminar where Nick Hall of Hall Associates ( @hallassociates ) spoke about Brand Promise.

One of the examples he used was a hairdresser. The brand experience a good hairdresser provides is confidence – not a haircut. Confidence that the hairdresser uses her/his expertise to make the customer look and thus feel good. That results in loyal customers who will . . . [more]

I’ve never pre-ordered a textbook until Melanie Bueckert’s “The Law of Employee Monitoring in Canada.”

This is no slight to Melanie’s fantastic background, but I didn’t expect much. Though there are exceptions, many privacy texts tend to be thin on substance, perhaps because the domain is evolving so quickly.

Given I had set my expectations low, I was delighted when I received Melanie’s text last month and discovered it included a thorough and deep discussion of the law of employee monitoring in Canada. This led me to introduce myself to Melanie, who is Legal Research Counsel at the Manitoba Court . . . [more]

I am totally exhausted after a day involving a chambers application, client meetings, attempting to settle a high conflict matter likely headed to litigation despite all efforts and then coming home to two children under four with a husband out of town. And, Monday is my day to post on Slaw …

Which leads to me to a little rumination on the ethereal promise of work life balance in the context of private practice law. I am with Jordan Furlong, whom I met coincidentally for the first time in person at a CBA Work Life Balance function, that we . . . [more]

Over the last week, privacy regulators from around the world have been meeting in Madrid at the 31st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. Canada’s own Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has not surprisingly had a prominent role in the conference, chairing a plenary session on internet privacy. She was also a speaker at another plenary session on moving towards a global privacy framework. The private sector have been involved in the discussions and it appears that there is growing consensus that the global economy and global internet necessitate global (or at least globally compatible) privacy standards. I . . . [more]

♫ Feel in my heart
the start of something new…♫

Lyrics and music by: Matthew Gerrard & Robbie Nevil, from High School Musical.

The BC Courthouse Library Society is launching their new website today (http://www.courthouselibrary.ca/cms/) which should be ‘live’ shortly (the old site is still there as this is posted).

The new site certainly fulfills their Strategic Direction as set out on their site:

Provision of Legal Information, Products, and Services to Members of the Legal Community:

Goals:

To understand the changing practice of members of the legal community and how they obtain and use legal information.

To design . . . [more]

Today we’re offering what the menu of one of my much-frequented restaurants might call “Google two ways.” But have no fear: the fact that our favourite double-O agent is the subject doesn’t mean this is business. No, this is about doodles, Google doodles — and particularly some of the hundreds out there that you have never seen before.

The main lode can be found on Google’s Holiday Logos page. This is a truly astonishing collection of inventive plays on the name.

If you’d like a source that’s organized a bit differently, go to Doodle Source, which started collecting the . . . [more]

For those with trouble prioritizing which of their next great ideas to undertake, there’s a fun column in the Oct. 20th edition of Business Week: The Seven Deadly Sins of the Innovator:

1. Lust: Innovating in a space you have no business being in.
2. Gluttony: Trying to create too many initiatives with too few resources. Innovation takes emotional and financial capital and focus.
3. Greed: Taking short-term profits at the expense of long-term growth.
4. Sloth: Taking short cuts—not doing the hard work, not following the proven process.
5. Wrath: Being so focused on your competition that you

Steven Covey is addressing the Drucker Institute live on the web: http://www.drucker100.com/

Not sure if it will be available afterwards.

Thanks Dave Bilinsky for the link. . . . [more]

One of the things I enjoy about reading the Language Log, a cooperative blog by academic linguists, is the ease with which some of the authors slip into high dudgeon. (I suppose I might be like that, too, if my subject were language, in which everyone is an expert.) The latest target of Geoff Pullum’s indignation is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, who, it turns out, doesn’t know his active from his passive, when it comes to voice.

The offending passage occurred in the judge’s dissent in Jones v. United States 526 U.S. 227 (1999) where Kennedy is interpreting a . . . [more]

A CBS news article says that blueprints of Obama’s helicopter were found on a computer in Tehran. How did it get there?

Seems that a defense contractor legitimately had the documents. An employee saved it on her home PC. That home PC contained, like many do, file sharing software. But that employee did not realize that the file sharing software was configured to share the folder it was put in.

In other words, if anyone anywhere using that file sharing software/network did a search, they could find and download that document.

This danger is not new – but its a . . . [more]