The long-standing monopoly on delivery of legal services is eroding across Canada. The current of consumer demand is steady and strong, seeking out a broader range of legal services and information, driven largely by cost, supply issues and technological change.

There is evidence of this erosion all around us, both within and without the bounds of the formal legal profession. Paralegals, notaries and agents provide specified legal services across the country, assisting with real estate transactions, wills, traffic offences and more. Courts are recognizing the needs of the self-representing litigant by providing self-help centres and creating online resources. Administrative tribunals . . . [more]

Lawyers tend to think of themselves as strong communicators, but they don’t always get their message across to clients.

It doesn’t help that clients aren’t always clear about what they want from lawyers.

This was evident at the mid-winter meeting of the CBA Council, when the Legal Futures Initiative took advantage of the gathering of lawyers from across the country, representing most sizes and types of practice, to find out what lawyers think clients want.

Presented with results from the Initiative’s own survey of client expectations, some lawyers present were a bit taken aback by the idea that clients wanted . . . [more]

JustAccess is a Toronto startup that, as of today, is seeking donations via the Centre for Social Innovation‘s crowdfunding site, Catalyst. The notion is that with a $10,000 infusion JustAccess can launch its own venture, which will:

support plaintiffs and defendants who can’t afford proper access to the justice system[,] share their stories with like minded people and request financial support towards their legal fees.

JustAccess is the work of a team of three people, Sam Saad, Chris Barry, and Kay Dyson Tam, none of whom is a lawyer or has legal training. Saad, the Managing Director . . . [more]

Last week, Exigent graciously invited me to a small lunch gathering of Torontonians to discuss the changing legal industry. Exigent, a major LPO based in South Africa, does business predominantly in the UK and Australia and has recently landed in Canada.

First, I’m happy that a major international LPO has finally seen Canada as worthy of investment.

Second, the arrival of Exigent means that change in the Canadian legal industry will – finally – begin to accelerate. Canadian law firms and clients will view the arrival of an international LPO as further validation for using non-Canadian lawyers to do work . . . [more]

One participant on the cbafutures.org website noted that with their own law school tuition at $13,000 a year, the pool of applicants with the means to attend shrinks tremendously. Indeed, some new students will pay almost $30,000 in tuition in order to attend their first year of law school.

But so what? A lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer, right? Everyone who goes to law school has the same education, and could conceivably serve the same constituency.

The question is really about the value of diversity. We’re used to thinking of diversity in terms of gender equality, and the . . . [more]

As law firms tackle the new reality of the economy and the changes being demanded by corporate clients, they should look to those within the firms who are already well-versed in strategy for business change: librarians.

I am currently in Seattle at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, including the Private Law Libraries’ Summit on Saturday. The message we are hearing from a number of different perspectives is clear: lawyers would be advised to seek help in re-developing their firms so they are better positioned for competitive advantage, and librarians are well suited for the C suite, . . . [more]

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The recent decision of Justice Fuerst in R v. Lippa has the controversy over the standing of paralegals raging again in Ontario. The decision relates to whether judicial officers have the discretion over which legal professionals will sit in the courtroom, and the order of cases which will be called.

In deciding that paralegals can be treated differently within the court system, Justice Fuerst made some interesting comments. She states at para. 18,

…s. 29 of the Law Society Act provides that every person who is licensed to practise law in Ontario as a barrister and solicitor is an

. . . [more]

Law librarians, law practitioners, and others interested in thoughts on the future of law practice will be interested in a provocative new piece by Jordan Furlong: The Future is Now: Eight Emerging Roles for Law Librarians. It appears in the July 2013 issue of Thomson Reuters’s Practice Innovations.

Jordan offers thoughts on new potential opportunities for law librarians and knowledge management professionals—often themselves librarians by training—in new law firm models that he foresees developing in response to multi-factored legal market disruptions. He suggests,

Starting now, law librarians and KM personnel have the opportunity to integrate themselves into the

. . . [more]

Many lawyers entered the profession because of a desire to do good, to help people, to support the rule of law. That’s their motivation.

Once in the workplace, though, their primary incentive is the need to make a living. That space between motive and incentive can create some cognitive dissonance for those lawyers who can’t take on the cases they’d like to tackle, particularly if it’s a question of the would-be client’s inability to pay; or the fear that the return would not justify the investment of the lawyer’s time.

Richard Susskind, in a paper prepared for the CBA’s Legal . . . [more]

The Quebec Bar Association (the Barreau du Québec) is seeking the legal right to automatically suspend lawyers facing serious criminal charges in connection with the exercise of their profession. The barreau expects to draft a Bill in conjunction with Quebec’s Office of Professions for the government to introduce in the legislature in 2014. The move is a response to the events of May 9, 2013, which saw three lawyers arrested and charged by the anti-corruption unit. These lawyers are under investigation for professional misconduct by the Syndic of the Quebec Bar Association (the bar’s disciplinary board).

Technology is often cited as the game-changing factor in the future of the legal profession. There’s an endless parade of new devices, plus software is being developed that can do some of the work lawyers used to do. Legal entrepreneurs harness the power of the cloud to power new business models.

What it’s doing to the legal profession is just one side of the equation. For clients – actual and potential – rapidly changing technology can both expand their reach to consumers, and be a legal minefield.

People who conduct any part of their business over the internet, for example, . . . [more]

John Chisholm has a nice post about his father retiring after 59 years in the same Australian law firm; a feat that will likely never be matched in this era of modern law.

John’s piece however is not just an homage to his Dad, it’s also instructive for those of us practicing today.

As John notes, in the 1950’s, the 1960’s and even the early 1970’s,

There was no place for 10 redrafts of something, you had to get your letters right the first time as paper was money and there were no photocopiers or printers. ….

You took your

. . . [more]