As we legal writers drag ourselves through the dog days of summer, we sometimes hit lulls in finding topics of interest. Lucky for me the United Kingdom continues to provide fodder for those exhorting North Americans to change the way legal services are delivered. And I count myself fortunate to have been able to connect with a number of players who are truly shaking up the legal services industry across the Atlantic.

While the spotlight on innovation is focussed primarily on the private sector, one municipal in-house legal team is starting to cause a sensation.

Geoff Wild has written a . . . [more]

As readers are aware, I have been very vocal about the scourge of the billable hour.

Recently a lawyer asked me, if I don’t bill by the hour, then how do I charge for my services? It then struck me that the real reason lawyers bill by the hour is because they don’t know how else to charge for legal services. To a person in any other line of business this would be a bizarre question.

But for lawyers, the art of pricing for legal services has been lost to time.

There are now fewer and fewer lawyers who realize . . . [more]

The Fastcase 50 for 2012 was announced on Thursday, earlier than last year presumably to coincide with AALL 2012, the American Association of Law Libraries conference currently taking place in Boston.

According to the press release, the Fastcase 50 “recognizes the smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law” and were nominated by legal and legal technology industry leaders, law firm managers and other individuals.

From Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase: “We get to recognize our heroes, the great thinkers, creators, and risk-takers who make this such an interesting time to work in legal tech. . . . [more]

The judge presiding over the UK trial of a police officer charged with manslaughter of a man at the London G20 protests in 2009, made a request that certain newspapers purge their online archived reports of the accused’s involvement in a 2001 road rage incident. The judge had ruled the jury should not hear evidence of this incident at the trial. The purpose of his request to the newspapers – with which they complied voluntarily – was to remove the risk that the jurors might read them.

The stories had been run by the papers legitimately, prior to any charges . . . [more]

Following the report of the LSUC task force on articling, there has been a lot of discussion in Ontario about how entry to the legal profession will look in the future.

This is a hot topic in the UK too, but for a different reason.

Deregulation brought about by the UK Legal Services Act is reshaping entry to the legal profession there. More school leavers are now opting to enter the profession via the apprenticship route rather than through law degrees. School leavers can join firms as litigation executives and train to become lawyers on-the-job via the Chartered Institute of . . . [more]

I’ve seen other summer reading lists lately and thought it would be fun to put together my own list of books currently or recently on my nightstand. There’s quite a range here–management/leadership type titles, geek girl titles, and some challenging fiction. I’m not really one for light reading! And, there’s probably no way I can get through all of these in the summer, but I can certainly try. And of course in putting this list together I found even more new books, so I better get reading.

What is on your summer reading list?

Here is the list (with no . . . [more]

I have been following an interesting blog and twitter feed (@LawSync) prepared by LawSync out of Sheffield Hallam University. LawSync has put the “wow” back into law school and is a project of that university’s Department of Law, Criminology, and Community Justice. According to its website:

The name of this project reflects our desire to see a better synchronisation between law as an academic discipline and professional practice, the expectations both of legal professionals and users of legal services, and regulatory influences. Law schools, law students, and legal professionals need to keep in sync with market needs and

Let me throw some controversy into your world today.

When I speak to groups about innovation in legal services the topic that always hits a raw nerve is the subject of office space. Next to personnel costs, office space is one of the largest fixed costs of any business, including law firms. However, much like the weather, every lawyer talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

It is a space planning rule of thumb that law firms need between 600 – 1,000 square feet of space per lawyer. Think of the savings if that number could be . . . [more]

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 is seeking comments on a newly released Issues Paper entitled “Issues Paper Concerning Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5 and the Limits on Virtual Presence in a Jurisdiction.” They are seeking comments to assist their consideration of the issues that come up when lawyers establish a presence and practice virtually in a jurisdiction that is away from their physical location. Responses are requested by July 31, 2012. See the above link for instructions on where to send them.

Remote virtual practices raise all sorts of interesting questions:

• How do you ensure the

Much is written and said about how it is undemocratic for unelected judges to make decisions that have an impact on public policy.

An interesting article last week in the UK Human Rights Blog makes the point that it is not so much the unelected bench that results in a democratic deficit, as the lack of meaningful public access to court decisions.

The authors point out that although judges may be somewhat out of touch, in the eyes of the public they are objective and fair.

The problem, they say, is that the courts are failing to use technology to . . . [more]

General Counsel have a great opportunity to change how legal services are delivered – if they choose to do so. While some have made strides to change things up so that they may assume a more strategic and value-added role within their companies (which in my view is the best role for GCs and their teams), many choose to remain reactive fire-fighters, policing an increasing number of outside law firms. In fact many advertisements for in-house counsel now stipulate that experience managing outside law firms is a vital quality for employment. Surely companies should be hiring in-house counsel to bring . . . [more]

There is so much talk these days about the business of law: rainmaking, marketing, business development, etc. All of this in pursuit of landing “clients”. Truth be told, it is actually quite easy to land a client. Many lawyers find to their surprise months or even years later that some casual encounter is actually deemed to constitute a “solicitor-client relationship” or at least the makings of one.

This has huge ramifications for a lawyer in terms of the law of conflicts of interest, the ethical duty of confidentiality and the client’s substantive right of solicitor-client privilege. It can also be . . . [more]