In what is very welcome news, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has released a practice direction, effective 1 October 2011, authorizing the use of reliable online versions of court decisions for filing in books of authorities and providing for special citation rules:

Practice Direction Regarding Filing of Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases, and Regarding Citation of All Judicial Decisions

Practice Direction

Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases

Effective October 1, 2011, copies of judicial decisions obtained from approved electronic databases are acceptable for filing provided the report of the judicial decision contains paragraph numeration consistent with the numbering of

Two galloping horses. A single rider, with one foot on each. The three are approaching a fork in the road.

Call me melodramatic, but this is the image that bubbled up in my mind as I examined the material I received from the Advocates Society this week.

The Advocates Journal contained an article by Sheila Block entitled “Advocacy Lessons from the Past”. It is an engaging piece sprinkled with references to the succinct styles of Maloney, Dubin and Robinette. The author reminds us of advice from Orwell on writing, relishes ‘beautiful, simple language’, and questions whether today lawyers focus enough . . . [more]

On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 the Opening of the Courts was held in Toronto, preceded by an interfaith service at Church of the Holy Trinity. The service consisted of a fascinating mix of a number of readings, including a South African anti-Apartheid song (and dance). I couldn’t help but think that this would have been impossible a couple decades ago.

But attendees were surprised by a protest outside of the church as soon as the services completed. A video of the protest is available here, with one of the speakers saying,

We’re going to be here every single year.

Looks like litbots and databases will soon be providing routine updates of structured information to human readers via newspapers and news websites in the form of machine written articles. Narrative Science is the company behind it.

Pretty soon, such litbots will be conversing with my own personal litbots, and negotiating the purchase of routine items I need and can afford, according to the budget I set and the priorities I identify. The prospect of the online grocery appears again: I need milk, eggs, and in-season fruit every Tuesday, for delivery Wed. afternoon. The grocery’s litbot can check my calendar . . . [more]

It has been a long while since we mentioned the Innovaction Awards. The 2011 winners were recently announced, and a Canadian group are among the winners:

Berwin Leighton Paisner, LLP (BLP) was selected for their Lawyers On Demand (LOD) initiative which began in 2007 after BLP observed two important issues affecting the UK legal market: (1) legal services clients want to stretch their budgets further and (2) many lawyers are looking for greater flexibility and autonomy in their work. BLP created LOD to address these issues. LOD challenged the traditional models of legal service delivery and brought talented freelance

Google’s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, is intent on disrupting the legal market.

First, it invested in LawPivot, a Quora-style Q&A platform for providing legal advice to businesses. LawPivot has now opened its platform to the public, allowing lawyers to answer businesses questions in a venue visible to the public.

This new twist on LawPivot’s business model will build up a valuable and publicly-accessible knowledgebase of legal advice for businesses to leverage. LawPivot will also provide lawyers a high-visibility platform to demonstrate their expertise to prospective clients.

Google Ventures has also recently invested in Rocket Lawyer, . . . [more]

Yes, lawyers are conservative. Yes, they’re slow to respond to social change. And yes, they’re by and large technophobic (ask any lawyer you meet about venerable RSS and watch their incomprehension).

But.

Some innovate. Clearspire, a firm in DC, if it can be said to have a location, is one of the innovators, and a firm worth taking a look at. It’s almost tedious to count the ways in which Clearspire differs from Rumble, Bump & Stiltskin, but the Economist does its usual good job of summarizing matters. These are three of the highspots:

• No billable hour. Instead:
  

  Clearspire

♬ An’ now I’m flyin’ through the air.
On a cloud, on a cloud.
On a cloud, lookin’ down…♬

Lyrics and Music by Cody Canada, recorded by Cross Canadian Ragweed.

Further to Simon Fodden’s post on August 16, 2011 entitled: “Privacy Commissioner Releases PIPEDA Guide for Lawyers“, I thought that a relevant passage in that report dealing with safeguarding personal information and in particular, with reference to mobile devices and cloud computing, would deserve its own post. The section in question on Safeguarding Personal Information is as follows (relevant paragraphs bolded for emphasis):

Safeguarding personal information

Lawyers

Have a look at Jason Wilson’s latest rethinc.k post, “The Document Life: Why “lawyer” is moving from a profession to a metaphor.” In actual fact, the post, after a brief intro by (legal publisher and Slaw columnist) Wilson, is a reproduction of an article written in 2008 by Ross Reeves for the Virginia Bar Association News: “Marshall McLuhan in the Modern Law Office: Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?”

McLuhan, the hometown boy and media messenger, is back in the world’s good graces again, after a number of years in the wilderness. And, of . . . [more]

At this year’s annual Canadian Bar Association meeting, two public figures in the Canadian legal world spoke out on a topic that is very oftendiscussed, but extremely difficult to assess whether any positive change is taking place: access to justice. Both the Governor-General of Canada and former dean of law at the University of Western Ontario, David Johnston and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin spoke at this year’s annual CBA conference.

This past weekend, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin discussed Canada’s access to justice (see a Globe and mail article here): according to the World Justice Institute, Canada places 9^th . . . [more]

First to BC where a committee of the Law Society of British Columbia, under the chairmanship of Gavin Hume, has produced the best and most thoughtful piece on how to practice ethically and effectively using cloud computing. We’ve referred in the past to helpful work done by the Bar Association in North Carolina and the ABA’s 20/20 Commission – see Jack Newton’s posts from May and July, as well as Connie’s and Omar’s take on last week’s ABA discussion.

At the Canadian Lawyer, David Paul has a good tip sheet of practical advice on the intelligent use . . . [more]