The inaugural UCLA Cyber Crimes Moot concluded today, with participants from across the U.S. and an international judging panel. Yes, my participation in the preliminary and final rounds of the event is what qualified the event as internationally judged. The winners this year were from GW School of Law, and their coach was none other than Orin Kerr.

The competition focused on a fact pattern based on the 2010 case of United States v. Warshak, dealing with the unconstitutional search and seizure of e-mails under the Stored Communications Act, and whether they should be excluded as evidence . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada publishes Practice Management Guidelines that include advice on the use of technology. Section 5.8.4 of the Guidelines say that the following practice is “not compatible with the public interest, the best interests of the profession or the administration of justice”:

advertisement of professional services using electronic media where the advertisement is directly and indiscriminately distributed to a substantial number of newsgroups or electronic email addresses.

This is clearly aimed at spam. However, a recent overview of technology and legal ethics* said that lawyers should also consider

whether the circulation of links via mechanisms such

The august Royal Canadian Mint, birthplace of the lovely golden loonie (but not the snappy new plastic bills) and soon to be the graveyard for the penny, is moving to take metal out of the coin equation altogether. They’re now promoting a plan to implement the MintChip, a system for exchanging value via electronic devices with ease and security:

MintChip brings all the benefits of cash into the digital age. Instant, private and secure, MintChip value can be stored and moved quickly and easily over email, software applications, or by physically tapping devices together.

Wisely, perhaps, the . . . [more]

♬ I want a new drug 
One that does what it should…♬ 

Lyrics, music and recorded by Huey Lewis.

On Monday April 2, 2012, Dr. Frank Fowlie, the Internet Ombudsman, Kari Boyle of MediateBC and your humble scribe did a presentation for the University of British Columbia law school. It was entitled: ODR Around the World and was meant to be an introduction into the emerging field of Online Dispute Resolution and how it is changing the way that people could resolve their disputes using internet technology.

During the presentation, I asked the students to reflect on . . . [more]

Our primary goal when we started posting bad cheque fraud warnings was the protection of LAWPRO-insured lawyers, most of whom reside in Ontario. An unexpected result has been the huge response from lawyers outside Ontario.

Of the nearly 2,300 emails we’ve received from targeted lawyers since January 2011, almost half have come from outside Ontario. We have had reports of fraud attempts from every province and territory in Canada and almost every U.S. state. In addition, we have had reports from more than twenty countries, including: Mexico, Argentina, the UK, Germany, Turkey and Australia. We keep track of the location . . . [more]

Legal argumentation is — or can be seen as — a branch of the age-old discipline of rhetoric, latterly “informal logic.” After all, people have been trying to persuade each other forever, whether in connection with rules or not. Though most lawyers rely on law school training, the discipline of actual practice and intuition as the instruments to guide and hone their rhetorical skills, some might wish to think directly about the art of persuasion itself. In which case, the new Rhetoric & Communication Research Network (RCRN) within SSRN’s Humanities Network should prove useful.

Law is more directly . . . [more]

I too am at the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 in Chicago organized by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section. This has been my first time at this conference. A few things struck me immediately:

• this is a very different law conference; and
• everyone is extremely friendly.

I arrived on Wednesday evening during a reception before the LexThink.1 event that Jason Wilson wrote up for us yesterday.

I noticed that there was a group of people huddled around an easel and announcements about making guesses about the weight of a food truck. Huh? What were they doing? . . . [more]

Last night was Day .5 of the ABA Tech Show, and I have to give it up to Matt Homann, et al. for putting on a great show at the newly branded Lexthink.1. The billing for this event is twenty slides, six minutes, one topic, all on the future of law practice. Sure, the set up is no Battledecks, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. Even with all the preparation the format isn’t as easy as you might think, particularly when that slide changes and you aren’t ready to move on just yet. It’s designed to push . . . [more]

One of the puzzling things I have noticed about new lawyers is that they tend to come out of law school thinking like 50 year old lawyers – and not like the digital natives they are. In general they don’t seem to think like their peers who have pursued callings other than law. And that’s not a good thing. 

That seems strange to a digital immigrant like myself, who embraces things like a paperless practice and social media. We sometimes wonder why law students are not pushing us into this world and demanding new and innovative approaches, rather than the . . . [more]

Given that it is Law Student Week at SLAW, I thought it appropriate to dedicate this post to the OBA’s recent recommendations to the LSUC Task Force on the future of articling.

Scrutiny of all professional entry-to-practice criteria by the Competition Bureau and Ontario’s Fairness Commissioner requires the legal profession, and all other self-regulating professions, to carefully analyze their criteria and eliminate any elements that do not play a legitimate role in protecting the public.

In response to this scrutiny Convocation approved the establishment of the Articling Task Force to address concerns about the articling program, relating in particular to . . . [more]

This past week Dr. Michael Rachlis launched Doctors for Fair Taxation, calling for the top wealth earners in Canada to be taxed even further. Given that physicians are often prominent members of this tax bracket, the initiative attracted lots of attention.

Rachlis suggested to Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom that this could inspire a “Lawyers for Fair Taxation.” Walkom responded with skepticism, which to me was incredibly telling of the way that lawyers continue to be perceived in society.

The rationale behind Rachlis’ group is that income inequalities lead to poorer health indicators, and that the decline of . . . [more]