In my post here on 19 September, I railed on about the fork in the road of advocacy – one towards mediation, the other towards traditional court advocacy. I said, “Court advocacy is to mediation advocacy, as tennis is to cage fighting. Without an umpire.” My theme: although there is some overlap of skills, the two are sufficiently different that the advocate should concentrate his or her practice on one or the other.

In the Spring 2012 Advocates’ Journal there is an article by the Chief Justice of Ontario which lays bare the differences between court and mediation advocacy . . . [more]

Those of you who read the Globe and Mail may have seen in today’s paper the report by Jeff Gray, “Yes, Virginia, this is a rant from the bench,” reporting an edited version of what Justice David Brown had to say from the bench, Thursday, about Ontario’s paper-based document management system. I might not have called it a “rant,” which suggests a lack of control; rather, it’s a scathing and at times sardonic denunciation by a judge fully in control of his facts and his language. It concludes:

[17] If some may consider such criticism un-judicial in

. . . [more]

In an unprecedented move that reflects a climate of judicial concern over the BC Justice Reform initiative, the three Chief Justices of BC’s courts issued a five page statement on judicial independence today. The statement was issued by Chief Justice of BC Lance Finch, Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the Supreme Court of BC and Chief Judge Thomas Crabtree of the Provincial Court of BC. The statement is entitled “Judicial Independence (And What Everyone Should Know About It).” In a previous post, I reviewed the BC Government’s launch of the Justice Reform Initiative which includes a Green Paper on . . . [more]

Statistics Canada released a report today, Legal Aid in Canada: Resource and Caseload Statistics, detailing information from 2010-2011.

The highlights of the report state that the federal government provided $112 million for criminal legal aid during this period, a decrease of 2% when adjusted for inflation, whereas provinces and territories increased their criminal and civil legal aid by 1% to $563 million.

A pdf version of the entire report is available here. . . . [more]

Is the lawyer’s preference for the word “client” instead of “customer” anything more than protectionism for the arcane?

The UK Office of the Legal Ombudsman doesn’t seem to think so.

Three years ago the first press release issued by the Ombudsman’s office deliberately chose the word “customer” to symbolize the change which its arrival heralded. So explains Adam Sampson the UK’s Chief Ombudsman in the Guardian last week.

The view of the Legal Ombudsman, it seems, is that the word “client ” trails behind it habitual thinking about the provision of legal services that neither can, nor should, survive:

The

. . . [more]

Michelle Alexander, a lawyer and professor at Ohio State, wrote an editorial in The Times yesterday, Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System. She provides some background on the current crisis in the American justice system, and how few accused actually realize their constitutional right to a jury,

 …in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these [jury] rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical.

. . . [more]

♬ There is no turning back from this unending path of mine…♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by HIM.

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia has released guidelines on cloud computing for public bodies.

You can view the guidelines at the following link: http://www.oipc.bc.ca/pdfs/public/CloudComputingGuidelines(February2012).pdf

There are several interesting aspects to the guidelines:

In addition to the requirement for public bodies to protect personal information no matter where it is, FIPPA also requires public bodies to ensure that, subject to three exceptions listed in s. 30.1 of FIPPA, personal information is only stored in and accessed

. . . [more]

In murder cases in Philadelphia, at least. A study by M. Anderson and Paul Heaton for the Rand Corporation, “How Much Difference Does the Lawyer Make? The Effect of Defense Counsel on Murder Case Outcomes” [PDF] concludes that the quality of the lawyer and the quality and quantity of the lawyer’s work are significant factors in explaining the outcomes of criminal cases.

This conclusion will likely strike any practising lawyer as trivial: one of the beliefs we hold (and cherish) is that our efforts and talents matter, that not all lawyers are created equal. Yet, seen from the . . . [more]

AALL Spectrum was kind enough to publish in their March 2012 edition my article called “Legal Project Management for Law Librarians” (PDF, 4 pages).

Legal project management (LPM) has already been a popular topic on SLAW for some time now (click here for past stories).

Although the foregoing article is a shortened version of my longer paper from last year entitled “Project Management in Law Firms: A New Role for Librarians?” available on my website, in the 10 months or so between articles I have seen a steady and growing interest in LPM in Canadian . . . [more]

The law faculty at l’Université de Montréal (UdM) has obtained accreditation (with conditions) from the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) to implement their new national common law program and degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.).

♫ Our generation has changed
The way we communicate
A hundred and 40 characters to say what you’ll say…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by @gabebondoc.

 

 

The Courts of Nova Scotia are the First in Canada to Enter The “Twitterverse”

The Courts of Nova Scotia have achieved a “First”. They are now “tweeting” news and information about the Courts, decisions of the Courts, and notices to the Bar as a way to better serve the public, the legal profession and the media.

The Nova Scotia courts, on their web page, state that Twitter “replaces a similar but . . . [more]

The following article appears in the January 2012 issue of LAWPRO Magazine.

Lateral hiring of partners or associates occurs at firms of every size, and is becoming far more common. In addition to reviewing the transferring lawyer’s credentials and suitability, the transferring lawyer and firm will need to identify and deal with potential conflicts of interest that may arise with respect to clients at the transferring lawyer’s previous firm, and in particular, clients for whom the transferring lawyer worked.

This critical task is not as easy as it might seem on first thought. The hiring firm must have sufficient information . . . [more]