The Law Society of Upper Canada is currently reviewing the ethical and procedural issues relating to the “unbundling” of legal services, otherwise known as “limited scope representations” or “limited scope retainers.”

Unbundling is the concept of taking a legal matter apart into discrete tasks and having a lawyer or paralegal provide limited legal services or limited legal representation, that is, legal services for part, but not all, of a client’s legal matter by agreement with the client. Otherwise, the client is self-represented. While the Law Society’s Rules of Professional Conduct and the Paralegal Rules of Conduct do not prohibit such . . . [more]

Stem Legal has relaunched the Canadian Law Blogs List at Lawblogs.ca started by Steve Matthews in September 2005. The List is an open directory of Canadian blogging lawyers, law librarians, marketers, IT professionals and paralegals (essentially anyone blogging in the legal industry in Canada).

Along with a new look, the new site features:

• browsing by practice area, by province, by industry topic, and latest additions
• subscription to LawBlogs.ca by RSS feed or by email to be notified of blog additions to the site
• a sample of recent blog posts from the various blogs on the front page

. . . [more]

On December 9, 2002, Bill 213, the Justice Statute Law Amendment Act, 2002, overturned the previous prohibition in Ontario against contingency fees, the last province in Canada to do so. The history behind this introduction is detailed in the Supplementary Report to the Ontario Civil Justice Review.

The policy reasons for supporting contingency fees was that it would theoretically increase access to justice and save clients money by moving away from a billable hour system. The concerns included that the lawyer might become an “interested party,” there would be less incentive to settle, and there would be more . . . [more]

The November-December 2010 CBA eNews provides links to some new and updated content from the Canadian Bar Association on the following topics:

– FAQs on Solicitor-Client Privilege and Confidentiality

– Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies (PDF)

– Guidelines for Ethical Marketing Practices Using New Information Technologies (PDF)

– CBA Code of Professional Conduct 2009

I also note the CBA Practice Link article entitled Beyond First-Generation Knowledge Management that cites me and a number of colleagues working in the KM field. . . . [more]

A new study by the University of Toronto and Tufts University states that appearance matters a great deal when it comes to judging people in a new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. “This includes clothing, posture, and hairstyles, but the real window to judging people is the face. We developed a method to measure facial power and found that it is a strong predictor of law firm profitability."

In most areas of law practice, lawyer/client communication problems are the number one cause of claims, followed closely by deadline and time management issues. Together they typically account for more than half the malpractice claims LAWPRO sees. Failures to know or apply substantive law typically account for about 10% of claims. See The Biggest Claims Risks article for more detail about the most common malpractice errors.

So, while knowing substantive law is important, from a claims prevention point of view you get more for your risk management efforts by focusing on improving client communications and focusing on getting things done . . . [more]

The Chief Justice of British Columbia, Lance S.G. Finch, addressed a meeting of the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Bar Association recently on the subject of access to justice, singling out the high cost of legal services as a prominent, if not new, obstacle to that goal. He said:

…I would call [the high cost of legal services ]the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it’s there, but no one wants to talk about it. I think it is time to open the conversation.

… I respectfully suggest it is time for the bar to address this question openly. It

. . . [more]

Last week I covered the Vigna v. Levant case and mentioned that comments are a poor way to gauge readership for the purposes of damages, which some readers agreed with.

A recent article in the Alberta Law Review by Matthew Nied discusses this further, Damage Awards in Internet Defamation Cases: Reassessing Assumptions About the Credibility of Online Speech. Nied is a recent UVic graduate, former Law is Cool contributor, and author of the Defamation Law Blog, which is currently on hiatus while he clerks at the B.C.S.C.

Nied proposes that given the hyperbole frequently found online readers . . . [more]

♬ Red alert! Red alert!
It’s a catastrophe..♬

Lyrics and music by Buxton Ratcliffe, recorded by Basement Jaxx.

It reads like a bad lawyer joke. How many lawyers does it take to get caught in a fraud scam? Apparently the number is 80. The ABA Journal reported on Nov. 22, 2010 that Federal prosecutors have indicted 6 people in a $32 Million dollar internet collection scam that caught 80 lawyers in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Alabama and Georgia. . . . [more]

Plain language — the written kind — has been of interest here on Slaw recently, with John Gregory’s post “Enforcing Plain Language” and Simon Chester’s post announcing the (October) Educaloi conference, “Telling the Law to the Public. Are There Better Ways?“. I’ve got a couple of things to offer here.

First, I thought readers might like to be reminded of The Legal Writing Institute and, particularly, its open access journal. (You should also have a look at volume one of their Monograph Series: The Art of Critiquing Written Work, which comprises 15 articles.)

There’s . . . [more]

Congratulations to Bennett Jones LLP, 2010 Platinum winner of the Intranet Innovations Award from Step Two Design, announced Wednesday at KMWorld 2010 in Washington, DC. They won for a number of innovations on their intranet BenNet. Based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), their intranet includes features such as an improved Precedent system, a “find the children” feature that locates documents using the parent precedents, and BenNet Books.

From the Step Two Designs announcement:

Bennett Jones, the 2010 Platinum Award winner and the first law firm to win this award, has created a highly sophisticated site that

. . . [more]

It was announced today that Thomson Reuters acquired Pangea3, “one of the largest legal outsourcing services company in India.”

Legal outsourcing services companies – otherwise known as “legal process outsourcing,” or LPO – are fairly new. LPOs involve law firms (and companies) hiring companies in India, the Philippines and elsewhere to carry out voluminous documentary review and other legal work, at cheaper cost. Some thought the trend was a fad, but with today’s development, it looks like LPOs are here to stay.

What will the impact be on practicing law in Canada? There will still be demand for . . . [more]