The annual Ted conference always has thought provoking presentations. One of the presentations this year was entitled “Four ways to fix a broken legal system“. Its worth taking the 19 minutes to watch.

The basic proposition of the presenter, Philip K. Howard, is that the legal system has become so complex that it instills fear to act. People become so self-conscious of their judgments that it skews behaviour towards failure. 

We should not just dismiss this as being unique to the American legal system. The Canadian system may not be as extreme in this regard – but . . . [more]

At TPL’s Lillian Smith Library tomorrow, Community Legal Education Ontario will be launching its new series of standard pamphlets of starter kit information for recent immigrants.

The materials, which are also available in English and French, cover the following topics:

* Children’s aid: Information for parents
* Criminal charges in Canada and your immigration status
* Do you want to sponsor your family to join you in Canada?
* Does your landlord want you to move out?
* Has your child been charged with a crime?
* Refugee claims in Canada
* Renting a place to live
* Your . . . [more]

Here’s a niche for the eager young lawyer: equine law (or might we say “equiny” — emphasis on the ‘whinny’ ). Makes sense, of course. There’s “a law” of pretty much anything of value in our culture. Horses, though their general use preceded the death of the buggy whip by a bit, are still with us, or some of us, that is, and are bought, sold, trained, treated, and, sadly, mistreated, all events that can have legal ramifications.

I happened across Equine Law and Horsemanship Safety, A resource for horsemen, lawyers and law students, a site at the University . . . [more]

Hat tip to my friends Sharon Nelson and John Simek of Sensei who today published the 2010 edition of their annual legal technology guide. It is discussed in the latest ABA podcast.

The blurb says

This annual guide is the only one of its kind written to help solo and small firm lawyers find the best technology for their dollar. You’ll find the most current information and recommendations on computers, servers, networking equipment, legal software, printers, security products, smart phones, and anything else a law office might need. It’s written in clear, easily understandable language to make implementation easier

♫ Don’t go breaking my heart
You take the weight off me
Honey when you knock on my door
I gave you my key…♫

Lyrics and music by Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin, recorded by Sir Elton John and Kiki Dee.

There is a disturbing post today to the IT Blog entitled: Computer Breaking and Entering is a Business.

Aside from the statement that 80% of the PC hack attacks come about thru vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat’s Reader (based on a report from ScanSafe, a Cisco company), the acknowledgment that there is an elephant in the room . . . [more]

There’s a fascinating piece on Monday’s Law Times about a speech that Supreme Court Justice Charron had planned to give to the Women Lawyers’ Symposium in Ottawa. Although Justice Charron’s address was never delivered, the text of her speech, penned by a former clerk, was nonetheless circulated with the rest of the material for the symposium. The part of the text that’s caught the attention of the Law Times is as follows:

The ‘priority of profit’ represents a significant barrier to institutional change in the private practice environment. . . . Many law firms are so focused on profit

[A post for Ontario lawyers]

As of January 1, 2010, big changes to three parts of Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure came into effect. These changes are intended to streamline the litigation process and increase access to justice. Many of the changes to the rules are a result of the Civil Rules Committees (CRC) consideration of the Osborne report. These are the most extensive amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure since they were first adopted in 1985. There are no general transitional provisions and in most cases these amendments apply to existing proceedings.

Taran Virtual Associates has created . . . [more]

It has been a little over a month since the changes to the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure have brought in “proportionality” as a governing principle and brought in specific directions regarding proportionality in the discovery process. This is a summary of a quick case law review I conducted for recent Ontario civil procedure decisions citing the proportionality concept.

By numbers alone, it appears Ontario courts are citing the principle slightly more. I counted 15 civil procedure cases reported on Quicklaw that mentioned proportionality from January 1 to February 14. For the same period last year the number was eight. . . . [more]

The two things everyone using computers is supposed to do are: back up regularly and create difficult, changing passwords. The two things that nearly everyone using computers fails to do are: back up regularly and create difficult, changing passwords. Now, the business about backing up wouldn’t apply to computers used in law offices (would it?). But it’s not so clear that all firms and lawyers in those firms have got a good password policy in place.

We’ve talked about this on Slaw a couple of times recently. John Gregory asked whether a failure to set proper — i.e. complex — . . . [more]

I’ve covered the Apology Act on Slaw before, and Dan Pinnington has touched on the implication for insurers.

One of my professors at UWO, Dr. Craig Brown, has taken it a step further, and suggests it may even assist insurers. Dr. Brown is the author of Insurance Law in Canada, probably the foremost work in this area.

In a recent article in The Lawyers Weekly he states,

…apologies will likely benefit defendants and their insurers by reducing both the damages payable and the costs of reaching a settlement.

The legislation encourages interaction between the parties to a

On February 9, 2010, David Cruickshank spoke at UWO Law on “The Business of Law: Hot Topics and Emerging Trends in the Legal Profession.” Cruickshank is a partner at Kerma Partners in New York City, and provides professional advice to law firms and other services.

My notes from his talk follow. . . . [more]

We haven’t heard much on Slaw about the legal situation with LawBuzz yet.

It’s been covered by the Law Times, Precedent, PRWeb, and Michael Geist, so I won’t go into the details of the case. A blog established by unknown authors (I asked) has also been set up dedicated to the suit. Some potentially defamatory posts were made about AdviceScene, resulting in litigation that has again raised some serious questions about online comment.

I was first exposed to the site in my first year of law school, when a member of our Student Legal Society . . . [more]