On the afternoon of Friday January 29, the University of Texas at Austin will host a conference on judicial biography, as a tribute to Roy Mersky, who was the subject of an earlier Slaw post.

At 2 PM Texas time the discussion will turn to International Jurists, featuring Philip Ayers on Chief Justice Owen Dixon of Australia’s High Court, Philip Girard on Chief Justice Bora Laskin of Canada, and Pnina LaHav on Shimon Agranat of Israel.

We seem to be in golden age of judicial biography. Any recommendations from the readership? . . . [more]

Plastic grenades alarm clients. That’s one of the examples in this interesting Dallas lawyer’s blog about some (U.S.) law firm marketing campaigns that pushed the envelope, perhaps a bit too far… . . . [more]

While doing my monthly domain name shopping, I stumbled upon what might be an interesting blog: http://www.ontariorulesofcivilprocedure.com/ It was created only 3 days ago and has no content, except the logo of the law firm behind it: Fraser Milsner Casgrain. Can someone tell me what is the big red square on top of their logo?

The most recent issue of The Lawyers Weekly provides a snapshot of the quantative output of the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2009:

“Looking at the opinions the individual judges wrote last year (as distinct from judgments they simply signed on to without comment) Chief Justice McLachlin and Justice Charron were the most solid majoritarians in the sense that they did the least concurring and dissenting, both wrote a total of nine majority or unanimous opinions, and Justice Charron wrote more unanimous judgments than anyone else — five.”

“Justice Charron and Justice Morris Fish spoke most

. . . [more]

John Morden and I have been discussing the extent to which Canadian courts look at cases from other courts, and I referred him to the excellent work of Professor Peter McCormick on the Supreme Court of Canada in a series of articles and a book Supreme at Last. . . . [more]

Most law firms are telling the same story, according to this article, which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish one from the other.

Developing a unique, identifiable and distinct voice is not easy, but it begins and ends with your ability to conceive and communicate a credible story that resonates at some level with your audience. Unless you can do that, you’ll never be heard above the din of the crowd.

So why can’t most law firms do this?

No reason at all. But when it comes to law firms, there is a negative assumption that

. . . [more]

practicePRO’s claims prevention and law practice management resources continue to grow in popularity with lawyers. In 2009 almost 150,000 copies of our articles, checklists and precedents were downloaded.

We’ve compiled the list of the forty most popular downloads for 2009. Many of them are consistently popular year to year, such as Peg Duncan’s e-discovery reading list, limitation periods charts, retainer precedents and various technology articles. There were a few interesting developments though:

• The Sample Budget Spreadsheet came in in the top spot, with twice as many downloads as last year. A sign of lawyers taking a closer look

. . . [more]

I was a presenter to the CBA BC Branch Work Life Balance Section meeting on January 21, 2010, entitled “The Lawyer Management Challenge: Attracting and Keeping Great Talent.”

The content of my presentation was largely based on my earlier post on Slaw on “How Virtual Law Firms Attract and Retain Great Legal Talent.”

The key three slides of my presentation set out a side by side comparison of the schedule and compensation of an associate working for a traditional law firm versus a contract lawyer working for Heritage Law:

A Day in the Life

View more documents from Nicole Garton-Jones

. . . [more]

From Volume III, Issue II of Amicus Curiae, Western Law’s Student Paper

Canada was a different place before Trudeaumania swept the nation, and the man we know as Ivan Rand, founding Dean of this law school and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was a product of his times. It would be easy to dismiss Dean Rand as an intolerant bigot, but as William Kaplan explained to an audience at Western Law on Nov. 11, [2009,] Rand was complicated character.

“Canadian judicial biography has been, with a few exceptions, mostly uncritical and largely celebratory, written by . . . [more]

For many years now my firm, Adler Bytensky Prutschi, has enjoyed the opportunity to host a student placement for Osgoode Hall Law School’s Criminal Intensive Program (CIP). This week, for the first time in the history of our involvement with the program, we were informed that “due to low enrolment in the course this year” a student would not be assigned to us.

While I am only hypothesizing, I fear that this storied program’s current enrolment woes are tied directly to the continuing erosion of our legal aid system. Barely a decade ago when I was a student in . . . [more]

A colleague was asking me recently about volunteer or work opportunities for lawyers abroad and I immediately thought of the work of the International Development Committee (IDC) of the Canadian Bar Association (I was fortunate to be on the committee for 6 years and participate in several missions to Africa). Most of their work is funded through the Canadian International Development Agency or other external funders (i.e., the cost of their overseas work does not come from CBA member dues) and is intended to support the rule of law in developing countries (among other things). Recent IDC projects have included . . . [more]

Yesterday’s National Post contained an interesting story regarding government programs around the world targeted at employers of military reservists. In an effort to support troops overseas legislators in the U.K. and Australia have enhanced job protection laws while simultaneously creating compensation programs that pay employers of reservists a stipend to help offset the loss of an employee during his or her tour of duty.

Here in Canada, federal laws protect the jobs of deployed reservists while recent amendments to Ontario’s Employment Standards Act explicitly permit unpaid leaves of absence for reservists deploying overseas. The C.D. Howe Institute is recommending Canada . . . [more]