Domenic Bellacicco’s phone is ringing off the hook these days thanks to a great “practice tip” article he wrote for latest issue of LAWPRO Magazine. Domenic is a Claims Counsel in the New Claims Unit at LAWPRO. and his article addresses an area we all too frequently see claims in these days: administrative dismissals.

Read the full Administrative Dismissal: Take It Seriously And Ask For (Our) Help article here.

I spoke with colleagues at two law societies (one in the West and one in the East) who said this was also a big issue (with local variations) in their . . . [more]

The increasing influence of social media has not just been noticed by traditional print publications.

CNW Group (formerly Canada News Wire) is Canada’s largest source for press releases and media information. They’re also known for their audio and video webcasting abilities, so they’re always on the cutting edge for technological developments.

One of their more exciting projects recently has been the Social Media Release, which allows for text to be augmented by more rich content including hyperlinks, dowloadable images and logos, audio and video.

You know the time has come for law firms to adopt social media when they . . . [more]

The English legal / publishing press are taking Reed Elsevier’s current travails to speculate whether the RoI of legal publishers is sustainable.

In previous economic downturns, the London firms have not responded by making cuts to legal information budgets. This time, perhaps with the transformations that have come with with the rise of free public legal information and increased client scrutiny of disbursements, it appears to be happening.

I recall one indiscreet Canadian legal publisher tell me that their company had been profitable since inception, including the Great Depression.

Here is the English take on the issues, from the Guardian . . . [more]

Michael Carabash, a recent Osgoode graduate who has set up with his own practice and marketing services, just released a free online book for legal marketing.

I’ve been sharing some ideas with him and Garry Wise recently, and there are a couple of projects in works that may be interesting.

Although Carabash’s book covers what many of us would consider the basics, there are still lots of lawyers coming up speed. The U.K. government is paying £160,000 a year for these specialty services.

You can get the book for free here. . . . [more]

The August 2009 issue of Law Practice Today, the ABA Law Practice Management Section’s webzine was just published.

Read the Law Practice Today “Wellness and Balance” issue here.

All sort of great articles on how you can find balance and wellness in our very busy world, including:

• Achieving Life/Work Balance Through Effective Time Management by Kathleen Brady
• How to Take a Vacation from Your Law Practice by Sheila M. Blackford
• A Lawyer’s Tale: Recovering from Depression by Keith Anderson
• Job Satisfaction: Little Things Lawyers Can Do to Make a Big Difference by Dan Millman
• Putting Up With Nothing—How To Do

Another year of interview insanity has come to an end and my firm, Adler Bytensky Prutschi, has happily matched with an outstanding candidate who we have very high hopes for in the 2010-2011 articling year. While this fact on its own is likely of little interest to Slaw readers, the technophile lawyers who follow this blog on a regular basis may be intrigued to hear how twitter – for the first time in our firm’s history – became unwittingly a very central part of our interview process.

Having started a legal twitter feed some months ago (www.twitter.com/prutschi), I . . . [more]

The front page of today’s Globe and Mail sports a big photo of Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod attached to the article “Can a busy female politician give reliable evidence? A judge says no” by Jane Taber. The lead paragraph runs as follows:

Lisa MacLeod is a young female politician who commutes to her job at Queen’s Park from Ottawa and leaves her husband, Joe, and four-year-old daughter, Victoria, at home. Mr. Justice Douglas Cunningham of Ontario Superior Court said this is a big distraction for the 34-year-old woman and as a result he felt he could not accept

The latest issue of LAWPRO Magazine – Changing Direction: Thinking Differently About Your Law Practice – is in the mail and on the web. Download entire magazine here (PDF format, size: 3.27MB)

Our cover stories this month all ask the question: Which kind of lawyer will you be? Legal guru Richard Susskind describes the five lawyer types he predicts will be in future demand. Karen Bell examines how some lawyers are innovating and resetting the legal services model. This article also contains a series of checklists to guide lawyers on the new skills and tools lawyers can use. In Strategic . . . [more]

InternationalProBono.com is a development of the International Bar Association aimed at providing a place for lawyers around the world who are involved in pro bono work to share reports and draw on resources provided on the site.

As you might imagine there’s an associated blog, to which you’re invited to submit a post as a guest blogger interested in pro bono work. . . . [more]

Wrapping up a week of Guest Blogging from Heenan Blaikie lawyers across the country, we’re going to end by focusing on big changes at Heenan Blaikie’s Toronto offices.

After nineteen years at Royal Bank Plaza, the firm is moving 400 metres up Bay Street to the new Bay Adelaide Centre.

The move presents all sorts of practical and logistical challenges. Soon to join us at Bay Adelaide will be Goodmans and Faskens. They’ll be watching carefully to see how we move the Library. Physically packing and transporting an entire law library is not a trivial undertaking. Here is a . . . [more]

and by Michael Spanier

One of the most important aspects of film and television production is the clearance procedure. A little known fact about entertainment lawyers is that we spend much (okay…some… well, precious little actually) of our day in our offices watching movies. Or cartoons. Or television shows. All in the name of “E&O Clearance Procedures.”

The importance of ensuring that a production is clear from an errors and omissions perspective cannot be emphasized enough. From the day a producer acquires the rights to a script, an underlying novel or a real-life story, the E&O journey begins. Every single . . . [more]

Having just passed the halfway point of 2009, we crunched the numbers on the most popular year-to-date article and resource downloads from the LAWPRO and practicePRO websites. There are a few new additions to the top ten, and past favourites have swapped places. The updated most popular LAWPRO/practicePRO downloads list appears here.

It looks as if more lawyers are looking at their firm finances, as the always popular sample law firm budget spreadsheet jumps up to become the most downloaded resource over the last six months. The sample law firm business plan came in at #9.

Peg Duncan’s amazing . . . [more]