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]

It seems that we’ve not yet managed to talk about Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada on Slaw, an unfortunate omission. LRWC is a committee of lawyers who work to protect the very people — lawyers — who promote human rights around the world. In their concise summary:

LRWC seeks to identify illegal actions against advocates, campaign for the cessation of such actions and lobby for the implementation of effective immediate and long-term remedies.

They list their campaigns by country (some 50) on their website, including, I should note, Canada and six instances of what the LRWC felt to be violation of . . . [more]

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the Judge Sonia Sotomayor appointment to the United States Supreme Court have reminded me why the idea of importing these hearings for real into our Canadian SCC appointment process bothers me. They’ve reminded me in a lot of ways, but one that stands out from this time around is the way in which the exchanges are antithetical to the process of judging. Judging should involve thoughtful consideration of the evidence, and, depending on the nature of the case, especially constitutional cases, of the context of the case. Of course, judges have predispositions, based on . . . [more]

Just as Allison Wolf shoots some holes in the myth of work-life balance in her recent Slaw column “The Tyranny of Performance,” the Canadian Bar Association has launched a new Work-Life Balance Resource Centre in the CBA PracticeLink section of their website.

Allison asks us:

What is the quality of our work life? What is the quality of our personal life? When both activities are fulfilling we have an abundance of energy. When one or both are draining we run into health issues and performance challenges.

Instead of work-life balance can we just talk about work-life enjoyment?

The . . . [more]

_­­I had the opportunity to hear one of the Chief Justices speak at the Israeli Supreme Court today. He explained some of the basics of the Israeli judicial system, and shared some of the challenges that they currently face.

Unlike some jurisdictions, Israel has had no problem drawing on international law for their domestic discourse. For example, when developing their position on freedom of expression, they looked to the most robust and liberal legal discourse on the subject and borrowed freely from American case law.

As a Jewish state they also do use some Jewish religious law, although in . . . [more]

On May 26 LAWPRO put on a special webinar aimed at helping lawyers to avoid being the victims of fraud. It was hosted and broadcast by the Ontario Bar Association.

You can now listen to a free MP3 of this program, and follow along with the program PowerPoint.

Fraud is the new normal. It is a real and growing problem for Ontario law firms and lawyers. Prior to the May 24 holiday weekend, we saw an apparent organized fraud that targeted 19 different lawyers for a total amount of $5.4 million. We continue to get almost daily . . . [more]

There’s a piece in the current Lawyers Weekly, “Commodification of contract drafting,” about some of the work that U.S. lawyer Ken Adams does. (The whole piece is on Adams’ site, page 1 and page 2, or here in a single page.) Much of the article deals with the obvious, such as the need for precision in expression and the dangers of using old-fashioned boilerplate. But three things caught my eye as being interesting.

First, Adams suggests that firms need rules when it comes to drafting contracts. The thought is that a firm style should be imposed where, presumably, certain . . . [more]

The latest issue of Law Practice Today (www.lawpracticetoday.org), the ABA Law Practice Management’s webzine was published today. This blockbuster issue has all sorts of great articles for the “suddenly solo” lawyer. This is new lawyer starting out as a solo because they didn’t get a job at a firm, or someone leaving a firm to continue a practice on their own. Many of the top names in law practice management have contributed articles to this issue: Dennis Kennedy, Jim Calloway, Andy Atkins and Mark Robertson.

Read the Law Practice Today “Suddenly solo” issue here.

Law Practice Today is the . . . [more]

The office of the Ontario Privacy Commissioner has released a document praising Gmail for making connection via SSL available for all communications through their website. “If You Want To Protect Your Privacy, Secure Your Gmail” [PDF] points out that when you communicate with your email server over a public wifi network, your communications are vulnerable to interception unless you encrypt them. SSL, or “secure socket layer,” is a cryptographic protocol in fairly common use — you’ll have seen it in operation if you do internet banking or make payments over the internet, and you can recognize . . . [more]

While our India readers are doubtless aghast at the Law Commission’s bold reforms on stamp duty – you can pay any transaction/court fee by demand draft/cash/postal order/banker’s cheque instead of through non-judicial stamp papers or special stamps – and at the breakneck speed of Indian Commissions of Inquiry – less than two months for a J&K fatality inquiry, and at Stalin’s announcement of a financial city – our North American readers will be puzzling over the implications of stories in today’s Evening Standard in London and the American Lawyer in New York. . . . [more]

You can follow the Sotomayor confirmation hearings online with live video. And for blow by blow commentary (by everyone and anybody) look at #Sotomayor on Twitter. . . . [more]