This afternoon LAWPRO sent an e-blast warning Ontario lawyers to be on the lookout for the latest fraud scheme targeting them. For the first time LAWPRO is seeing a counterfeit bank draft fraud scheme that targets real estate lawyers on mortgage deals. Furthermore, the new scenario may include the supposed fraudster using the identity of a major national financial institution as the actual lender in the transaction.

This new type of fraud works as follows: A new and previously unknown client or lender contact allegedly from a major bank will ask a lawyer to act on mortgage matter. The source . . . [more]

Issue 12 of the News & Views on Civil Justice Reform, from the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, released a few days ago, has a piece by Jordan Furlong, “This is Not the End of Lawyers …but this is the End of the Traditional Legal Business Model” [PDF], responding to an excerpt from Richard Susskind’s book, The End of Laywers?, in the same issue.

Furlong wisely would have lawyers construe their coming (already here?) loss of control of the marketplace for their services as an opportunity to transform the practice of law. As always, he writes . . . [more]

Slate ran a story yesterday on what research says about how gender — or sex — influences judging, “In a ‘Different’ Voice” by Deborah Rhode. This interest was sparked, of course, by the fuss over Judge Sotomayor’s remark in a speech eight years ago about how a “wise Latina woman” might judge. If the effort is to see whether a judge’s nature affects how that person would decide certain issues, it’s surely wasted effort: you don’t have to be of the “what the judge had for breakfast” school to know that judges are not fungible automatons. But drawing . . . [more]

If you haven’t yet had your fill of reading about the sea change that’s running through the legal profession, you should read “A Study in Why Major Law Firms Are Shrinking” by Alan Feuer, published in the June 5 edition of the NY Times. Among the myriad points of interest within the article — I won’t attempt a summary — are references to blogs, where the aftermath of the lay-offs got dealt with, particularly abovethelaw.com and what the Times describes as “the wildly popular” lawshucks.com (what a great name).

From everything I’ve read, firms in Canada are laying . . . [more]

June’s issue of Canadian Lawyer just came out, with a great article by Glenn Kauth on using web tactics for client development.

There’s a few familiar faces (including yours truly), and some familiar platforms.

But what’s interesting about the piece is the rationale provided for why more big firms are not jumping into it. As a cost-effective strategy, some of these firms indicate that most of their clients are not heavily utilizing social media.

In my opinion, this misses the point slightly. Not only do bigger firms have the ability to produce more comprehensive and polished approaches to social media, . . . [more]

The desire of publicly-listed corporations to use current communications in fulfilling their duty to disclose material information about their activities can run into the technical limits of (some of) the new media.

There’s an article [PDF] by an American law firm on the topic – 8 pages in all.

An amusing example from the article: a corporate blogger was tweeting from a corporate phone conference, and was recalled to order about the limits to discussions of corporate earnings etc. So the next time it happened, he sent out FOUR separate tweets with disclaimers applicable to the same message! (One asks . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington has put together a list of resources on Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court.

The list is broken down into:

• articles/books by Sotomayor
• her U.S. Senate confirmation hearings at the lower levels of the U.S. federal bench (1992 and 1998)
• links to her jugdments
• profiles and analyses from other websites

Rupert White of the U.K. Law Society’s Gazette has a couple of articles on law firms’ use of Wikipedia: “Top 50 firms that get Wikipedia – and those that don’t” and “Why the world’s favourite encyclopedia matters.” His basic position is that a law firm should have a page on Wikipedia and should groom it regularly to make certain it’s accurate, full (definitely not “fulsome,” as he has it!) and up-to-date.

I’m less convinced that a Wikipedia page is a necessity. After all, if your firm comes up top in a Google search for key components . . . [more]

There’s a piece by Debra Logan on the Gartner Blog Network, “Twitter and e-Discovery,” that goes over some fairly straightforward stuff about e-discovery and social media. What struck me as interesting was an observation at the end of the piece, pointing out that because of the briefness of a tweet, it is more likely decontextualized than are other discoverable utterances (doodles on pads at meetings?), at least when it’s looked at outside the flow it first appeared in. It’s context that gives or controls meaning, and the briefer the utterance the less each word is shaped by neighbouring . . . [more]

I’m fascinated watching the right wheel out its opposition to President Obama’s candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. The current designated target, online at least, seems to be her putative “experience” gained from having overcome various difficulties in her life, something President Obama made a point of praising. The worst argument raised against this aspect that I’ve seen so far has to be that by Thomas Sowell in the National Review Online:

Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.

If you were

It has been crazy busy here at LAWPRO over the last month or so. Just over three weeks ago, we had calls from a few lawyers who had found themselves as possible targets of a bad cheque scam. They had been retained on a business loan matter in which it appeared the intent was to have them deposit a forged loan proceeds cheque into their trust accounts and then disburse good funds from them. We decided to send an e-blast warning the profession to watch for bad cheque scams.

That e-blast prompted several more lawyers to call us. We saw . . . [more]

Take the opportunity to read Dennis Kennedy’s May piece in the ABA’s Law Practice Today, Legal Technology Trends for 2009, this year’s version of his annual predictions and advice. I’m stealing none of his thunder if I tell you that his eight trends are:

1. Technology budgets get decimated
2. Making do with what you have or doing more with less
3. The mobile phone as platform
4. Looking to the cloud
5. Using tech to get the word out and the money in
6. Focus on client-focused technology
7. E-Discovery in still waters
8. The perfect storm for collaboration

For one thing you’re going to want . . . [more]