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]

The Ontario Bar Association’s E-Discovery Implementation Committee has released eight model precedents. They are:

• Discovery Agreement
• Preservation Agreement
• Memorandum to Corporate Client Regarding Documentary Discovery
• Memorandum to Individual Client Regarding Documentary Discovery
• Preservation Letter (To be Sent to Opposing Counsel)
• Preservation Letter (To be Sent to Defendant or Proposed Defendant
• Preservation Order
• Annotated E-Discovery Checklist (with suggestions on how to minimize e-discovery costs)

These Model Documents have been revised based on comments received, as well as to reflect changes to the Sedona Canada Principles Addressing Electronic Discovery and impending amendments to the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure (see below),

Thanks to a Law Times Tweet, I learned that the entertaining peek into the lives of summer students at Cassels Brock & Blackwell is back in business. You may remember this blog from Connie’s post last summer.

Having summer students spend time blogging about their experiences probably seems like a crazy thing many. I think this is a great marketing initiative, both for attracting potential students, and also to the wider community. How many of you saw the tweet from Law Times – a main stream publication? How likely is it that this news will show up in . . . [more]

If you’ve not yet had your fill of Richard Susskind, the much-mentioned-on-Slaw author of The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, you can hear him in conversation with Berkman Center’s Brock Rutter in a discussion recorded yesterday on how IT can make practice “better and more efficient through the use of software and applications to streamline repetitive legal tasks.”

The interview is found on Radio Berkman. . . . [more]

Further to my post last night, we have received more than a dozen calls and e-mails from lawyers further to the fraud warning blast LAWPRO sent out Monday afternoon this week. Thankfully, that e-mail blast prevented most of these lawyers from being victims of a bad cheque fraud.

However, two of the lawyers who called didn’t get our message because their Spam filter caught our e-blast. One happened to call us for advice on how to handle a suspicious transaction further to articles he had read in past issues of LAWPRO Magazine. The other just happened come across our . . . [more]

Last week LAWPRO e-blasted 20,000 Ontario lawyers in private practice with a warning about a bad cheque fraud scam targeting lawyer trust accounts.

That e-mail blast prompted several Ontario lawyers to call us and we have gathered further information about these frauds. It now seems clear to us that there is an organized scheme underway to defraud Ontario lawyers in and around the Greater Toronto Area using matters involving small business equipment loans. These matters all share the same basic timeline and circumstances, and in some cases, the same purported individuals or entities (a lender from Halifax or Montreal). These . . . [more]

I just came across the CBA PracticeLink article A Recession Coping Guide for Canadian Law Firms by Janice Mucalov (April 2009). I like the thoughtful, careful, but yet strategic approach taken in this guide. The focus is on the client relationship, keeping up morale within the firm, and thinking long-term. Here is item #4 on keeping up morale:

Feeling uncertain is inevitable. But rumours, job anxiety and money worries can impair productivity. Reassure your lawyers that you are doing everything prudently possible to lead the firm through this recession.

Remind people how your firm weathered the last downturn – provide

I have posted on SLAW before about this, but as the June 1 deadline is approaching I thought another post was warranted. Also posted on LawyerSuccessTips.com.

Is your law practice or firm one of the profession’s leading lights of innovation? Have you or someone within your firm with vision and courage led a groundbreaking effort to practice law differently? Have you developed a new and better way of serving clients, a breakthrough way to find new business, a truly innovative way to value and sell your services? If so, then you deserve the recognition of lawyers and clients . . . [more]

The Philadelphia Bar Association has issued an advisory opinion (PDF) concluding that it is unethical for a lawyer to have a third party “friend” somoene on Facebook for the purposes of getting information about that Facebook user.

Facebook lets users fine tune their privacy settings, allowing a user to lock down all their info so it is only visible by friends or subsets of friends. I’m personally of the view that if a user has locked down their privacy settings, they are explicitly expressing an expectation of privacy in the material that is posted. But if someone voluntarily friends someone . . . [more]

In February of this year the U.K. firm of Allen & Overy laid off of 450 people, including 47 partners and its whole private client practice. Two months later twenty-three of the lawyers and support staff from their private practice have formed their own firm, Maurice Turnor Gardner, specializing in “private wealth, philanthropy, and partnerships and LLPs.” Another law firm for the rich wouldn’t be particularly interesting but for the fact that five of the six partners and all but four of the employees are women, as reported in the Times.

It’s likely the size of the firm . . . [more]

Following the April 24th Federal Court of Canada decision, the Canadian Bar Association have again urged the Prime Minister to repatriate Omar Khadr. This time, they have addressed the plea to the U.S. President as well. From the CBA’s April 24th press release:

The CBA, which earlier this year called for Mr. Khadr’s repatriation following President Obama’s order to close Guantanamo Bay, is urging the two governments to immediately expedite the return of Mr. Khadr to face judicial process here.

From the CBA’s letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama (PDF):

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