Those Slawyers in or near Toronto might like to know that Richard Susskind, author of “The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” will be speaking at the National Club on Wednesday, February 11 at 5 p.m., courtesy of the Canadian Bar Association. Those wishing to attend can let the organizers know here. The first chapter of Susskind’s book is available on the CBA site in PDF.

The CBA announcement of his impending talk also said that Susskind

has recently agreed to share his expertise with the Canadian Bar Association in the role of Special Adviser. He

Devin Johnston, a second-year law student at the University of Manitoba, predicts the death of Facebook within three years.

A major reason is alternative social media platforms that will compete with it more effectively.

I’ve already mentioned Jurafide as one alternative for lawyers seeking American clients, and Jordan Furlong has mentioned LawLink just over a year ago. At that time, LawLink was restricted to American attorneys. It has since opened up to include lawyers from the UK, Canada, and Australia.

However, they still have a statement under the “threat of perjury” that the registrant is a practicing attorney . . . [more]

Using Twitter for data mining and information gathering isn’t new. Most Twitter users effectively search for key terms using Summize, and for PR professionals this is almost a must-do these days to monitor your brand.

I regularly use Twitter (and other microblogs) to direct my “followers” to stories of interest, which can be pieces I’ve authored or news stories. But I have no idea if people actually like the stuff I post unless I get positive feedback (which I occasionally do). I do know that on sites where I have administrative control I notice a steadily . . . [more]

British novelist, playwright and ex-laywer John Mortimer died today. He was 85.

He was perhaps best known, and loved worldwide, as the inventor of the fictional character Rumpole of the Bailey whose legal philosophy was summed up in that magnificently witty phrase: “Crime doesn’t pay, but it’s a living.”

According to Amazon.ca:

“Before there was Quincy and The Practice, there was Rumpole. Rumpole of the Bailey is, quite simply, one of the finest television series, and it has served as a model for all law dramas that followed it. Edgy and satirical, Rumpole is based on John Mortimer’s

Project Gutenberg has released Pleasantries of English Courts and Lawyers: A Book about Lawyers, by John Cordy Jeaffreson, originally published in London in 1875. (The book has been variously available over the years, last published by Hein in 1974.) Gutenberg makes the book available for downloading in HTML and plain text formats, in addition to Plucker format, which is new to me but makes texts suitable for reading on smart phones and the like.

This is a quaint, not to say arch, look at life at the English bar that can be amusing and may provoke thoughts about . . . [more]

The professional social networking site LinkedIn has slowly been making a number of changes that are making the site increasingly useful. I am still finding my way around, but changes I find of interest:

• the addition of third party applications that allow me to do things like share my presentation slides (via Slideshare) and to see recently added presentations of others, and to see what my contacts are reading with the Amazon.com application;
• increased and improved functionality of groups, allowing those in a group to have a discussion;
• suggestions of people who I might know who are on LinkedIn

practicePRO, LAWPRO’s risk management and claims prevention initiative, provides lawyers with tools and resources to help them succeed in the practice of law and avoid a malpractice claim (see this article for information on the most common legal malpractice claims).

As we have completed another year we have updated our most popular downloads list. What are other lawyers looking at? The top 5 downloads were as follows:

1 Peg Duncan’s Canadian focused E-Discovery Reading List
2 Rollie Thompson’s article on the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines
3 A LAWPRO Magazine article on The Dangers of Metadata
4 A sample . . . [more]

I’d like to update my thinking on the following question:

What is the responsible way to get rid of electronic information that one does not want, or that one has a legal duty to get rid of (like irrelevant personal information)?

Some of the alternatives:

• delete the information from one’s drive. (unlikely to be satisfactory, since ‘undelete’ programs are readily available)
• reformat the drive
• apply a specialized ‘wiping’ program (one or more times)
• destroy the drive physically
• encrypt the data on the drive then destroy the keys

Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner takes the view that the best way properly . . . [more]

Back in November Dave Bilinsky reported on new Client ID and Verification Rules coming into force across the country.  B.C., Manitoba and Ontario‘s just came into force on December 31st.

The Law Society of Upper Canada is holding a teleseminar on January 13, 2009 to explain how these new requirements will affect legal practices and what you should be doing to confirm your client’s identity upon being retained to provide legal services.

Here is the lineup of speakers (subject to change):

• Karen Bell, Karen Bell LLB
• Caterina Galati, The Law Society of Upper Canada
• Ian M.

I dare say more than a few SLAW readers will have a New Year’s resolution that, in one form or another, has at its core, a goal of getting to an empty inbox. Unfortunately, there is no magic button – it takes a lot of time and effort to get to an empty, especially if you have hundreds (or even thousands of messages) in your Inbox.

I won’t focus on cleaning up older messages in this post. My LAWPRO Magazine article Surviving the E-mail Onslaught has some quick tips. Probably the best collection information on this topic is the Inbox . . . [more]

I forgot to celebrate the winter solstice, when the days start to lengthen once more and sunlight seems to be a thing you can bank on even though brutal January and February lie ahead. But if time “creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” so does this lengthening of light; a measly 38 seconds got tacked on to yesterday, for example. I know this because of SunPosition.com, a business in Barrie Ontario that specializes in locating the sun in the sky — anytime, anywhere.

Knowing how Sol was (or will be) there (or here) can be of . . . [more]

On my must-read list are some of the LLRX.com articles for this month. The authors have put together some great resources. Here’s the line-up:

Neurolaw and Criminal Justice
Ken Strutin’s article highlights selected recent publications, news
sources and other online materials concerning the applications of
cognitive research to criminal law as well as basic information on the
science and technology involved. — Published December 28, 2008

Deep Web Research 2009
Marcus P. Zillman’s guide includes links to: articles, papers, forums,
audios and videos, cross database articles, search services and search
tools, peer to peer, file sharing, grid/matrix search engines,
presentations, . . . [more]