An excellent Osgoode Professional Development program took place on 26 November- Successful Settlements: Strategies & Tactics for Civil Litigators.

To my mind it highlighted the divergence developing within the legal profession in Ontario.

Several of the speakers addressed settlement methods including mediation, second pre-trials and strategies for getting to yes. They emphasized the psychology of settlement discussions, and the therapeutic value in giving the parties the opportunity to vent their feelings on the issues. One speaker reported how she was thanked by a party who said until that point, “I spent thousands of dollars and no one had heard what . . . [more]

A lot of attention is being paid these days to cyberthreats and cybersecurity. It seems widely accepted that such threats and security questions cannot be confined to the IT department any more, but they involve sufficiently critical threats to organizations that boards of directors have to get involved. When boards get involved, they turn to their counsel.

Some enterprising law firms in the US have published books on the topic. The blurb for this one strikes me as a bit over the top – and the threats they sketch have been real for years (off-the-shelf attack software available for . . . [more]

Phantom clients, those who believe they are represented by you, though the individual has not formally hired or retained you, can lead to a potential claim down the road. If you decline an engagement for legal services or the client chooses not to retain you, the non-engagement should immediately be confirmed in writing by way of a non-engagment letter. Here are three resources to help you draft one: . . . [more]

The Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure has proposed changes to the Customer Service Standard and Integrated Accessibility Standards regulations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). If approved, the changes will be enacted on July 1, 2016, and take immediate effect.

This proposal includes incorporating the Customer Service Standard into the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation and making changes to requirements of the Customer Service Standard (see details below). . . . [more]

The Rules of Professional Conduct of the Law Society of Upper Canada state that: “The lawyer must not …knowingly attempt to deceive a tribunal or influence the course of justice by offering false evidence…suppressing what ought to be disclosed…”

Lawyers may be offering false evidence without even knowing it. Lawyers frequently refresh witnesses’ memories in preparation for discovery or trial. However, refreshing a witness’s memory is not a neutral activity. In Witness Preparation: A Practical Guide, Bryan Finlay et al state that “the process of memory is not a simple matter of resurrecting fixed traces, but instead a process . . . [more]

If you’re about to tackle a complex matter or task in an unfamiliar area, how should you prioritize your first steps? New research shows that you’ll be off to a better start if you focus on learning rather than results. This is especially true if the matter context is unpredictable or dynamic.

I interviewed Dr. Meredith Woodwark – whose research uncovered these findings – to learn more. Woodwark teaches organizational behavior and leadership at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research focuses on motivation, learning goals and employee engagement.

Q. How is your research . . . [more]

This post is by Ian Hu, claims prevention and practicePRO counsel at LAWPRO

I vividly remember losing one of my first potential clients. He was shopping for lawyers and had whittled his list down to three or four. I had dealt with legal issues exactly like his before and resolved them successfully. I felt I knew the law as well as anyone. I would help him and impress him with my knowledge and experience. I put on my best suit and tie. As I walked down to meet him I figured I had the advantage.

During the meeting I gushed . . . [more]

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

I predict that the first components of a litigation file to be completely automated are the drafting of:

• Common Pleadings (e.g. Statement of Claim for “slip and fall”);
• Affidavit of Documents; and
• Discovery Plans for common actions.

Why?

These documents are rule based, and computer programs love rules. I envision a computer program asking questions at the beginning of the file . . . [more]

Bob Ambrogi blogged this morning that two more U.S. states have adopted amendments to their legal profession rules of conduct that include technological competence as part of a lawyer’s overall duty of competence, bringing the total number of states having adopted this duty to 17. The duty first appeared in the ABA Model Rules in 2012, as Comment 8 to Rule 1.1, as follows:

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Attributed to Nelson Mandela, that quote fits the experience of groups around the world that sought over much of the past 20 years to make the law freely accessible on the internet. Beginning today (November 9^th), dozens of members of the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM), along with other supporters, are meeting in Sydney, Australia where AustLII is hosting the 2015 Law via the Internet conference. Some countries attending are currently at the “impossible” stage and look to achievements in Canada and elsewhere for inspiration of what is possible. . . . [more]

What is a good lawyer? What is a smarter lawyer, for that matter?

How we evaluate ourselves, and our colleagues, may have historically been based on outdated notions of an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. But in the era of search engines and legal databases, the utility of such skill sets are not nearly as useful as in the past.

Harvey Schachter of The Globe interviewed Edward Hess on how workers can improve in an era balancing on the precipice of machine learning:

…start to change your mental model of what “smart” looks like. We have been trained to believe

A fantastic development out of the United States last week – Harvard Law School and Ravel Law plan to make access to the school’s entire library of reported U.S. case law available for free on Ravel’s website. In a multi-year effort and at a cost said to be in the millions (exact details not known), some “40,000 books containing approximately forty million pages of court decisions” are being digitized and uploaded to Ravel’s platform, where anybody will be able to search, read and use the material at no cost. This is an incredible advance in open access to law and . . . [more]