MWP. My colleague and her team have started using this acronym to help sort the projects that come to them. MWP stands for make work project. MWPs are the bane of busy people and groups and when analyzed will necessarily fall to the bottom of a pile. A caution though, one person’s MWP may be viewed as a necessary rush by someone else.

Whether you are working in a service department inside of an organization or you are taking in work from clients, some tasks are simply MWPs. From the library side of legal work, some theoretical MWP examples: extra . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association Futures Initiative holds the first of five FuturesChats today. Each Tuesday in October — today and October 8, 15, 22 and 29 — Slaw blogger Omar Ha-Redeye of Fleet Street Law will moderate a Twitter chat about the future of law in Canada. The conversation is live from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. ET [5:00-5:30 p.m. CT / 4:00-4:30 p.m. PT etc.].

The topic for today is “the primary objective(s) of legal education.”

To join the conversation log on to Twitter, follow @OmarHaRedeye, and search for the #cbafutureschat hashtag. Or you can use tweetchat.com to become . . . [more]

This article appeared in the September 2013 issue of TitleNews.

Cyber Criminals Steal More Than $1.5 million from California Escrow Company.

California-based Efficient Services Escrow Group was shut down by the state after cyber criminals stole more than $1.5 million from the firm’s trust account and wired the money to China and Russia.

In a petition filed in Orange County Superior Court, the California Department of Corporations (DOC) said the thieves first wired $432,215 to an account in Moscow on Dec 17, 2012. Then, the criminals wired more than $1.1 million on Jan 24 and 30 to a trade . . . [more]

The Legal Innovators Roundtable, a monthly gathering of the like-minded in downtown Toronto, is a constant source of fresh ideas on the changing face of the legal industry. (If you would like details of meeting times and place I would be happy to provide them.)

Here is an ABA article circulated last week. It profiles Novus Law, a Chicago based legal services company that reviews, manages and analyzes documents for large-scale litigation, now poised to focus on drafting briefs and motions. Interestingly neither founder is a lawyer.

See the long list of legal process outsourcing and litigation support firms at . . . [more]

The other day, I was sitting with Phil Brown, of the Law Society of Upper Canada, trying to solve the world’s problems – as we are wont to do from time to time.

I ventured that one of the constraints to access to justice is a lawyer’s overhead. And a large part of that overhead in large- and medium-sized firms, is lawyer salary.

Then I thought, how crazy is it that we live in a world where lawyers can’t survive on a salary of $250,000.00 per year – keeping in mind that this amount is about 5 times what the . . . [more]

“The conundrum that regulators have is that we are to all intents and purposes recognizing entry-level competence,” Tim McGee, CEO of the Law Society of British Columbia told a CCCA lunchtime panel at the 2013 CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon, discussing what the role of the regulator should be in ensuring competence in the legal profession.

His point was that despite CLE requirements, lawyers aren’t actually assessed by regulators as their careers progress – it’s assumed that if they attend an accredited law school, get a certain degree and pass a bar exam, law students are competent to become lawyers. . . . [more]

This article is by Nora Rock, corporate writer and policy analyst at LAWPRO.

From a malpractice claims perspective, criminal law may not be as safe an area of practice as you might think: LAWPRO sees over 30 criminal law claims per year on average. These claims are sometimes complicated by steps taken by lawyers who take certain dangerous DIY steps in the name of claim “self-repair”.

One of the most common bases for claims against criminal lawyers is “ineffective assistance of counsel”. This allegation, not uncommon as an appeal ground in criminal court, may also be cited in a malpractice . . . [more]

Last week a London criminal court tackled the thorny problem of whether a witness should be required to remove her full-face veil.

Judge Peter Murphy ruled the witness must remove it when giving evidence but may wear it at other times during her trial. When she is not wearing it only the judge, jury and counsel will be permitted to see her face. Courtroom artists will not be permitted to sketch he without her veil. See the judge’s reasons here: The Queen -v- D (R) . . . [more]

This post was originally published on the CBA Legal Futures Initiative website, and is authored by Omar Ha-Redeye, a lawyer with Fleet Street Law, a part-time professor at Ryerson University and Centennial College, and a blogger here at SLAW.

One aspect of the future which hasn’t received as much attention is the significant demographic shift occurring in Canada.

Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of The Big Shift, The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future, spoke at the CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon recently on how the entire face . . . [more]

Communication-based claims and complaints against lawyers remain remarkably common despite the increased ease with which we can communicate with clients through use of technology in addition to more traditional modes of communication.

Strong and effective communications between lawyers and their clients are an essential component of the lawyer-client relationship. Some of the issues that might be flagged as problematic in a communications based claim include:

• Failing to obtain and follow a client’s instructions;
• Failing to keep a client informed of progress, or lack of progress in complying with instructions;
• Failing to advise a client of all settlement offers;
• Confusion as

“Are we happy being lawyers?” That’s the question Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder tackle in The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010). Lawyers themselves, they have anticipated your next question:

What do you mean by “happy”? On a scale that runs from having root canals to a night of fine wines and sex on a tropical island, where does “unhappiness” turn into “happiness”? Do you mean “happy” right now as I write footnote 17 on this brief for Acme Investments or “happy” during the course of my ten-year legal career? … Also, . . . [more]

Lawyers work in one of the least diverse professions in any country, Dr. Arin Reeves told the Monday morning plenary session at the 2013 CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon. It was something the women and minorities in the largely white, male audience had probably already guessed.

And they no doubt nodded vigorously, or even silently applauded, when she said that “diversity” is not merely a matter of including a few people who don’t look like you on a team – it’s a matter of including them because you value their input, because you know they’ll bring something important to the . . . [more]