In light of the ongoing revelations at the Commission Charbonneau and recommendations from l'Office des professions et du Conseil interprofessionnel du Québec, on February 13, 2013, the Quebec government tabled Bill 17, An Act to Amend the Professional Code With Respect to Disciplinary Justice to improve the effectiveness of professional disciplinary boards and to reform how they issue disciplinary measures when a complaint against a professional is made.

The European Union is adopting regulations on alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and online dispute resolution (ODR), according to a press release and associated documents, including a draft ODR regulation. This is aimed at consumer e-commerce in particular.

I have not yet found in the documents answers to some questions that occur to me off the cuff. (The answers may be in there somewhere – feel free to provide via comments.)

• Who pays? It appears to be taxpayer-funded, rather than relying on user fees. There is mention of a cost of 4.6 million Euros (annually?).
• What law applies? This list

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On February 28, 2013, the Law Society of Upper Canada became the first Canadian law society to ratify the national mobility provisions allowing for full and permanent mobility of lawyers between Ontario and Quebec.

Most Canadians will be forgiven for failing to be as joyful as the Benchers were that day, as the agreement does much to enhance lawyer mobility (and hence fee-earning capability), but does nothing to address access to justice.

The Law Times piece on this matter was done by Yamri Taddese and can be found here.

How much better it would have been if Benchers had . . . [more]

After a visit to the Mayo Clinic, the dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University decided that there was a need for a “teaching hospital” for law school graduates to gain experience and learn their trade while being assisted by experienced lawyers. Thus, this summer, Arizona State is setting up a non-profit law firm for some of its graduates to work under seasoned lawyers and be paid to provide a wide range of services at relatively low cost to the residents of Phoenix.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.

– Madeleine L’Engle

The release of Canada’s national mental health strategy Changing Directions, Changing Lives last year served as a reminder that we are all, even lawyers, vulnerable to the effects of mental illness.

In today’s knowledge based workforce, the effects of mental illness are felt not only by individuals and their families, but also the economy. The impacts of mental illness may be further compounded . . . [more]

Taking a case to trial is a long and expensive journey. Even the most assertive plaintiffs and their counsel may struggle to move a lawsuit forward quickly due to unresponsive defendants, scheduling difficulties and limited court availability.

For this reason, our Rules of Civil Procedure provide for the option of a summary judgment motion, which allows the moving party to proceed “directly” to a judge and make a pitch that this particular case can be decided by a motion judge and does not require a full trial. Cases most suited for summary judgment are those which have little or no . . . [more]

I was doing some research into social media policy examples for a course, and came across Jaffe PR’s Social Media Policy Template for Law Firms and Attorneys. It is available for use and adaptation by lawyers and firms. Last updated in November 2012, this template was first published in 2008 and has been updated a number of times over the years as social media has developed.

From the introduction:

At Jaffe PR, we have made our best effort to outline a comprehensive set of online policies and procedures for using social media effectively and responsibly. This is our fifth

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Having coffee one day with Mitch Kowalski, whom I met through these pages, the idea bubbled up of regular informal meetings of like-minded legal professionals interested in delivering legal services in a way that suits the 21^st Century – not the 19^th.

No agendas, no speakers, no membership lists — just a regular place and time for people to drop in and chat about what we’re doing, following or finding in our efforts to make the legal profession more like a modern business.

Mitch took the important step of actually organizing it. The first meeting took place . . . [more]

Last Fall, I read an article about the General Counsel for Kia who creates tests for his external legal counsel. The tests have nothing to do with law and everything to do with process. In one test, external counsel should have taken 20 minutes to complete a mundane task using an excel spreadsheet. The average time taken by Kia’s nine outside law firms? Five hours. Simon Fodden also has a great piece on this, here.

There are many takeaways from this, but an important one is that its shows that lawyers are not always the most efficient personnel . . . [more]

I say, Doctor, Doctor! The Economist has a Johnson column on lawyers in the U.S. who call themselves "Doctor" because they have a J.D. degree. Apparently some states' ethical rules frown on this practice while others don't. The columnist comes down in favour of "common sense," which reserves that title for medical practitioners by and large.

Clients with unrealistic expectations, complaints about legal costs and dissatisfaction with results achieved are just a few of the issues addressed in the recent report from the Legal Ombudsman of the United Kingdom, The Price of Separation: Divorce related legal complaints and their causes. While the concerns raised are not new to most lawyers in family practice, the Ombudsman takes a solution-focused approach that makes this report a valuable manual on client services in family law.  

The report is based upon complaints received by the Legal Ombudsman’s office in 2011-12, of which some 18% related to family law matters. . . . [more]

There’s a series of three articles over on Law.com’s Law Technology News that you might find interesting. D. Casey Flaherty, corporate counsel for Kia Motors America, came to the realization that the billable hour was often spent in . . . well, unnecessary ways. Particularly:

[T]echnological incompetence is endemic to the [legal] profession; and the quantity of resources wasted on busywork is shameful.

As a consequence he devised a test, an audit, of potential outside counsel for Kia, and has run it nine times. His articles (The Origin of the Outside Counsel Tech Audit, Kia Motors Tests Outside . . . [more]