At the outset of a file I ask my clients for all of the documents they have that are relevant to the lawsuit. Usually they respond by asking me exactly what I want. At this point I explain to them that they are obligated under the Rules of Civil Procedure to disclose any document that they may have (or formerly had) in their power, possession or control that is relevant to the lawsuit. “Whether it helps you, or hurts you, if it is relevant we need to disclose it.” is something I have said on many occasions and it’s true… . . . [more]

The following article appears in the May/June 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. It is available at www.lawpro.ca/magazinearchives.

LAWPRO is seeing far too many real estate claims where the lawyers handling the deals are making or not catching fairly basic errors. Often these mistakes result from errors made by clerks – all or most of which the lawyer could’ve and should’ve caught.

Common mistakes include:

• Not catching errors in legal descriptions
• Missing executions
• Not doing searches
• Not bringing rights or way or easements to the attention of the client

We also see claims involving ILA. Sometimes there was no recognition . . . [more]

Others have talked about their contributions to lawTechCamp 2012 held in Toronto in May. I am sharing the slide decks from the presentation I did with fellow consultant Stephanie Barnes and the six minute demo I did the same day.

The first talk here is an introduction to Law Firm Knowledge Management. Included are some images developed by Stephanie, and some we have developed together, as well as content from other sources. . . . [more]

As we all give a moment of silence for the sad, preventable destruction of Dewey LeBoeuf it may be time for firms to recall the words of Sylvester Bowen of Bowen, Fong & Chandri:

 When we hire lawyers, we hire those who believe in what we believe.

 We don’t hire lawyers who are technically good and need a job.

 We don’t hire lawyers who are driven by money.

 We hire lawyers who are motivated by our principles of change and innovation.

 We don’t want lawyers who are seduced by the reliability of hours and profits per partner because that . . . [more]

The vast majority of web searches continue to be conducted through Google, estimated at about 66.4% of all searches in early 2012. Google is understandably concerned about losing its market dominance. In December 2011, Microsoft’s upstart search engine Bing surpassed Yahoo and become the second most used search engine worldwide.

The only way Google can retain its lead is by continuing to provide the most relevant information to users, so it constantly rewrites its code, as with the new Penguin update that I mentioned here. Although Wikpedia has over 365 million readers and is ranked one of the top . . . [more]

Among the top dozen creditors of Dewey & LeBoeuf which filed for bankruptcy yesterday were some familiar names:

Thomson Reuters $2.363 M

Lexis Nexis $1.413 M

Wolters Kluwer $653 K

I find the relative scale of the debts interesting, as well as the fact that the three publishers must have been prepared to continue to extend credit long after the newspapers were spreading word of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s troubles far and wide.

We’ve had scant experience of law firm insolvencies so I don’t know what has traditionally happened to the library when a firm closes its doors. Or in today’s . . . [more]

I was asked to present this week at a special lunch session of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries as one of several speakers to discuss tablets and their apps. In my case, I will discuss the new iPad (or iPad3, as it is sometimes called).

If interested, set out below are my general comments on iPads along with a list of apps I most frequently use. . . . [more]

As a lawyer setting up a sole practice after many years with a Firm, I have had to read about technology recently. A lot. One topic on which so much has been written is Cloud computing and concerns for Canadian lawyers raised by the PATRIOT Act. A simple search of SLAW alone lists 53 articles touching on this topic.

This is the situation as far as I have been able to cobble it together.

The PATRIOT Act is intended to simplify the US government’s access to business records for intelligence gathering permitting quicker, easier access to otherwise confidential records and . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), which for the purposes of clarification is not the regulator of Nunavut but of Ontario, has just released the Interim Report by the Articling Task Force.

The Task Force has previously been commented on Slaw by Adam Dodek and John O’Sullivan. The five options under review include:

1. Maintaining the status quo

2. Status quo with added quality assurance measures

3. Replace pre-license transition requirement with post-license requirement

4. Allowing students to do a practical legal training course (PLTC) during or after law school

5. Abolishing articling in favour of a PLTC . . . [more]

Recently I spoke at lawTechcamp at the University of Toronto about the future practice of law. The session generated a great deal of discussion with the audience, some of it quite heated – particularly when I raised the question, “Why should we hire students or junior associates?” The point of my question was to force lawyers to question everything we do – not take any process or practice as a given. The players in the legal industry who are able to forget the past and re-invent how legal services are delivered will be wildly successful.

One of the questions from . . . [more]

Google makes up to 500 changes a year to its algorithm. The newest Google Algorithm change was released on April 24, 2012 and was dubbed Penguin. This update focuses on webspam and eliminating black hat SEO tricks, but it’s likely that other changes to the previous Panda algorithm this year will also be referred to in pop culture as Penguin as well. Web analysts have been closely watching the effects of these changes over the past few weeks.

Entire industries are thriving primarily off of search engine results, and it’s only a matter of time before law firms . . . [more]

Altman Weil just released its Altman Weil 2012 Law Firms in Transition Survey. This is the fourth time they have released this survey. While a tad big US law focused, it does clearly show that the bigger firms are waking up to and addressing the profound changes and challenges that are occurring in the practice of big law. A good read for those with a bit of extra time this long (at least here in Ontario!) weekend. . . . [more]