A few weeks ago, I wrote about the need for firms to take a stronger look at risk management – in other words, to see risk management as much more than simply compliance with law society and other regulations. I suspect that many firms do not have a formal risk management role within the firm because they don’t believe there is much risk beyond compliance issues or that the role is not robust enough to warrant a special position within the firm.

Both of these viewpoints are incorrect, so let me bulk-up the risk manager’s role to include innovation to . . . [more]

An extraordinary warning today from the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority that fraudsters in Britain have set up phony law firm websites, sufficiently genuine looking that there’s a real risk of fraud.

Bogus firms: Are you at risk of being cloned? . . . [more]

Rule 3.01 (1) of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Rules of Professional Conduct is always overshadowed by its sister rules. Yet, it is perhaps one of the most important rules of our profession:

3.01(1) A lawyer shall make legal services available to the public in an efficient and convenient way.

This rule suggests that if a lawyer is not providing legal services in an efficient manner, she is breaching the rule; and, if a lawyer is not providing legal services in a convenient manner, she is also breaching the rule. Interestingly enough, the commentary in rule 3.01 . . . [more]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “end of days” for the traditional legal services provider – partnership law firms.

And I can already hear you grumbling. “How can there be an “end of days” for the current model of law firms? And don’t give us any of that, ‘UK Legal Services Act will change the world,’ crap. Kowalski, you’re crazy.”

Perhaps, but hear me out.

The partnership model of law firms is doomed to fail because of what Mancur Olson calls the collective action dilemma. Collective action dilemma occurs when you have a group of people all acting in . . . [more]

Risk management has been a hot topic in the corporate community for about 10 years, springing mostly from scandals such as Enron, Worldcom and more recently the financial crisis of 2008. The devastation that these events wrought forced boards of directors to devote significant resources to managing risk and to keep abreast of what is happening in the world at large.

When one looks at law firms, we see that attention is paid to risk management only in the micro-sense; controls are put in place to prevent lawyers and staff from stealing trust funds, there are some controls over who . . . [more]

I was involved with managing a litigation file not too long ago. The client had a budget that required its large law firm to be tightly controlled and had asked me to assist in this regard.

Things went off the rails very quickly when the lawyer in charge became angered by the client’s desire to control how he ran the file.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said to me. “And I’ve read some of your stuff. You have a low opinion of lawyers.” It was clear that he was taking the client’s attempt to decide how the file would be . . . [more]

How do you assess how you are really doing? You need to look at much more than just billable hours. The key is cash flow management: You must understand what monies are coming into your practice, and where money is flowing out. Most modern law office accounting systems can give you reports that will give you a much better understanding of the cash flow of your practice. On a monthly basis, you should review the following ten reports from your accounting system:

#1 – Overall and projected monthly billings: What are your overall monthly billings, measured against your projected billings? . . . [more]

The inaugural UCLA Cyber Crimes Moot concluded today, with participants from across the U.S. and an international judging panel. Yes, my participation in the preliminary and final rounds of the event is what qualified the event as internationally judged. The winners this year were from GW School of Law, and their coach was none other than Orin Kerr.

The competition focused on a fact pattern based on the 2010 case of United States v. Warshak, dealing with the unconstitutional search and seizure of e-mails under the Stored Communications Act, and whether they should be excluded as evidence . . . [more]

Last week I wrote on The High Cost of Cloud Computing Due Diligence, and asked readers what thoughts they had on how the burden of cloud computing due diligence could be reduced.

In his post on The Myth of Due Diligence, David Whelan questions the assumption that we should apply more strict due diligence requirements to the cloud than to traditional desktop-based software:

If due diligence is called for – and something is, whether it needs that name or not – then it should apply equally to the wireless routers, operating systems, and locally installed software within law

♬ There is no turning back from this unending path of mine…♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by HIM.

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia has released guidelines on cloud computing for public bodies.

You can view the guidelines at the following link: http://www.oipc.bc.ca/pdfs/public/CloudComputingGuidelines(February2012).pdf

There are several interesting aspects to the guidelines:

In addition to the requirement for public bodies to protect personal information no matter where it is, FIPPA also requires public bodies to ensure that, subject to three exceptions listed in s. 30.1 of FIPPA, personal information is only stored in and accessed