Ideally, your office should have clearly established internal controls for handling and documenting all types of financial transactions. These internal controls are really just policies and procedures that direct what steps should be taken when various financial transactions occur. Although a lack of internal controls does not necessarily constitute a breach of the Rules of Professional Conduct or By-laws, you may consider implementing internal controls to assist your efforts to comply.

The following are some suggested internal controls you may consider implementing
at your office:

Cheque requisitions

When dealing with cheque requisitions for both your general and trust accounts, consider . . . [more]

Here’s a smart little website that finds free eBooks for your Kindle on the Amazon site. It searches the best sellers and updates them regularly. Plus, the creator of the site includes a nice article on how to find and use free Amazon eBooks, even if you do not own a Kindle. via LifeHacker . . . [more]

Risk is an inevitable reality of law practice. The only way to eliminate risk is to stop practising law – an option most readers of this article are not yet contemplating. A more realistic option is to actively mitigate risk through structured, systematic risk management. This approach is particularly helpful at the law firm level, where risk management can sometimes be seen to be contrary to the perceived self-interest of individual lawyers in the firm. A systematic approach – that begins with a risk analysis and includes strategies to mitigate identified sources of risk – not only helps overcome this . . . [more]

The following is adapted from practicePRO’s Managing a Better Professional Services Firm, and it and the other Managing booklets are available here.

A post-matter client survey is one of the best ways to collect information about what clients thought about the services you provided to them. Make sure your survey is structured to help you identify specific areas for improvement. Ideally, it should include some open-ended questions.

For major or top-billing clients, consider sending a managing partner or other senior person to meet with clients on an annual basis to review and assess how the relationship is going, . . . [more]

Do the wills you are drafting for your clients deal with their digital assets? Does your will deal with your digital assets (personally and for your practice)? I’m guessing that your answers to both these questions is “No.”

My good friend Sharon Nelson did an excellent post on this hot topic on the Ride The Lightning blog. Until recently, lawyers just didn’t think about digital assets. This needs to change as lawyers and clients alike all have significant and growing online presences. It can be very difficult and time consuming for family members and estate trustees to deal with digital . . . [more]

Today is Observe National Stress Awareness Day. As lawyers, we know stress all too well. Ehow.com has a list of five things you can do to reduce stress in your day-to-day life.

1. Prioritize your life. Our lives are stressful because each day is jam-packed with things to do. The list of things to do never seems to end and only carries over to the next day. People tend to do the least important things on the list first and then feel as if they haven’t accomplished enough in their day.

2. Don’t worry if you don’t get through . . . [more]

Would the public tolerate giving judges discretion in the sentencing of murderers?

Are online child pornography offenders likely to commit offences involving sexual contact with children?

Are job training programs for people leaving prison useful?

These — and another four — interesting questions get addressed summarily in the current issue [PDF] of Criminological Highlights, a publication of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. Although criminal law is a specialty practised by relatively few lawyers, given the present federal government’s interest in crime, it might not be a bad idea if more of us educated ourselves . . . [more]

Here is a nice, printable, breakdown of fallacies commonly deployed in argument. Helpfully, the authors have also provided an example of analysis, applying the typology to a published opinion on same-sex marriage penned by Cardinal O’Brien, Britain’s foremost catholic cleric. . . . [more]

The following is based on an article that appeared in the January 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. While the details of the insurance coverage discussed in the article are specific to LAWPRO insureds, the issues highlighted in the article apply to all lawyers. Lawyers outside Ontario should check with their own insurance providers about what is covered under their policies.

Lawyer mobility is now taken for granted: The days of spending one’s whole career in a single practice setting are long gone. Consider these scenarios:

Scenario one: A lawyer previously in practice elsewhere joins a new firm. A claim . . . [more]

Irwin Law has recently released a short (132 page) monograph by Professor Karen Eltis of the law faculty at the University of Ottawa entitled Courts, Litigants and the Digital Age: Law, Ethics and Practice. (The book is also available in an iPad version.) It’s a book that should find itself on every judge’s and every lawyer’s must-read list, because Eltis tackles some of the difficult and currently intractable-seeming issues posed by information technology, issues that will only become manageable as they are more broadly understood by all branches of the profession.

The chapter heads will give you a . . . [more]

The following article by Cleo Kirkland, senior recruitment consultant at The Counsel Network in Toronto, is featured in the January 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. The article includes a number of sidebars featuring insights from firms that excel at recruiting and retaining lawyers. The sidebars can be viewed in the full version of the article.

When candidates approach our firm about a lateral move, they all tend to ask a variation of the following questions: which firm is the best for me? Which will make the greatest difference in my career? which offers me the greatest opportunity for . . . [more]

“Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Predictions,” the 2012 edition. This can be a quick read, or, with its extensive footnotes, a larger project.

Some Standouts:

• “Big data” powers commerce and advertizing
• Widespread adoption of the $100 smartphone
• 3D printing: here, but not there yet
• MRI and advertizing

Naturally, as a service offered to international corporate culture, it exhibits characteristic blindspots. For instance, it does not consider the implications the successful peer-to-peer online organizing for big data projects. Still, it is well footnoted, so there lots to chew on. . . . [more]