Cyber criminals and identity thieves want to steal your personal information to commit fraud. They may try to get a credit card in your name or to access funds in your bank account. On top of directly losing money, your credit status can be damaged and it can take a great deal of time and expense to restore your good name.

And this goes beyond being an issue of personal concern. LAWPRO has seen situations where law firm bank accounts were hacked and where law firm bank account information was used on counterfeit cheques.

There are many different ways to . . . [more]

“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]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article that discusses the risks that can arise when dealing with elderly clients. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

Changing demographics are leaving their mark on trends that concern LAWPRO counsel: We are seeing increased potential for claims surrounding issues of the capacity of elderly clients and undue influence. The increased number of elderly . . . [more]

Yesterday gave us rare opportunity to see the glory of the delivery of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, as many in the world commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.

Commentary about the March and the speech, their context and their legacy abounded this week. But many also heard the entirety of Dr. King’s speech, delivered in his own voice. The copyright in the speech is protected and strictly enforced, now by his estate.

Some media outlets secured the required permissions for wide reproduction of the speech or its broadcast. Licence fees . . . [more]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article that discusses criminal law, which while not a large source of LAWPRO claims, still has its dangers. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

Criminal law has not traditionally been a fertile source of malpractice claims, notes LAWPRO Claims Counsel Karen Granofsky, but “ineffective assistance of counsel” claims are a growing trend.

For example, . . . [more]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article that discusses the hazards of family law. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

When a starry-eyed couple is about to get married, no one likes to think about the possibility of divorce. However, in some cases one side (e.g., the husband – or the husband’s family) has assets it wants to protect in . . . [more]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article dealing with clients who urge a quick settlement. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

“Many plaintiffs’ lawyers fall victim to clients who desperately need money in the early stages of a personal injury lawsuit,” says Cynthia Miller, Unit Director & Counsel (Litigation) at LAWPRO. “So they settle the client’s statutory accident benefits claim . . . [more]

In the September 2010 issue of LAWPRO Magazine, we asked our claims counsel about what they feel are the biggest malpractice hazards in each area of law based on the claims files they work on every day. Here is an excerpt from that article dealing with franchise law. Click here to read the full article “Practice Pitfalls”.

Acting for franchisors can be particularly risky for lawyers, warns LAWPRO Claims Counsel Anna Reggio. Although some franchisors are large multinationals, many are small and relatively unsophisticated businesses.

One area of risk involves the onerous disclosure requirements imposed upon a franchisor by the . . . [more]

Law librarians, law practitioners, and others interested in thoughts on the future of law practice will be interested in a provocative new piece by Jordan Furlong: The Future is Now: Eight Emerging Roles for Law Librarians. It appears in the July 2013 issue of Thomson Reuters’s Practice Innovations.

Jordan offers thoughts on new potential opportunities for law librarians and knowledge management professionals—often themselves librarians by training—in new law firm models that he foresees developing in response to multi-factored legal market disruptions. He suggests,

Starting now, law librarians and KM personnel have the opportunity to integrate themselves into the

Today’s conclusion of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) 2012-2013 session calendar— after a burst of some high-profile opinions—is an opportune occasion for a reminder of the fantastic resource that is SCOTUSblog. The site’s been around since the relatively early days of blogs—2002—and it has been discussed or referenced on this blog a few times. Indeed, a Google search for “SCOTUS” returns SCOTUSblog before it does the home for SCOTUS itself:

SCOTUSblog can be seen as a superb example of an excellent public resource supported by commercial partners, including a legal publisher. It started small and rather . . . [more]

Ontario lawyers might be familiar with the Law Society of Upper Canada’s AccessCLE service, which is a database that provides electronic PDF access to papers and materials from LSUC events since 2004. Previously this service was pay-for-view.

However, the Law Society just announced that articles older than 18 months are now free of charge! Articles newer than the 18 month time frame will still be available on a pay-per-view basis, at costs ranging from $25.00 to $35.00 per article. Lawyers outside Ontario can access all these articles as well.

AccessCLE allows you to conduct a full text search, preview the . . . [more]

CBC news recently reported that the average Canadian spent over 41 hours online each month in the fourth quarter of 2012, and that Canadians are the world’s second-heaviest users of the internet (just behind Americans). While there is a great deal of variety when it comes to the nature of this online activity, there is no question that a substantial proportion of it leads to the creation of property that has value – whether it’s objective, measurable commercial value, or simply personal value.

In his article “The legal status of virtual goods” in the May 31 edition of the Lawyers . . . [more]