Lawyers tend to think of themselves as strong communicators, but they don’t always get their message across to clients.

It doesn’t help that clients aren’t always clear about what they want from lawyers.

This was evident at the mid-winter meeting of the CBA Council, when the Legal Futures Initiative took advantage of the gathering of lawyers from across the country, representing most sizes and types of practice, to find out what lawyers think clients want.

Presented with results from the Initiative’s own survey of client expectations, some lawyers present were a bit taken aback by the idea that clients wanted . . . [more]

As law firms tackle the new reality of the economy and the changes being demanded by corporate clients, they should look to those within the firms who are already well-versed in strategy for business change: librarians.

I am currently in Seattle at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, including the Private Law Libraries’ Summit on Saturday. The message we are hearing from a number of different perspectives is clear: lawyers would be advised to seek help in re-developing their firms so they are better positioned for competitive advantage, and librarians are well suited for the C suite, . . . [more]

Slaw has recently featured two great pieces from Simon Fodden and David Canton discussing PRISM and its privacy ramifications. Concerns over PRISM and what are sure to be other as-of-yet undisclosed government surveillance programs has left many wondering how they can “lock down” their data in the cloud.

While PRISM caused much gnashing of teeth about the security of the cloud in general, there are nine providers that provide data to the government under PRISM, as detailed by an NSA presentation released by the Washington Post:

• Microsoft
• Google
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Skype
• Twitter
• AOL
• Apple
• YouTube

The web searches we . . . [more]

I’m egregiously late on this, but on the “better late than never” theory” I’m finally reporting that the Farber Financial Group has produced a smart phone app for insolvency lawyers. RESOLVE comes in Android and iOS versions, and there’s a web-based version that should run well on a BlackBerry. In fact, if you want to check it out before you download, give the web-based version a try and you’ll see most of the features it offers.

The features are described on the Farber website as including:

• Searchable, portable Canadian, US and Global Bankruptcy Statutes and Regulations (e.g. Bankruptcy & Insolvency

Technology is often cited as the game-changing factor in the future of the legal profession. There’s an endless parade of new devices, plus software is being developed that can do some of the work lawyers used to do. Legal entrepreneurs harness the power of the cloud to power new business models.

What it’s doing to the legal profession is just one side of the equation. For clients – actual and potential – rapidly changing technology can both expand their reach to consumers, and be a legal minefield.

People who conduct any part of their business over the internet, for example, . . . [more]

Microsoft Windows 8.1 will be available later this year through the Windows store, and is available today as a preview.

8.1 addresses criticisms about Windows 8 and brings many improvements. It also brings back the start button, and allows a choice of booting to the Metro interface, or to the traditional desktop. (For some reason only Apple seems to get away with getting rid of things we are used to.)

Microsoft is giving the full details today at its Build 2013 developer conference. I watched a live stream of part of it. Some of the enhancements are . . . [more]

With today’s release of The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues, the consultation phase of the CBA’s Legal Futures Initiative begins.

Trends and Issues puts data and insight from original research commissioned by the CBA into a single document meant to provide an overview of major challenges facing the profession. The report – and the questions it raises – form a starting point for discussions and further consultations with stakeholders in the legal services industry.

We’ve been showing you bits of those papers here, and on the interim Futures website, for the last seven weeks. If . . . [more]

At the “Smartphones and Tablets: What’s Right For You” session at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Solo and Small Firm Conference last week (archived webcast is available for purchase), there were a number of questions on syncing Android devices with MS Exchange/Outlook. In response my co-speaker Mike Seto prepared the following. As these questions appear quite common, I thought it would be helpful to share Mike’s answer with a wider audience.

If your calendar/email/contacts are on a Microsoft Exchange server, you can set up current Android phones to sync over the air without further software.

1. Add your exchange . . . [more]

A tweet this morning from Heather Colman alerted me to the Building Smarter Organizations event happening today in Toronto.

If you are like me, and you are not in Toronto attending this event, you can still participate through the web.

There is a Linked In Group and a #smartorg twitter stream. There are plenty of concepts being shared through tweets that will make you think. Examples:

Mark Federman ‏@MarkFederman
Great Drucker quote: Mgmt mostly consists of making it difficult for people to do their work. #smartorg

Heather Colman‏ @HeatherColman
More bureaucratic mgmt= less engaged staff #smartorg

It is worth your . . . [more]

I receive between 100 and 1,000 business-related e-mails per day. Out of necessity, over the last few years I’ve developed a numbers of systems that help me manage my inbox effectively. This is the third in a series of posts describing the systems I utilize to stay on top of my inbox.

Keeping on top of e-mail on your smartphone helps you maximize productivity during “down time”on the road and minimize the amount of time you’re spending managing your inbox when you’re at the office. A smartphone keyboard, however, is only really suitable for composing short messages, so you want . . . [more]

It’s astonishing how much has changed in my five years of attending ABA TECHSHOW.

At ABA TECHSHOW 2008, Rian Gauvreau and I launched the beta of Clio, which at the time was not only the first of a new generation of web-based practice management systems, but the one of the first of any web-based product to be exhibited at TECHSHOW.

At this first TECHSHOW, Clio prompted both admiration and fear among attendees: half the visitors to our booth were thrilled about the prospect of putting their data in the cloud (by the way, back then “the cloud” wasn’t even . . . [more]

There’s not much that the large law firms have as an advantage over mid-size and small firms. Their bloated overhead, high-priced rent, and unnecessary bureaucracy, all translates into higher operating costs passed on to clients.

There is one thing which does hold large law firms apart from the rest, and that’s the decades of institutional knowledge which is internally accumulated. As much as the law is constantly changing and evolving, much of it still remains the same, or is easily updated from precedents that have recently become obsolete. This realm, of internal legal memos and precedents, is the area where . . . [more]