The Commons on the photo sharing site Flickr has brought together institutions from around the world to share their images (photographs, illustrations and the like) that are either in the public domain or available for open use.

I was surprised to notice last week that a Law Society of Upper Canada Archives is part of The Commons.

According to an undatec LSUC press release:

The Law Society Archives is pleased to announce that it has been admitted to The Commons on Flickr, a grouping of institutions from around the world that contain archival photograph collections which are available on

In a recent civil case, the British Columbia Supreme Court had to decide on the admissibility in evidence of a database of transactions under a contract, and the results of SQL analysis of the database that produced a number of Excel format spreadsheets. The people who generated the spreadsheets were available to testify in person about how they had run the queries: Animal Welfare International Inc. v. W3 International Media Ltd., 2013 BCSC 2193 (CanLII).

The opposing party submitted that the analysis done in extracting the data constituted expert evidence, and the witnesses needed to be qualified as experts . . . [more]

I just listened to an IT.Can teleconference with Barry Sookman commenting on the final anti-spam regulations. This post summarizes a few key issues that arose.

As you probably know, the CASL regulations are now final. The anti-spam portions of the act come into force on July 1 2014. This is a shorter grace period than many had expected.

Many business were waiting for these regs before figuring out how it affected them. Unfortunately the regs did not remove most of the compliance burden. Businesses need to start working towards compliance very soon.

The provisions that deal with permissions required for . . . [more]

The electronic documents part of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) generally operates on an opt-in basis. Thus, for example, s. 41:

A requirement under a provision of a federal law for a document to be in writing is satisfied by an electronic document if

(a) the federal law or the provision is listed in Schedule 2 or 3; and

(b) the regulations respecting the application of this section to the provision have been complied with.

To date, only the Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act and a small part of . . . [more]

The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is currently seeking input from lawyers on two proposed new practice standards. The draft standards, proposed by the Law Office Management Committee, relate to lawyers’ responsibilities in the areas of timekeeping and data maintenance:

TIMEKEEPING
1. A lawyer’s accounts must be fair, reasonable and lawful.

a) The assessment and reasonableness of a lawyer’s account will depend on many factors, of one which is the time and effort “required and spent”.

MAINTENANCE AND BACKUP OF ELECTRONIC DATA

Lawyers must ensure there is a system in place for the maintenance, backup, and access of all electronic data.

How do you use social media in conjunction with events, whether “live and in person” or online? The upcoming Twitter Moot always impresses me in how they have redefined an in-person event for the virtual space, holding the actual moot online–and publicly!–so that others can follow along and even participate. It changes the whole dynamic of the event.

How else can social media be used in conjunction with events–to plan them, promote them, engage people at the event or people just observing, how to “capture” or record the event, and how to allow everyone to learn from the event? Daniel . . . [more]

The December 2013 issue of LAWPRO Magazine focuses on the issue of cybersecurity and law firms. As a supplement to the magazine, practicePRO has added a number of model policies and articles to our Technology page. Written policies that clearly establish guidelines and requirements governing the acceptable use of firm technology can help reduce cyber exposures and give staff clear direction on what they are permitted and not permitted to do with law firm technology resources.

These resources and sample policies can be adapted to create polices for your firm. The model policies are also available in Word and . . . [more]

On December 4, 2013, the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Industry announced that Canada’s new anti-spam law (CASL) will come into force on July 1, 2014.

Concurrent with this announcement, Industry Canada published its finalized Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations (ECPR) with respect to CASL. These regulations were released in response to concerns that its initial set of regulations imposed unnecessary and overly burdensome requirements with respect to the dissemination of commercial electronic messages (CEMs).

After further consultation, Industry Canada introduced a degree of increased flexibility in the ECPR by including, among other things, changes related to familial relationships, excluded CEMs, . . . [more]

Each year on December 1st we open up Clawbies.ca for “nomination season”, a month long process where online participants can highlight some of their favourite voices within the Canadian legal blogosphere.

This past Sunday we were pleased to carry forward that tradition once again – unbelievably for the 8th time! The website theme and award badges got their annual facelift, and the announcement post went live at 9:00 am eastern/6:00 pacific.

A handful of days later, and I’m happy to share our annual “good will project” is off to a great start (and not just Erik Magraken, who now famously . . . [more]

I don’t know if Gmail and Google Calendar are much used within practice — I can think of a bunch of reasons why they shouldn’t be — but I’m certain that many of us who work in the legal industry use these applications in our private lives. In either case, it’s important to have control over your data. If you don’t access your Gmail via IMAP, you don’t have a local copy on your own machines. Now Google plans to let you simply download your mail data as they roll this ability out over the next month. Calendar data can . . . [more]

The November 2013 issue of Connected is now available online.

The bulletin covers news about the impact of social media on courts. Most of the items are about the United States, but there is occasional coverage of other jurisdictions.

The bulletin is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

In this issue:

• Michigan court to begin using social media to contact hard-to-reach parties
• Texas Judge bans social media use for child custody litigants
• How are governments using Instagram?
• Arizona Supreme Court launches new veterans’ clearinghouse website

  . . . [more]

They laughed at me when I suggested that law firms should move to open concept offices for all lawyers with fun amenities like rooftop terraces.

Not possible! they yelled.

We could never get any work done! they sneered.

We need our offices! they pompously carolled.

We’re not techies working for Google! they laughed.

Now Australian law firm, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, with offices across Australia employing over 500 lawyers has proven them all wrong.

Walking into Corrs’ new Sydney office at state-of-the-art new office tower, 8 Chifley Place was like walking into a dream.

No private offices. None. . . . [more]