Yahoo has decided that as of June of this year, workers who had been previously telecommuting will have to report to the office for work, as discussed on many news sites. The type of collaboration, communication and creative energy that can only be achieved face-to-face seems to be a driving factor.

It is no surprise that employees directly affected by this new policy are unhappy. In fact, employees are not the only ones reacting to this; the internet is buzzing with criticism over this decision.

Telecommuting is considered one of the more flexible ways employers deal with an increasing . . . [more]

♫ I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Joni Mitchell.

The Law Society of British Columbia has now released their Cloud Computing Checklist on the Practice Support and Resources section of their website. This checklist follows on the issuance of their Cloud Computing Report in 2012.

Cloud computing offers many benefits to lawyers including: accessing a vast array of new software services and applications, off-loading hardware and software maintenance and upkeep to others, . . . [more]

Chris Dale, a lawyer-turned-eDisclosure-consultant based in the UK, has taken my two-post series from December on search inside the legal organization (see here and here) and applied the thinking specifically to eDiscovery. In his post Why Don’t We Just Use Google for eDiscovery? he suggests that the complexity of using litigation support tools–with concept searching, de-duplication, e-mail threading, clustering and predictive coding–has lawyers asking why not just use Google, or something like Google?

He gets to to the crux of the problem in this notion:

If the primary point is that Google does not purport to give you everything

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 second in a series of posts describing the systems I utilize to stay on top of my inbox.

We’ve all done the favour of making an introduction over e-mail. What often follows is a string of e-mails that bear no relevance to the introducer:

Jim: Bob, please meet Alice. You should definitely get to know each other; please take it from here!
Bob: Alice, . . . [more]

David and I both touched on Google Glass in April of last year, the company’s new project to push computing technology into our eyewear. A new video, released yesterday, offers some additional insight into what it might be like to wear such a product. [embedded below]

These video clips are obviously targeting the capture of lifestyle moments, but with respect to lawyers, I’ve been wondering if there could be any value in the courtroom? In particular, whether enhanced “team communication” could be had when larger teams are involved. We sometimes see the second chair role using laptops, exchanging email, . . . [more]

I was involved recently in a demo of a product that a vendor was trying to sell to our firm. I won’t identify the product or vendor, because this is not about the product itself. The vendor did two things that did more harm than good.

The first problem was the vendor’s approach. They were quite proud of the product, and launched directly into its advanced and cutting edge features. But they ignored the basics. So anyone observing the demo who was skeptical of the product in the first place, or not comfortable with change, or felt the cutting edge . . . [more]

One of the many great things about the United States, from a lawmaker’s point of view at least, is that they comprise fifty-one legislatures attempting to tackle the problems that face us (in the West, at least) with a net of words. It’s like a greenhouse or nursery for the legal species. And we up here in slower Canada get to watch to see which cultivars survive politics, real life — and occasionally ridicule.

For example, a bill currently in the hothouses of the Oregon legislature — Oregon Senate Bill 71, A Bill for an Act Relating to Drones; . . . [more]

When was the last time you tweaked or updated your LinkedIn profile? Unfortunately, “never” or “not recently” is the most probable answer for the majority of lawyers. In a day and age where almost every prospective or new client will check you out online, a solid LinkedIn profile is one of the key foundations to an online social brand. And if you are not otherwise active on the web or in social media, it is the one place you probably should be.
For those that would like to tweak their LinkedIn profile, a hat tip to Ernie Svenson for pointing . . . [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 first in a series of posts describing the systems I utilize to stay on top of my inbox.

First up is creating a “Robots” folder. This is a nearly foolproof system for easily separating e-mails sent from real humans from machine-generated e-mails sent by automated systems (including newsletters, alerts from software systems, Twitter notifications, etc.)

To determine which e-mails should be sent to your “Robots” . . . [more]

The EU last week published a draft directive on network security that requires communications operators (including utilities, banks etc) to report threats or attacks on their operations to national security agencies. In the US, President Obama is about to issue an Executive Order on critical infrastructure security that will provide for notices of imminent threats to operators of such operations. (Drafts of the Order have been circulating for months.)

Any word on official Canadian attention to such matters?

Do you know of any legal barriers that would prevent especially state-based operators of information systems (whether ‘critical’ or not) from defending . . . [more]

We always assume that the digital transformation will be lead by the youth. Or at least Mitch does.

Kevin O’Keefe came across a recent study which indicates that older readers needed less brain activity when reading on a tablet than on paper or e-Readers. The authors used EEG devices to monitor (theta band) brain activity and tracked eye movement. In fact, the older readers, aged 66-77 years, were actually able to use the tablets better than younger participants.

The point here is that the readers’ subjective preference of print over tablet was irrelevant, for all age groups. Most of the . . . [more]

A private correspondent has suggested to me that call centres that record incoming calls ‘for quality assurance purposes’ often store the recordings offshore, including in the US. The correspondent wondered if there was any concern that the information in the calls might therefore be subject to investigation or copying by US law enforcement under the PATRIOT Act.

Both the Canadian and the Ontario Privacy Commissioners have commented on allegations of special risk of having personal information in the US because of that statute. Neither have supported the concerns. A recent summary of the discussion is found in the Ontario IPC’s . . . [more]