An ever-increasing body of ethics opinions and reports on the suitability of cloud computing for lawyers aim to provide guidance that may appear deceptively straightforward. Take the following as an example:

Cloud computing is acceptable, but make sure you first undertake an appropriate level of due diligence on your prospective cloud computing provider.

While this doesn’t appear onerous on the surface, the cumulative expense of performing due diligence on multiple cloud providers could prove to be prohibitive for solo- and small-firm lawyers – the very demographic that benefits most directly from cloud computing.

Take the simple task of reviewing privacy . . . [more]

The unique and indefatigable Tom Bruce is the Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell – no need for a geographical adjective when you were the first on the block.

Yes, LII was the first – and it’s coming up to its Twentieth Anniversary – or at least an excuse for a party in Finger Lakes.

Tom explains:

The LVI conference started out as a rather clubby event for a smallish group of open-access publishers largely based in the academic world. More recently, we’ve been joined by some academic researchers in legal informatics and by a few government

A group of Ottawa area students and young professionals has launched Zegov.ca, which describes itself as a “content aggregator designed to provide the public, the media and public-service employees with a continuous flow of information generated by government institutions through social media.”

Zegov.ca offers a single gateway to content from federal government Twitter and Facebook channels and official blogs.

According to the creators, there are 222 government Twitter accounts, 95 Facebook pages and 11 official blogs right now. Zegov.ca soon plans to add content from official federal YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn accounts.

On the Zegov.ca site, you can find . . . [more]

It has now been six months since the “first step” Google+ API was released; and unfortunately, it remains a read only tool. Six months! That’s an incredibly long time for a company trying to innovate and play catch-up with a competitor that is so far in front. If Google wants continued loyalty from the grass roots developer community, they need to enable this basic aspect of interoperability — writing into the Google+ ecosystem from outside applications and websites is critical to its evolution.

For the legal community, this means lawyers and firms will continue to spend time manually sharing content. . . . [more]

Yes, “The new iPad”, not the iPad 3, or the iPad HD, and no doubt millions of people will rush to buy one. In Q4, Apple sold 15.4 million ipads – which is more than any PC manufacturer sold of theirPC lines. 

I upgraded to a Google Galaxy Nexus phone a few weeks ago – and for a short time actually had cutting edge tech for both smartphones and tablets. That is always going to be a short-lived experience.

The new iPad features a higher resolution display, quad-core processor, better camera and HD 1080P video recording (like the iPhone 4s). . . . [more]

In Alberta, we have consumer protection legislation in the form of the Fair Trading Act.

The Fair Trading Act affects how most household purchases can be sold by prohibiting unfair practices and misleading advertising. In specific types of transactions, the Act provides consumer cancellation rights, special contract requirements and a seller’s code of conduct. It also requires specific types of businesses to be licensed.

There are many sources of consumer protection in addition to legislation. A news release from the Alberta Government celebrates the work of Albertans who were named consumer protection champions for 2011.

The reason that I find . . . [more]

After nearly two years since publishing its first proposal on the topic, the North Carolina State Bar has adopted its Formal Ethics Opinion on cloud computing (thanks to Steph Kimbro for the heads up). The opinion, titled 2011 Formal Ethics Opinion 6: Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property, concludes that:

a law firm may contract with a vendor of software as a service provided the lawyer uses reasonable care to safeguard confidential client information

Like the Law Society of British Columbia’s Report on Cloud Computing, the . . . [more]

On Friday the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario released the paper Embedding Privacy into the Design of EHRs to Enable Multiple Functionalities – Win/Win authored by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Dr. Ann Cavoukian and Richard C. Alvarez, President and CEO of Canada Health Infoway.

From the March 2, 2012 news release:

Research indicates that Canadians have a degree of comfort with using EHR information for such purposes, as long as privacy and security protections are in place. The paper underscores the need for transparency in the way EHR information is managed and safeguarded.

“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]

I just learned of the existence of a bulletin called Connected, which is published by two US-based organizations, the National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

“This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media.”

The focus is American but there is occasionally material about non-US matters, as in . . . [more]

Every age has had its paranoia, I imagine. After all, the world does have its dangers and among them are indeed some of the people who have risen to power — who themselves get paranoid about challenges to their power. In relatively recent memory there was the destructive McCarthy period in the US and later, Nixon’s creepy fears. Closer to home, not too long ago the RCMP kept files on just about everyone who jaywalked, and hippies were certain their phones were tapped and flushed their dope down the toilet whenever there was an unexpected knock on the door.

Now, . . . [more]

This weekend I participated in PodCamp Toronto, an unconference about social media with hundreds of participants. We had close to 80 sessions over the weekend, and a good number of them talked about or mentioned the newest social media darling, Pinterest. As a long-time blogger, I think of Pinterest as a photo blog with some advanced functionality, but the rest of the world sees it more like an online scrap book or bulletin board. With Pinterest, users “pin” images they have found around the Internet that inspire them to a “pin board”. Individuals can have many different pin . . . [more]