Recently, the tech world has been buzzing with recent corporate blow-ups involving high level executives. Indeed, recently, Carol Bartz, the then-CEO of Yahoo, was fired over the phone and subsequently publicly denounced her boss as a “doofus”. As reported in Canadian Business magazine, Michael Arrington’s recent spat with his former employer, AOL, also went swimmingly. Both high-profile terminations had an effect on the employers.

Bartz mainly damaged her own career prospects, but her public outburst reflected poorly on the company. The incident almost certainly hurt employee morale, riled activist investors and added to Yahoo’s legal fees.

Less than a week

Recently, I had occasion to look at the speeches and presentations made by members of ultimate courts of appeal – the Supreme Court and its equivalents. And Canada ranks somewhat disgracefully last in terms of making the speeches publicly available.

Eugene Meehan has monitored the court too for speeches and presentations, but his pickings are similarly slim in recent years. . . . [more]

“Unbundling” is a name given to the provision of legal services for part, but not all, of a client’s legal matter, by agreement with the client. Another name is “limited scope retainers”.

The idea is that by providing Rules of Professional Conduct and guidelines on the issue to lawyers and paralegals, the public will have greater access to justice.

Unbundling raises all kinds of ethical and procedural issues. The OBA struck a task force to draft the OBA’s submissions on the subject to the Law Society’s Professional Regulation Committee. Here are the main issues identified in the OBA’s submissions : . . . [more]

The following article by Nora Rock appears in the Fall 2011 issue of LAWPRO Magazine.

At LAWPRO, we’ve seen a growing proportion of incivility allegations cropping up in claims. For example, lawyers may find themselves personally liable to pay a party’s costs under Rule 57.07 (Rules of Civil Procedure) where the court has found that the lawyer’s actions contributed to running up the bill.

Incivility can also lead to other consequences. The client’s case may be prejudiced because the lawyer is unfavourably viewed by a jury; or a prospect of settlement may evaporate in the face of a lawyer’s . . . [more]

There’s a new player in the flash mob market. Vibe is a Twitter-like app for the iPhone that lets you communicate with other Vibe users anonymously. There is no login, no sign-up, no registration: it’s strictly download and play. Moreover, you shape your “vibes” by the distance you’d like them to travel and the length of time you’d like them to live. If you “Whisper” your vibe travels no more than 50 metres from where you are, “Speak” and the radius is 500 metres, etc; and like the tapes on Mission Impossible, your vibes can self-destruct after 15 minutes, 1 . . . [more]

Medical data is one of the most sensitive types of data and, like lawyers, some doctors have reservations about storing confidential client data “in the cloud.” The security of storing Electronic Health Records and related data on-premise is perceived by many doctors to be more secure than cloud-based alternatives.

This thinking is challenged by a US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) study that assesses the root cause of significant data breaches involving health information. The study finds the top causes of breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to be:

• Physical theft of devices /

Studying or writing about your peer group can be a daunting and sometimes professionally hazardous task. For evidence of this, consider well-respected consultant and legal futurist Richard Susskind whose early work “The Future of Law” was met with considerable skepticism and even derision in some legal circles.

Despite the hazards, inherent in such an endeavour I could not help myself recently but to accept such an assignment that tasked me with the performance of an analysis and the development of a framework for the engagement of consultants in an industry in which I myself am a consultant. The task for . . . [more]

Regardless of the function being outsourced (whether it is data centre networking services, business process outsourcing, call centre services, application development and programming), performing a detailed and thorough due diligence is the first step in cementing a successful and healthy relationship for both supplier and customer. The objectives of performing due diligence are to allow both parties to understand customer’s business requirements and objectives, to evaluate the supplier’s capabilities, to understand the cost components, to ascertain the risks to both parties, and to establish the level of cultural fit of both organizations. The extent to which the parties can minimize . . . [more]

Way back in December rumours were flying about the social bookmarking site Delicious. Various reports had it that owner Yahoo! would be closing it down. Slaw’s own Steve Matthews even put together the post R.I.P. Delicious tracing its pending demise. Many people looked for an alternative and exported their bookmarks to other sites in anticipation of it being closed. Some of those alternative services welcomed the new members with open arms, even creating tools for transferring the bookmarks over.

Fast forward: an announcement came out in May 2011 announcing the sale of Delicious to AVOS, owned by YouTube . . . [more]

Ontario has the unique position of having more applicants for articling positions than available positions. A panel at the Second Annual Conference Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education discussed the future of articling in Ontario on September 24, 2011 at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Tom Conway of the Law Society of Upper Canada Task Force on Articling shared some of his personal views on the subject. He indicated there were 1,700 people who registered for articling in 2010-2011, and the situation is expected to get worse with UofO expanding its common law section, and the new law schools recently launched. . . . [more]

As an update to my posting of 19 September 2011, the Canadian government introduced on 29 September 2011, Bill C-11, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act. This bill is identical to Bill C-32 which was introduced in June 2010. Bill C-32 died in March 2011 when the Canadian government fell in a vote of no confidence. This is the 4th attempt at amending the 1924 Canadian Copyright Act in order to address newer ways in which we all create, distribute and use copyright-protected works, and in order for Canada to be able to join the two digital WIPO . . . [more]

On the 26th, Newspapers Canada released its 2011 National Freedom of Information Audit.

Everybody fails, apparently, (and especially BC, and Ottawa) except PEI. At least, that’s what the reporting emphasizes, though the report itself is more balanced. 88% of BC requests were not filled within the required 30 business days, though all eventually were.

Newspapers Canada also followed up on its audit with further requests for department emails, some of which it has released, concerning the audit itself, and that is where the really interesting story is, as reported by the Tyee. . . . [more]