I am having an interesting day. Interesting in a cursed way.

Before I left for the day last night I was made aware of some “first thing in the morning” research needed for a 9:30 meeting. A simple case-gathering task looking for the most authoritative Alberta Court of Appeal decision on a point of law. No problem.

Also before I left for the day, I started the firm’s memo template, typed in the “you asked me to find” statement, did a very quick search of the CED headings (one not quite relevant hit, pasted into the memo) and a quick . . . [more]

As a self-employed lawyer, you are directly responsible for your business expenses. So what would happen if a serious accident or illness prevented you from working?

Just because you can’t work doesn’t mean your business expenses suddenly stop. You’ll still owe rent, equipment lease payments, and utilities. In addition, you probably have employees with families who depend on your ability to pay a salary on time. 

You’ll need money to keep the doors open and the lights on so you have something to go back to when you recover. If it looks like you can’t return, you’ll need to cover . . . [more]

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Friday. Panelists included Arthur G. Greene, Boyer Greene LLC, Bedford, NH; T. Andrew Brown, Brown & Hutchinson, Attorneys at Law, Rochester, NY; Thomas C. Grella, McGuire Wood & Bissette PA, Asheville, NC; Ken Young, Young Mayden LLC, Charlotte, NC; and Mark Robertson, Robertson & Williams, Oklahoma City, OK & co-author of Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour. Moderator was Prof. Gary A. Munneke of Pace University School of Law, White Plains, NY. Note: these are . . . [more]

It sounds like a scary title, and it probably is. It had Lee Berlik saying,

Will this be my last tweet? Attending “the Perils of Social Media”

Dominique Sheldon of Wildman Harrold spoke about behavioral advertising, and the legal risk it can entail. There can often be unintended consequences as the result of business use of social media.

Clients will want to advertise online, irrespective of the potential for backlash. It’s a growing market, and it’s where consumers are spending their time. Zenith predicts an explosive growth of online advertising in the next few years,

…internet advertising continues to

Thomas Edison’s visitors, so the story goes, had to push hard to open his front gate: he was using their energy to pump water up to his house. This “crowdsourcing” his water supply was a trivial exploitation and might even have benefitted his visitors by helping them (ever so slightly) stay in shape. Your visits, whether you know it or not, also pump water for a bunch of “Edisons” every day, and it’s not clear that you’ll regard this exploitation as entirely harmless. 

I’m speaking, of course, of your visits to websites. And the “Edisons” in question here are . . . [more]

These are notes are from a panel presentation session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Thursday. Panelists included Dominique Shelton, Wildmon Harrold, Beverly Hills, CA, Prof. Teresa Scassa, University of Ottawa, Research Chair of Information Law, Ottawa, ON, Dr. Ann T. Greeley, DecisionQuest, and Nicole Black, Rochester, NY . Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Dominique Shelton – Overview on what is social media

Social media often involves the creation of “user generated content”, which . . . [more]

The past couple of weeks have offered an amazing ringside view of an unusually public and acrimonious debate over software patents.

First, This American Life aired When Patents Attack, a fantastic expose of Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding company owned by Microsoft’s one-time CTO Nathan Myhrvold. The episode leads listeners to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that companies like Intellectual Ventures are at the root of all that’s wrong with the US patent system. It’s a must-listen for anyone involved in, or merely interested in, intellectual property law.

Then, last week, after losing out on a huge bidding war for . . . [more]

These are notes are from a panel presentation session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Thursday. Panelists included lawyer/librarian Matthew Braun, Legal Reference Specialist at the Law Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Sara Sommarstrom, Program Director, Minnesota Justice Foundation, and Prof. Nanette Elster, Vice President, Spence & Elster and Adjunct Faculty, The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

This session was made up of three very different presentations exploring . . . [more]

In a recent Slaw marketing column, Is “Humble” in Your Marketing Repertoire? , Steve Matthews noted that although lawyers are often encouraged to focus their marketing on their expertise, it’s counterproductive to actually proclaim yourself as an expert in your marketing materials. As Steve says, “expert status should almost always be bestowed by others, not claimed by you.” He advises that you “let your clients decide that you’re an expert based upon your performance.”

So how do you showcase your performance in your marketing materials without sounding like a blowhard? Instead of talking about your performance, demonstrate it. And always . . . [more]

Here’s the promised post on the iPad apps recommended, or mentioned warmly, by Tom Mighell and Nerino Petro during the ABA session on Thursday that discussed the use of tablet computers in the practice of law. Some of the those identified as “free” also have a beefed up version offered for sale. As I’m sure you’ll understand, there are literally thousands upon thousands of iOS apps now, and it was only possible for the panel to discuss a very few in the time allotted. And, as I’m sure you’ll also understand, all kudos goes to the two expert panelists and . . . [more]

The ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security hosted a panel on Comparative Approaches to National Security moderated by Professor Harvey Rishikof, with Brigadier-General Blaise Cathcart from JAG, and Eneken Tikk of NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The panel looked at how different states have tried to resolve the tension of security and liberty in a variety of national security contexts, a topic recently covered by The Star.

Cathcart spoke on the virtue of the whole government approach of obtaining information, and Tikk recounted the challenge of the 2007 cyber attacks in . . . [more]

As a follow up to my post on J. E. McEneaney’s Web 3.0, Litbots, and TPWSGWTAU, here is an interesting and brief piece in Nature on what’s lacking in search engines. Turns out the author, a computer scientist at the U of Wash., thinks it is a machine capable of reading our sentences for meaning, not keywords.

There is a good summary of the article on the NYT blog.

As a side note, the fact that his academic homepage is in Comic Sans has new implications for me, after having read this epic defense in McSweeney’s. . . . [more]