Lawyers and their clients are more mobile than ever before. With the Internet, easy international travel and a global economy, relationships and business transactions – and legal matters and disputes – frequently cross international borders. Handling matters that involve foreign law can increase the risk that you will face a malpractice claim, and can have important malpractice insurance implications that you should keep in mind.

This article highlights activities and situations involving dealings with foreign lawyers and foreign law that can lead to situations that will likely not be covered under your E&O policy. . . . [more]

The latest in metasearch engines appears to be Fastoise (presumably rhymes with “tortoise” if the graphic is any indication). Fastoise searches across search engines Yahoo! and Bing (both of which use Bing’s search tool), YouTube and Twitter.

Results are separated into four columns, with images from the search across the top. I could not see any related RSS feed or alert service, but results can be shared across Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (the newest social network).

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The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was established by the Equality Act 2006 with the ambition of creating an equal society which respects human rights. The government in its consultation, Building a Fairer Britain: Reform of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is now proposing that the equality and human rights champion has its wings clipped and turned into a mere regulator through the repealing and amending of certain sections of the Equality Act 2006. Under the proposals, the EHRC would in effect no longer be a champion of equality and human rights, but instead an isolated . . . [more]

As Toronto celebrates the 31st annual Pride Parade today, it’s worth remembering that Canada maintains some of the most progressive LGBT legislation in the world.

This year I joined the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) with a million people in what’s estimated as the largest parade ever.

The CCLA has expressed concerns about the continuing funding of the parade.

Daniel Dale of The Star caught us on Twitter. . . . [more]

Today is Canada Day, so we’re all off celebrating. But because it’s also Friday, I thought I’d schedule this fillip for the folks south of the border and those Canadians who have taken their CrackBerrys to the cottage. It’s just a bit of musing on that “best friend” of summer celebrations, the humble hot dog — the frankfurter, the wiener, and surely one of the “wurst” hits of nutrition going.

Western lit first records the hot dog in ancient Greece, marking even then the eagerness of the diner: in the words of Homer’s Odyssey,

[H]e tossed about as one who

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In mid-May, the Council of Canadian Academic Law Library Directors adopted the Calgary Statement on Free Access to Legal Information.

The Statement, that promotes the principles of open access in legal scholarly publishing in Canada and free access to legal information in society, follows the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship adopted by the law libraries of major American universities in late 2008.

The Durham statement called for two things: (1) open access publication of law school–published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions . . . [more]

The CRTC today published proposed regulations for the anti-spam act. Apparently there are still some to come from Industry Canada. The CRTC invites comments on the draft until August 29. From the CRTC notice:

The Commission calls for comments on new draft regulations, Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations (CRTC), with respect to the form and certain information to be included in commercial electronic messages (CEMs) and with respect to requests for consent for the sending of CEMs, the alteration of transmission data in electronic messages, and the installation of computer programs. The draft regulations are made pursuant to legislation which gives . . . [more]

The Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario (ACLCO) is looking for:

a dynamic, self directed, results-oriented individual to implement a custom designed knowledge management strategy with the 77 clinics that make up the community legal system in Ontario.

The position is for twelve months, with a possibility of an extension for two years.

The ACLCO KnowledgeNOW Discussion Paper and Report of 2010 laid out a series of recommendations concerning knowledge management across the clinic system. The successful applicant is to fashion and carry out a strategy to put them into effect.

The full job description and the 2010 report . . . [more]

I have been working over the last few years on what I feel is a latent distinction within our concept of intellectual property. This distinction sets apart the properties produced in educational institutions from commercial properties. The “intellectual properties of learning,” as I term them, often have, if inconsistently, a distinct economic and legal status to them, whether in copyright or patent law, tax-exemption or incentive. The distinctions made around the public good of learning have a long history, dating back in the West, I am finding, to the medieval monasteries, but they hit the headlines last week.

On June . . . [more]

Legislation cracking down on crooked immigration consultants (Bill C-35) comes into force on June 30, 2011. At the same time, the...

Foolkit, which stands for Free Legal Toolkit, provides free comprehensive access to legal resources in every Australian state except Western Australia. Produced by an Adelaide lawyer named Andrew Rogers, it is a collection of resources for lawyers, support staff, law students and the general public. By some measures, Foolkit is one of the largest access to law websites in Australia. Foolkit gets over 2 million hits per month and Rogers estimates that it is used by about 20 percent of lawyers in Australia.

Foolkit’s goal for lawyers is to improve the efficiency and quality of practice and professional life. . . . [more]

A few weeks ago when the postal strike was looming I wondered if a strike might be a tipping point that leads to even less mail being sent. 

A Globe and Mail article says that has indeed been the case. The article says, for example, that 350,000 ING Direct customers have switched online in the past 2 weeks. The impact of that?

“Canada Post will lose at least $2,352,000 a year in revenue from ING Direct on stamps alone, assuming the company sends each of those 350,000 people one letter a month at the commercial price of $0.56 a stamp.” . . . [more]