A new study of Israeli judges reported on recently in the Globe and Mail strongly suggests that if you’re a prisoner looking for leniency, you may want to wait until His Honour has finished his cream cheese and lox.

Researchers studied 1112 rulings by Israeli judges presiding over parole hearings. At the opening of the court session, 65% of rulings favoured the prisoner but the chance of a favourable ruling dropped nearly to zero by the end of the morning session. Amazingly, after the lunch break favourable prisoner rulings jumped back to the 65% level before beginning a steady decline . . . [more]

As we often do on Slaw, I’m going to alert you to a nifty Google doodle today:

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first spaceflight of a human being. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes in his Vostok spacecraft. Gagarin died on March 27, 1968. . . . [more]

There is an excellent message from Governor General David Johnston in the Canada News Centre about National Volunteer Week.

This spirit of giving, which often develops at a very young age and helps to define our collective identity, forms the very basis of any dynamic society.

and later

During National Volunteer Week, I invite Canadians to think about how they can make a difference in their communities and get involved. Let us take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the work of all volunteers.

I hope you enjoy reading Slaw.ca this week. It is the work of many volunteers. If . . . [more]

Roberta Shaffer, the Law Librarian of Congress, recently gave a keynote to the American Association of Law Librarians Vendor’s Colloquium in Chicago, and during that presentation made a number of observations about socio-info, law practice, legal research, and legal publishing trends [Fn. 1], two of which I found particularly important to highlight. First, she said that legal publishers can find lawyers to update existing content, but are having problems getting lawyers to write new treatises. Second, she said our vocabulary has changed, specifically that we are using shorter sentences and shorter words to help us cope with information overload. [Fn. . . . [more]

Standards for on-premise, cloud and mobile technologies used by lawyers have, to-date, been lacking. While an abundance of recommendations, best practices and other guidelines have been issues by Bar Associations and other organizations, there has not been a single, comprehensive document lawyers could look to for clear guidance on what minimal standards should be adhered for on-premise, cloud and mobile technologies.

The International Legal Technology Standards Organization (ILTSO) aims to change that. ILTSO is a non-profit organization consisting of attorneys, bar association representatives, IT professionals, and business leaders with a stated mission of “helping attorneys and clients better understand the . . . [more]

A good part of Slaw is playing hookey today, visiting the ABA TECHSHOW at the Chicago Hilton. It’s the 25th Anniversary show, so we are having fun looking forward and back – and seeing how far we’ve come since the days of DOS and 20 MB hard drives.

Last night, we were entertained by an IgniteLaw session in which twelve speakers gave provocative and creative talks about legal technology and the future of law practice. . . . [more]

As promised, more from the ABA Techshow, and more from Steve Matthews, who presented on website basics for lawyers.

Getting noticed and ranked high by search engines is very important for firms, because most of the traffic to your site will come from searches on Google and the other search engines. So how do you engage in “search engine optimization,” or SEO as it’s called?

Page SEO factors

1. Use page titles and make them unique and descriptive; it helps search engines understand what you’re about. When you’re browsing, look up at the top of your browser: you’ll see the title

Here on Slaw we pretty much take for granted some of the basics of IT, prime among which might be the value of a website to practicing lawyers. But, of course, it’s just not the case that all lawyers have—and make good use of—websites. So for those of you who fall into that category (or who have a friend who does) here’s a little something.

As it happens, I’m at the ABA Techschow in Chicago listening to Slaw’s Steve Matthews explain the basics with respect to the necessary infrastructure, Website 101: Build and Rebuild.

Domain names
Use short, memorable . . . [more]

Michelle is a colleague of mine – an executive coach working in the oil patch. Michelle’s workdays start early. By 7 am she is in the cab of a pick up truck with a client at the wheel. Instead of business suits she wears jeans, work boots and a parka. The coaching sessions don’t take place in boardrooms but rather as her clients drive to and from the various work sites. Most days this winter it was minus thirty degrees and the trucks never warm up because of the frequent road side stops to roll down the window and conduct . . . [more]

Every now and again judges have to deal with unrepresented plaintiffs. Sometimes there’s a good reason why P couldn’t find representation. That will usually make the judge’s job harder.

Consider this description of of a recent claim. The amount claimed was a 200 hundred million. There’s no indication why the plaintiff chose that figure.

The action arises from the purchase of a … refrigerator by the Plaintiff on or about September 25, 1999.

P alleges as against the defendants defective repair service, electronic surveillance by the defendants of the plaintiff, theft via Internet of his personal files, data and emails,

The recently released case by Justice Guy DiTomaso in Kohl v. ING Insurance Company of Canada, 2011 ONSC 2138, discusses the ability to amend a claim while arbitration is still pending.

The Plaintiff, Roy Kohl, was involved in a car accident when his car hit a brick wall on October 18, 2005. Ian Hu of Oatley Vigmond LLP commenced an action on his behalf for accident benefits and damages for bad faith and mental distress on December 10, 2008 against his insurer, ING Insurance Company of Canada, represented by Deborah Neilson of Carroll Heyd Chown. . . . [more]

A number of Facebook users in Quebec tried to begin a class action against FB for alleged infringements on their privacy. A Quebec court has now refused certification as a class action and dismissed the case: St Arnaud c. Facebook Inc. 2011 QCCS 1506.

One ground for dismissal was that FB users sign an agreement that all disputes must be adjudicated in Santa Clara County, California.

A more interesting element of the decision was that the ‘contract’ with FB was not a consumer contract within the meaning of Quebec law, since there was no payment and no obligation on . . . [more]