The Wall Street Journal recently featured a fascinating article on how architecture influence how we think. Researchers have found that nearly everything about a room, from the height of its ceilings to the colour of its walls, has a direct impact on the quantity and quality of our thoughts. Not only that, but researchers have found our capacity to recall information, to be creative, and to draw connections between seemingly unrelated concepts is heavily influenced by our surroundings. While the connection between a room’s qualities and mood has been established for years, this research represents some of the first . . . [more]

We’re pleased to announce that Gabriel Granatstein will be joining Slaw.

Gabriel is a lawyer in the Montreal office of Ogilvy Renault, where he practices employment and labour law. He also writes for his blog, Quebec Labour Law.

Prior to joining Ogilvy Renault, he served as an officer in the Canadian Forces, where his duties included assisting in grievance processing, conducting administrative and disciplinary investigations and a period of deployment as a peacekeeper in Bosnia. He continues to serve as a reservist. . . . [more]

Are law school rankings legitimate? Play Indiana U's Law School Ranking Game

It was quite a surprise to read that Howrey LLP, a large US based law firm, recently closed its doors. From various accounts, there were a host of reasons the firm went out of business. The irony is that Howrey was a pioneering firm with a desire to innovate. 

There are some interesting lessons learned. Howrey began to offer a suite of discovery services similar to those provided by LPO [legal process outsourcing] vendors. Innovative, yes! But perhaps not that smart. It seems that the global legal landscape was innovating faster (than the firm). 

Bob Ruyak, the firms Chairman and . . . [more]

There’s been something of a buzz lately among the law marketing crowd about putting QR codes on business cards — typically on the back, because they are ugly. (See, e.g. Shatterbox, Larry Bodine, ABA Journal.) It’s taken a while for this technology to percolate down to lawyers:these pixelated squares have been around for a few years now and mentioned more than once on Slaw: QR Code; Possibilities of Barcodes; QR Codes & Mobile Marketing. The thought is that a contact need only snap a photograph of your QR code to be provided with whatever . . . [more]

May we suggest that you be sure to vote today. It looks from advanced polls as though the turnout might be larger than anticipated, which would make a pleasing surprise.

And if our gentle encouragement isn’t enough, perhaps the fact that Google’s Doodle of the day features the election will move you to action.

. . . [more]

Hero defined: a man of distinguished courage or ability or a man who has acquired wisdom and virtue.

I have kept a list of heroes for many years. I suspect that the list reveals a good deal about my views on several subjects. The list is as follows:

1. Cecil A. Wright (1904-1967)

Wright was known to all as Caesar. Wright earned a Ph.D. in law from Harvard in the 1920s. He later taught and became Dean at Osgoode Hall Law School when it was located in downtown Toronto. In 1949 Osgoode was the only law school in Ontario. In . . . [more]

The Grievance Settlement Board’s March 28th privacy award made for some sensational headlines that decried the Ontario Ministry of Labour’s disregard for occupational health and safety inspector privacy by undertaking CPIC checks without consent. The headlines do not do justice to the difficult and significant issue dealt with in the award that relates to the MOL’s obligation to disclose information about inspectors pursuant to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. McNeil.

The Supreme Court issued McNeil in January 2009. The Court held that the Crown is not a single entity for the purposes of its prosecutorial . . . [more]

One hundred sixty years ago London invited the world to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in the new and astonishing Crystal Palace. The Google Doodle for today commemorates this event, and, as is the case lately with these doodles, this graphic is interactive. Your cursor over the doodle becomes a magnifying glass, letting you see details with greater clarity — including a number of miniature animations.

The Crystal Palace, originally erected in Hyde Park, threw a glass roof over 990,000 square feet of space. The building was moved and altered considerably in . . . [more]

Sony responded today to the theft of data from Playstations in a press release today.

The breach earlier this month was one of the largest in history, and involved names, addresses, and potentially credit card information for up to 77 million users. Sony claims any credit card information would have been encrypted, limiting the use of the sensitive data to the hackers.

A number of governments are already inquiring into the breach, and there is talk of civil actions as well. Users were particularly upset that they were not informed of the breach immediately.

Sony thanked customers for their loyalty, . . . [more]

Earlier this month a certain Liam McHugh-Russell uploaded a functional Canadian Legal Style to Zotero’s style library here.

Look for the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 7th ed. (McGill Guide), Liam’s style handles secondary sources perfectly, as far as I can tell, and performs well for cases and legislation.

When I asked him about the style, he did note that, due to the variety of formats in which citations to cases and legislation are offered online, the style cannot guarantee seamless downloading of citations to primary resources.

That said, I was able to extract a citation from . . . [more]

In technology today, and especially on the web, there is a constant push for the new shiny thing. Lately it seems like that new shiny thing comes in two flavors: Voice Recognition and Video. In my (not-uncontroversial) opinion those are two of the most overrated technologies in the business right now.

Video

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Undoubtedly true, but honestly…don’t use a thousand words when 56 words will do. It seems like today every website is trying to video-enable itself and recently I even saw a pitch for video e-mail! That’s fine when the . . . [more]