Many interested stakeholders who participated in the AODA consultation process from February 1, 2011 to March 18, 2011 are very concerned about the timelines and a number of the requirements related to the implementation of the transportation standard. The cost implications for the transportation standard are believed to be significant. Provisional estimates, for certain smaller transit systems, would see the annual ongoing operating costs equate to upwards of 50 percent of the current operating costs.

Responding to a Request for Proposal (RFP) is an expensive exercise. Proposals are labour-intensive, often last minute, and have the capability of greatly enhancing or diminishing a law firm’s reputation with the recipients. 

Lawyers find proposals intrusive on their billable hours and think that their marketing staff should be able to handle the process. However, even the best marketing staff, who can research the prospective client and pull together a decent first draft, needs input from the lawyers on the proposal team. They need the lawyers’ insights on the client’s legal needs. They need relevant, specific examples of the firm’s . . . [more]

I attended a Women’s Law Association of Ontario dinner recently where Chief Justice Winkler provided the following tips on how to succeed in law:

1. Law is a helping profession. Help others without looking for anything in return.

2. People want to help you. Graciously give them the opportunity do so.

3. Respect your elders. Respect those younger than you. Respect those the same age. Respect those in lesser positions than yours. Respect others.

4. Be loyal. Loyalty begets loyalty.

5. Do not exaggerate. Don’t mislead the court. Don’t take advantage of anyone.

6. Get a mentor or several mentors.Don’t

. . . [more]

When you have a second to lift your head from the day-to-day, moment-to-moment legal work on your desk, you might take a look at what some people are envisioning with respect to your future legal work. The Law Lab — “A Petri Dish for Legal Innovation” — (a not entirely… savoury image, perhaps) — is a joint venture of Harvard’s Berkman Institute and the Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship with the mission:

to investigate and harness the varied forces — evolutionary, social, psychological, neurological and economic — that shape the role of law and social norms as they enable cooperation, governance

. . . [more]

Various Canadian Privacy Commissioners have taken the position that car license plate numbers are personal information, and thus subject to privacy legislation. That comes up, for example, in the context of Google street views, where Google has been told they must blur license plate numbers. 

Various Privacy Commissioner decisions have also limited the use of driver’s license information. For example, a store may ask to see a driver’s license as identification for someone returning a purchase as a fraud prevention measure, but the store is only supposed to look at it, not record the information on it.

Those principles are . . . [more]

Myth #1: I don’t need life insurance because I’m single and have no dependents.

Fact: Everyone leaves behind expenses when they die. In addition to funeral costs, there may be medical bills and personal debts that have to be paid. While your estate could be liquidated to cover some of these costs, it takes time and may not be enough. Life insurance relieves the financial burden of your death on your family or executor by creating instant tax-free cash. 

Myth #2: I have enough life insurance through my employee benefits.

Fact: Most employee life insurance benefits are designed to provide . . . [more]

The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.

– Marshall McLuhan

In 2011, the University of Alberta will host the Herbert Marshall McLuhan Edmonton Centenary. Being the city of McLuhan’s birth, Edmonton boasts a special connection to the Canadian icon, even though others are also celebrating.

I offer you this link as tribute to Marshal McLuhan – the 1971 convocation address when the University of Alberta awarded him with an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Considering the number of times he has been mentioned here, I wonder what Prof. McLuhan would say about . . . [more]

CLIC made a difference

In the late seventies and early eighties, the Canadian Law Information Council was the key player in the effort to create a vision for accessing legal information online. CLIC was the idealistic, innovative and somewhat eclectic creation of the federal and provincial governments, that ran out of steam well before the new order it foresaw, came to pass. In its relatively short life, however, CLIC played a valuable role as prophet, educator and motivator in preparing the legal information community for the dramatic changes that were to come.

CLIC was “right on the money” in projecting . . . [more]

LAWPRO has seen a significant increase in bad cheque frauds targeting lawyers all over North American over the last two months, and over the last week several new names are being used on the ongoing collaborative agreement frauds. We are also seeing more activity in the last few weeks on frauds involving a real estate purchase deposit and a settlement of an employment related personal injury claim. Over the last few months several hundred lawyers from across North American have reported to us that they received various versions of these messages attempting these frauds. See below for more details on . . . [more]

Un peu difficile de choisir la session quand il y a trois sujets thématiques parallèles..! C’est le cas d’ailleurs aujourd’hui toute la journée, sauf pour les plénières. La session en rubrique est populaire la salle est comble! C’est vraiment un sujet d’actualité qui intéresse beaucoup les participants.

Nicolas Vermeys, de l’Université de Montréal, a ouvert la session avec une mise en contexte. Nicolas mentionne que plus de 7,000,000 de Canadiens sont présents sur facebook, selon le Commissaire à la vie privé, rendant ainsi ce site le plus populaire au Canada. C’est pourquoi sa présentation est principalement axé sur facebook et . . . [more]

Last week TechCrunch featured a terrific guest post by Mark Suster about Why Startups Need to Blog (and what to talk about …). In reading Suster’s blog post, it occurred to me that many of his recommendations for startups apply equally well to law firms.

The kinds of questions I constantly hear from lawyers about blogging – “what should I blog about?”; “who is my audience?”; “where should I post?”; etc. – are the same kinds of questions many startup company bloggers-to-be ask about blogging. Suster’s article provides insights that bloggers from any industry can benefit from.

A few . . . [more]

Gordon Ross, Vice-President of ThoughtFarmer, opened his 13:30 session today by asking: “Is knowledge loss really an issue?” The annual average industry turnover rate is 35.7%. When staff leaves you lose both what they know (technical knowledge) and who they know (social knowledge). Intranets are not good for retaining knowledge and enabling users to find it, in one intranet survey asking “does your intranet search usually help you in finding what you are searching for”, 85% of professional respondents answered “No”.

Typical problems arising from knowledge management include:

• Just because it is captured does not mean it will be

. . . [more]