Governments, courts, school boards, and people in general too often focus on the wrong aspects of new things. Whenever a new tool arrives – such as various forms of social media or smart phones – two seemingly opposite things happen.

First, as we experiment with new tools, people inevitably do stupid things with them. Such as making comments or posting something on social media that the person would never have posted on a physical bulletin board, or written in an open letter to a group of friends.

Second, because humans have flawed risk perceptions, we are more comfortable with the . . . [more]

After close to 10 months with a 3G-WiFi iPad, I am finally “returning” my BlackBerry (through my employer) in favour of using my own iPad as my sole communication tool.

The advantages of the iPad:

• screensize: larger screensize with the ability to “expand” text using the 2-finger swipe/stretch technique (this is a huge factor for older people like me with dwindling eyesite)

• browsing: fully functional browsing on the Internet, including the ability to do meaningful Westlaw, Lexis and CanLII searching (among other legal research databases)

• email: a great email client, allowing the ability to have both personal

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My kids watch a popular TV show called Mythbusters in which the hosts seek to uncover the truth behind popular myths. While watching it with them the other night, it struck me that outsourcing has its own share of myths. One that I think deserves having a light shined on it is benchmarking. In this article, I’ll discuss the myth around benchmarking, its impact on an outsourcing agreement, what I take to be benchmarking’s proper role, and I’ll endeavor to do it all with the same “gleeful curiosity and plain old-fashioned ingenuity” that the hosts of Mythbusters are described by . . . [more]

The UK Press Complaints Commission, a non-governmental, self-regulatory body fielding complaints about the content of British newspapers, ruled today that material published on Twitter is not private and did not violate the editorial code of practice. The Daily Mail republished some of Sarah Baskerville’s tweets. She is employed by the Department of Transport and as a civil servant is bound not to “call into doubt the impartiality of the civil service,” which, the Daily Mail felt, some of her tweets did.

From the adjudication:

The article referred to the fact that the complainant had in her tweets: described the

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Various bits of twitter wisdom tell me that the American Bar Association has a refreshed website. I just had a mental picture of ice cream plopping out of a scoop into a bird shapped bowl. As an Associate member of the ABA, I would have expected news of this to hit my email in basket along with all of the other material they send.
The tweet I saw did originate with Edward Adams, editor of the ABA Journal.

The message form ABA President Stephen Zack on the new site reads:

American Bar Association President Stephen N. Zack announced

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As we sometimes do on Slaw, I’m pointing out the Google doodle of the day. February 8 turns out to be Jules Verne’s birthday, and in its honour Google has done up a view from below, replete with a lovely lever that moves the ship forward, back, up and down.

Go and take the real thing for a test dive.

And because, good as it is, it’s only lumière without son, I’ve got an extra treat for you: a clip from an authentic (US) submarine dive horn recording. (You might want to turn your volume down.) If it . . . [more]

As we begin the new year, a lot of my clients are developing their 2011 marketing plans, and that means I’m getting a lot of questions about what they ‘should’ do to market their practices this year. Here’s part of an inquiry I received from an existing client:

I simply must know what works for lawyers in my practice area, in a similar geographic area. What I need to do is to focus on best practices of other attorneys specifically in these areas of law, and replicate them to the extent possible….

In other words, I need a direction: cable

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Yes, there are plenty of ways you can compromise your online identity by (mis-) using a dating website. A scenario not everyone considers, however, is having your password stolen and used to hijack other aspects of your online identity.

If this sounds like a nightmare scenario, it is. And it happened to over 300 users of popular Vancouver-based dating website PlentyOfFish.com last week when a hacker compromised the site’s security and retrieved real names, passwords and e-mail addresses for a small subset of the site’s 11,000,000 users.

The breach highlights an error that PlentyOfFish and many other websites make: storing . . . [more]

Many wills include one or more bequests to charitable or religious institutions. In spite of the testator’s good intentions, these bequests often lead to claims when there is confusion over which institution was to receive the bequest. These mistakes often come to light only when the estate is being distributed – and they can lead to costly and time-consuming litigation when charities fight over the bequest.

Many of the claims reported in this area could be avoided if lawyers took steps to confirm that the information given by the testator is correct when the will is being drafted.

Often testators . . . [more]

Update on Egyptian online sources of legal information.

Mediation is frequently promoted on the ground that it reduces the cost and delay inherent in litigation, and in this way it increases access to justice.

Leave aside the issue of whether mediation reduces cost and delay. Does it increase access to civil justice? . . . [more]

On the occasion of the OBA Institute 2011 last week, another law blogger meetup was held in Toronto. Unlike the previous week’s Toronto law blogger meetup, this one was female dominated. It is great to see so much interest in blogging! One participant, a law blogger wannabe, said she wants to start blogging once she finds a focus for content. While focus on a specific topic (or range of topics) is helpful if one is highlighting a specific practice, the actual type of content does not need to be restricted.

Law blogging is particularly challenging because of the need . . . [more]