The November-December 2010 CBA eNews provides links to some new and updated content from the Canadian Bar Association on the following topics:

– FAQs on Solicitor-Client Privilege and Confidentiality

– Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies (PDF)

– Guidelines for Ethical Marketing Practices Using New Information Technologies (PDF)

– CBA Code of Professional Conduct 2009

I also note the CBA Practice Link article entitled Beyond First-Generation Knowledge Management that cites me and a number of colleagues working in the KM field. . . . [more]

Every year, our organization, like many others, donates money to a viable and worthwhile cause. Let’s not kid ourselves, not all the reasons for these donations are altruistic.

The Washington Post carried a story on Tuesday about a Virginia man who was acquitted of a charge of failing to stop for a school bus that was unloading passengers. His lawyer made an argument, accepted by the court upon appeal, that the relevant section of the statute had been misdrafted, ever since it was changed in 1970, and was missing a critical “at,” rendering it meaningless.

Here’s the section in question:

A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or

. . . [more]

Jane was a family law associate in a large firm where she hoped to be made partner within 2 years. While she had a good client base including clients whom she had brought to the firm and excellent billings, she felt that she was invisible to most of the partners.

She didn’t work in a large practice group and had no apparent champion who might speak for her at the partnership table. She often felt that the partners saw her family practice as a sideline service they were happy to provide their corporate clients provided they didn’t have to touch . . . [more]

A new study by the University of Toronto and Tufts University states that appearance matters a great deal when it comes to judging people in a new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. “This includes clothing, posture, and hairstyles, but the real window to judging people is the face. We developed a method to measure facial power and found that it is a strong predictor of law firm profitability."

eHealth has been a major and controversial topic lately. A lot of time and effort has been spent on it, as there are many issues such as costs, privacy, security, and standards.

I had an encounter with the health system recently, and from my observations as a patient we need to keep this initiative moving, find ways to solve those issues, and stop using paper. I paid particular attention to the paper and documents that were created. Throughout the process, I was asked the same thing multiple times. (Confirming who I was and what they were going to do multiple . . . [more]

Alex Manevich earlier bemoaned here on SLAW the abysmal state of online access to Ontario court dockets.

In a recent request to the Canadian Association of Law Libraries listserv I asked colleagues the current state of online access to Canadian court dockets.

Unfortunately, the situation is not much better two years later.

However, I have added to the Case Law page on my legal research and writing website a chart of links for accessing Canadian court dockets (and for those jurisdictions who do not provide access, I provide a link to contact the court registry).

I will continue to update . . . [more]

Last October, Les Publications du Québec — the official printer for Acts and regulations in that province — started to remove marginal notes from its newly updated consolidated legislation collection called “Compilation of Québec Laws and Regulations”. When an Act or regulation gets amended, all its marginal notes are now removed from the text. Marginal notes in Quebec legislation will therefore progressively fade out as consolidated texts are being updated.

Marginal notes are words and small phrases that were traditionally displayed in the margin of printed statutes, providing hints about the content of specific provisions. Modern typesetting conventions . . . [more]

In most areas of law practice, lawyer/client communication problems are the number one cause of claims, followed closely by deadline and time management issues. Together they typically account for more than half the malpractice claims LAWPRO sees. Failures to know or apply substantive law typically account for about 10% of claims. See The Biggest Claims Risks article for more detail about the most common malpractice errors.

So, while knowing substantive law is important, from a claims prevention point of view you get more for your risk management efforts by focusing on improving client communications and focusing on getting things done . . . [more]

The Chief Justice of British Columbia, Lance S.G. Finch, addressed a meeting of the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Bar Association recently on the subject of access to justice, singling out the high cost of legal services as a prominent, if not new, obstacle to that goal. He said:

…I would call [the high cost of legal services ]the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it’s there, but no one wants to talk about it. I think it is time to open the conversation.

… I respectfully suggest it is time for the bar to address this question openly. It

. . . [more]

Graphene. If you said graphene to me yesterday, I would have nodded and smiled, secretly hiding my complete lack of knowledge. Graphene is a two dimensional derivative of carbon that is the topic of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Nanodots. Again, I say, “What?” Shame on me, since there was news in April about a library on a chip thanks to nanodots.

Rather than letting Slawyers know about my shameful lack of knowledge on general scientific topics, I have a suggestion. Check out MIT’s Technology Review. Follow them on twitter if short snippets of article titles are . . . [more]

This week in biotech was all about the wisdom of the crowds:

The crowd comprising Canada’s Natural Resources Committee, including Conservative MPs, in order to maintain our domestic capability to produce isotopes for medical imaging and treatment.

The crowd of VenGrowth investors spoke clearly in favour of the funds’ deal with Covington, approving the transaction by a wide margin on 4 of the 5 votes, according to the Financial Post.

The crowd of recent biotech IPOs, however, is telling us that we are still in a challenging environment for the public markets. Anacor, Zealand and Zogenix , lowering their . . . [more]