Good grief: it’s the (I should have expected it) reductio ad absurdum of legal advice. Until now, the briefest piece of wise legal counsel was “It depends.” Now a UK lawyer is offering free advice in 140 characters, which, though longer than that gold standard, doesn’t seem wiser.

A smiling man styled only as The Legal Oracle (@thelegaloracle) is offering on Twitter:

Tweet your legal claim or question and we will answer it free of charge. Taking the fear and mystery away and making law accessible.

Speaking of “fear and mystery”, who in his or her right mind . . . [more]

Have a look at the Research Buzz post today on Google Special Syntax: The Around Operator. Evidently, Google has had a proximity operator available for the last couple of months.

The operator is a capitalized AROUND followed immediately by a number within parentheses, representing the number of words within which you’d like the second term to occur from the first search term. For example, [cameras AROUND(5) courtroom] will find, of course, “cameras in the courtroom”, but also “cameras debated for sniper courtroom” and, interestingly, “Judge closes courtroom in Nodine trial to cameras.” These latter are results that would have . . . [more]

The nomenclature of a contract can subtly alter the relationship between the parties. The choice of particular words can create tension when exercising the provisions containing them simply because of how they sound, and what impression those words make in the mind of the reader. The legal effect can be identical, but a subtle psychological bias can be introduced by selecting loaded words as definitions or terms. This bias can be reinforced by using the notice provisions of the agreement to influence whether a notice is communicated, and how it is communicated.

Consider a scenario where a first party is . . . [more]

We have a new law in Canada, or we will when it received Royal Assent. Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act, made it through the House of Commons and the Senate.

SUMMARY
This enactment amends the Old Age Security Act to preclude incarcerated persons from receiving benefits under this Act while maintaining entitlement to benefits for, and avoiding a reduction in the amounts payable to, their spouse or common-law partner under this Act.

Thank heavens that our minority government could all agree that Canadians would feel better to know that if you make it . . . [more]

The Florida Bar Association has recently published a professional ethics opinion on the duty of lawyers to ‘sanitize’, i.e. erase the memory of, storage media such as printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines.

The opinion explains why such devices even have memories; some of the older among us may not think of them as that smart! It also notes a duty to supervise staff whose job it may be to clear out the memories of these devices before the devices are returned to lessors, or sold, or even just scrapped.

I see that the Law Society of Upper Canada’s ‘technology’ . . . [more]

Section 12 of the Copyright Act gives the Crown copyright in any work “prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department…” This broad sweep is considered, by the federal and provincial governments at least, to include court and tribunal judgments and legislation. The issue of whether this is appropriate or not has been somewhat finessed (albeit in a question-begging way) so far as federal legal material goes by the 1998 Reproduction of Federal Law Order SI/97-5 providing that:

Anyone may, without charge or request for permission, reproduce enactments and consolidations of

In a previous column, we described the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice’s Inventory of Reforms, a freely accessible, online database that contains descriptions of civil justice system reform initiatives from across Canada. The importance of this information is not only in letting people within a jurisdiction know what is changing, but also letting all jurisdictions across the country see what is being tried elsewhere. The natural extension of this is the ability to identify the most effective reforms so that they can be highlighted and applied elsewhere, though this function is naturally the most challenging to put into . . . [more]

As part of its series of guidelines to supplement the CBA Code of Professional Conduct, the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee has published a document that has seventeen solicitor-client privilege and client confidentiality FAQs.

Lawyers have a duty, as is expressed in the various provincial rules of conduct, to hold client information in strict confidence, except as authorized by the client, required by law, or otherwise required by the rules. The duty of confidentiality is distinguished from the common law rule of solicitor-client privilege with respect to oral or written communications between client and lawyer. The duty of confidentiality is . . . [more]

The comment period for the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20’s issues paper on “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology” closes on December 15th. The Commission is soliciting feedback from all corners, but would particularly like to gather feedback from practicing attorneys. The scope of the issues raised by the paper is broad:

1. Form of the Commission’s conclusions. The commission is soliciting feedback on how to best release its findings: a white paper, legal technology resource site, or possibly a change to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
2. Best Practices. What “best practices” exist for the

The Parliamentary Information and Research Service has published a brief report entitled “The Stuxnet Worm: Just Another Computer Attack or a Game Changer?” [PDF, HTML] by Holly Porteous. As most Slaw readers may know, this malicious software, spreading throughout the world, is aimed at disrupting or controlling certain industrial processes that are regulated by computers. The sophistication of the worm and the speculation that it was targeted at Iran’s nuclear facilities have raised concern and commentary about malware to a new level.

This report is a valuable overview, addressing briefly the manner in which Stuxnet was launched . . . [more]

Last week I talked about two announcements from Stem Legal: the newly relaunched Canadian Law Blogs directory site Lawblogs.ca and the 2010 Canadian Law Blog Awards a.k.a. the CLawBies now open for nominations. A third announcement came out at the same time which we haven’t yet mentioned: a new URL shortener for the Canadian legal industry, Lawlks.ca (pronounced “Law Likes”).

Stem is primarily using it to track content being shared from Lawblogs.ca site. Steve Matthews says in the announcement on the Law Firm Web Strategy blog:

The idea is to track which Canadian legal content pieces are getting

Acquisitions and mergers are expected to continue as the major legal publishers explore ways to increase their profitability, achieve growth and increase market share. When organic growth fails to achieve corporate expectations, acquisitions and mergers are the next best thing.

The acquisition of Canada Law Book by Carswell Thomson is simply the most recent acquisition of note in the Canadian market. There have been many others of far greater significance in recent years, including the acquisition of Yvon Blais by Carswell, the acquisition of Quicklaw by Lexis Nexis and the re-acquisition of Irwin Law from Quicklaw by its founders.

Long . . . [more]