The organizing committee of the 2010 ODR and Consumers Conference to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia Nov. 2-3, 2010 is pleased to announce that Madam Justice Frances Kiteley will be a keynote speaker at the Conference.

Madam Justice Kiteley:

Co-Chair since 2006 of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology (which she joined in 2005) and member of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Prior to her elevation to the bench, Madam Justice Kiteley was called to the Bar in Ontario in 1976; she was in private practice in Toronto for 19 years and was elected as a Bencher . . . [more]

In a stunningly inaccurate prediction, I announced to a friend a few years back that parasols would move into the mainstream here in Canada as we worried more and more about sun damage to our skin. As you may have noticed, it didn’t happen. Perhaps it may still, awaiting only some prominent person to champion the thing, in the way that Englishman Jonas Hanway in the mid 1800s popularized the use by men of umbrellas against the rain despite the taunts and ridicule he got for using a woman’s device.

Everyone’s doing it now, of course. And umbrella makers rejoice . . . [more]

A monk asked Joshu in all seriousness: “Does a dog have Buddha-Nature or not?” Joshu retorted: “Mu!”

The problem of “identity,” as we would style it today, is the sort of thing that zen masters make their students struggle with, as in the famous dog koan set out above, which tackles the matter elliptically. “Who am I?” — “Who are you?” — are questions that human beings have been worrying since the dawn of consciousness, presumably.

Now, I’m not going to get all gnomic on you here: it’s not the place for it. But the deep question is not so . . . [more]

The current spate of stories concerning nations trying to limit the use of Blackberries, when combined with the recently floated ‘net neutrality’ agreement between Verizon and Google, is emblematic of the continuing invasion of the world of telecommunication by the world of governmental and corporate power. Almost two decades ago, I was on a panel with Professor Marge Shultz of the Berkeley Law School faculty, who made a remark that I have never forgotten. Professor Shultz opined that,

Our ability to make advances in technology is outpacing our ability to understand how such progress fits in with law and politics

. . . [more]

For those lawyers or small business owners just starting out, setting down roots online can be a daunting process. Not everyone has the budget to hire out a new website construction project, and on the other side, there are numerous sources that will encourage you to DIY – “do it yourself”. What frequently happens though, is the new entrepreneur gets stuck. Do you cobble it together? Or, do you bite the bullet and find the budget?

The following advice won’t be for everyone, but for the soon-to-be business owner, or anyone who’s jumped into business over the past five years, . . . [more]

Google has just released a new search page dedicated to real-time results — those posts that come in typically from Twitter. They’re rolling it out, as they do with all innovations. But if you’re keen, you can get to it via http://www.google.com/realtime?esrch=RealtimeLaunch::Experiment. When it’s otherwise available to you, it will be reachable at http://www.google.com/realtime.

One nice feature is the ability to restrict your results by geography. Thus, for example, I was able to see what people in Canada were saying about the floods in Pakistan. And, as Google suggests, it might be handy to find out what’s going on . . . [more]

Safety is an illusion in today’s workplace. The current economy coupled with rapidly advancing technologies allows opportunities, or makes it necessary, for organizations to change the way they work. For individuals in many organizations, it could mean that risks (suggesting change, launching a new product, revamping a process) are not taken in an effort to maintain some kind of status quo (continued employment for example). The obvious downside for not taking a risk is that sometimes maintaining the status quo is equivalent to stagnation and failure.

I have always been a glass half full, change equals opportunity, bring on the . . . [more]

The following is the text of the August 26 e-blast sent to Ontario lawyers reminding them of the ongoing collaborative family law cheque scam.

Almost every day LAWPRO® hears from lawyers who find themselves the targets of various kinds of frauds. While this message is not a full fraud alert, we felt we should advise lawyers to be on guard, as there has been a significant increase in the number of collaborative family law agreement frauds reported to LAWPRO over the last week. Almost 20 firms have been targeted in the last four business days. We also urge lawyers to . . . [more]

Legal Watch blog recently reported that Apple has applied for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who “jailbreak” or unlock their iPhones or who otherwise tamper with their devices against Apple policy.

I was delighted to learn from a tweet by Lyonette Louis-Jacques, the International Law Librarian at the University of Chicago (and a Slaw columnist), that two of Karl Llewellyn’s lectures are available in audio on the U of Chicago website. Llewellyn was an adherent of the U.S. “legal realism” movement and, perhaps most famously, the force behind the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code.

One of his duties at Columbia, and later at the University of Chicago, was to deliver introductory lectures to first year students. His book The Bramble Bush, still read with pleasure today, came out of . . . [more]

Driving the other day, I saw the following electronic highway sign:

Seattle:
Rte. I-90 19 mins
Rte. 520 14 mins

There are only two bridges from Bellevue to Seattle, so I had to choose one of these routes. No-brainer, right? Take Rte. 520 and save five minutes.

Not so fast, so to speak. Seattle’s not a small town. Both these routes lead there, but they leave drivers in very different places. Does “Seattle” refer to where each road enters the city, or to a specific spot? If the latter, where? Depending on where I want to go in Seattle, I-90 . . . [more]

A California town has decided not to have a Facebook page after being advised by its lawyer of the legal risks.

The ABA Journal has the story.

Excerpt:

The legal issues include:

• May city officials remove vulgar posts and misinformation, or are the comments protected by the First Amendment?
• If a quorum of city council members comment on a Facebook post, is it a violation of the open meetings law? Such laws require advance notice of meetings and an opportunity to attend, blogger Robert Ambrogi writes at the Media Law blog.
• Is the city obligated to retain user comments

. . . [more]