Over the last few months I have noticed a marked uptake on the topic of legal project management in the legal literature and blogosphere. Although I think lawyers have always “done” legal project management (not always well), I also think the recent buzz on the topic is related to the economy and the recent emphasis within the legal profession on changing trends and the need to do legal project management better.

SLAW recently did a book review of Steven Levy’s book called Legal Project Management. In addition to Steven’s book, there is also Jim Hassett’s The Legal Project Management . . . [more]

I’ve long had a fascination with Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, mostly because of his short fictions. He combined a wild imagination and calm, disciplined, mannerly prose. A particular favourite — and famous — passage is the list of animals that he says is taken from (his invention) the “Chinese Encyclopedia, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”:

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair

There has been a lot of press over the latest countries that don’t want Blackberries in their country unless they can get access to monitor user communications. See, for example, the Washington Post, Techdirt, Engadget.

RIM designed Blackberry communications so they would be secure, in a way that RIM itself can’t even access them. That’s a great feature that makes privacy advocates, corporate users, and individual users very happy. 

But it also makes some governments very unhappy – particularly those who believe they need to spy on communications. Some to the extent that they threaten to ban . . . [more]

I drift along sometimes, dreaming that maybe I can stop learning new technical things for a while and actually use a few technologies to finish some long-term projects. Then something comes along to wake me up. One of the more recent of these wake-up calls came with the announcement of Apple’s iPad. People were complaining that it didn’t support Adobe Flash content.

I don’t generally pay a lot of attention to either Apple or Adobe, because I tend not to associate either one with open standards or open software. That’s just a bias though, and life is never that simple. . . . [more]

Next week, Toronto firms will interview and hire for 2010 – 2011 articling positions. Last fall I wrote a post called “Interview Tips for Summer Students.” This time I thought it would be helpful to give an inside look at the hiring process by describing the steps we at Hicks Morley (a management-side human resources and advocacy firm) go through in selecting the candidates to whom we extend an offer.

What follows is a description of the firm’s process with some commentary on how I’ve worked though it in the past five years or so as a member . . . [more]

My colleague Laurel Murdoch showed me the latest issue of the Harvard Law School Bulletin, the lead article focusing on the changes happening at the Harvard Law Library, led by John G. Palfrey, the Law School’s vice dean for library and information resources (formerly of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society). Palfrey is the author of a very interesting piece that Louis alerted us to, entitled Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus

Palfrey’s piece ends with a collaborative challenge:

Our next step should be a process akin to a design charrette.60 We ought to

In the middle of May, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon introduced Bill C-26, the Transboundary Waters Protection Act, which has received 1st reading. According to the (as usual) excellent legislative summary from the Parliamentary Information and Research Service, the Bill has as its main features expansion of the waters affected by the existing prohibition on bulk water removals. Now waters that flow across the boundary between the U.S. and Canada are included, whereas before only waters that straddle the boundary were affected.

Prohibited “bulk removal” is defined as follows:

“bulk removal” means the removal of water from boundary

Economic Death occurs when a prolonged disability prevents you from earning a living and you have no other source of income. You are still alive, but have been become a financial burden on your family, friends and society. This can have a profound impact on you and your family’s future and for some it’s a fate worse than death. 

Think the risk is low? You may be surprised to learn that during your working years, the odds of suffering a disability are much greater than the odds of dying prematurely. According to actuarial tables, between ages 35 to 65, 3 . . . [more]

The two leading Canadian legal publishers, Carswell Thomson and LexisNexis Butterworths, have something in common – both face a major challenge for continuing relevance in the Canadian market. Interestingly enough, the real challenge does not come from each other, but from free services and technological advances, and increasingly from small but nimble legal publishers committed to the delivery of high quality competitively priced products. How each of them responds to this challenge will determine their ultimate role as providers of legal information in the Canadian legal market.

Meeting the challenge has been made more difficult because of the unrealistic expectations . . . [more]

Great sign from Frank Hatzman on Cottesloe Beach, Perth.
. . . [more]

As we said last year on the first Monday in August:

Slaw will be quieter than usual today: it’s the August civic holiday here in most of Canada, which, as befits our particular federation, goes by various names across the land —

Alberta (Heritage Day)
British Columbia (British Columbia Day)
Manitoba (Civic Holiday)
New Brunswick (New Brunswick Day)
Northwest Territories (Civic Holiday)
Nova Scotia (Natal Day)
Nunavut (Civic Holiday)
Ontario (John Galt Day + Simcoe Day + others)
Prince Edward Island (Natal Day)
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Day)

[source: Wikipedia]

– or is not celebrated at all, as in Newfoundland & Labrador, . . . [more]

No, this is not about Caribana taking place in Toronto this Simcoe Day long weekend. Rather, it is about two reciprocal blog carnivals that were posted yesterday. You may recall a blog carnival is a review of recent blog posts on a topic that rotates around, hosted on different blogs. While the subject matter may be serious, blog carnivals have a playful element. You may also recall we hosted Blawg Review (the law blog carnival) #249, here on Slaw.ca in February, written by Omar Ha-Redeye.

This time around, Ed, the Editor of Blawg Review, and Charles H. Green, co-author . . . [more]