practicePRO’s claims prevention and law practice management resources continue to grow in popularity with lawyers. In 2009 almost 150,000 copies of our articles, checklists and precedents were downloaded.

We’ve compiled the list of the forty most popular downloads for 2009. Many of them are consistently popular year to year, such as Peg Duncan’s e-discovery reading list, limitation periods charts, retainer precedents and various technology articles. There were a few interesting developments though:

• The Sample Budget Spreadsheet came in in the top spot, with twice as many downloads as last year. A sign of lawyers taking a closer look

A recent InformationWeek article explores 7 key questions organizations must ask themselves about investing in social networking in 2010. The important questions include:

• Is it necessary to have a corporate policy around social networking? Yes. It must be short, simple, and clear.
• Which way works best? Definitely get involved with the 4 dominant social networking players: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Maintain a four-pronged public networking strategy. Its also recommended that companies build a dual social media strategy that incorporates homegrown online communities with an involvement with the key public social networks.
• Where’s the ROI? Don’t think of social networking

.♫ Copycat, copycat, copycat
copy copy copy everyone else….♫

Lyrics by Dolores O’Riordan and music by Noel Hogan and Dolores O’Riordan, recorded by The Cranberries.

Anyone who places content on the web should be concerned with detecting the unauthorized copying of their content. Certainly anyone with a blog would not want others taking their original content without their permission. This actually happened to my own blog just recently: www.thoughtfullaw.com. In my case it was simply someone who was unaware of the rules around copyright.

But there was a case in Victoria British Columbia where a law firm . . . [more]

The Supreme Court announced this morning that it would release Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr on Friday morning. . . . [more]

According to a piece on Out-Law.Com, Nominet, the UK domain administrator, is allowing domain registrars for dot.uk domains to shut down web sites if there are credible allegations of criminal activity on those sites.

This is not supposed to happen with allegations of civil wrongs, such as copyright infringement (though if infringement is an offence under the Copyright Act, does that count as criminal?).

Registrars are cautioned not to lock someone out of their domain on the allegation of a commercial or personal rival . . .

Apparently this policy has been developed in association with the police. . . . [more]

Omar Ha-Redeye’s post about e-learning earlier this week prompts me to disclose a possible Law Commission of Ontario e-learning course, in conjunction with Ontario law schools. The LCO is in the process of renewal and one on-going issue is the relationship with the Ontario law schools, especially those schools other than Osgoode (which provides funding – including funding from York University – and inkind contributions to the LCO). Obviously, one manifestation of the relationship is in contracting researchers from the law faculties, in the appropriate case, (improvements in which are also under consideration), but another suggestion, from Western Law’s Dean, . . . [more]

The current #1 on the New York Times most popular articles list is an item that appeared in the Technology section on the weekend: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now.

In terms of complexity, the Facebook privacy settings lie somewhere between the calculations behind a space shuttle launch and figuring out what the Toronto Maple Leafs need to do to win a Stanley Cup. These things are simply beyond most of us mere mortals. I think it is safe to say that most Facebook users do not appreciate all the nuances of Facebook privacy settings, especially when . . . [more]

From Pingdom, the Internet 2009 in numbers:

With such kernels as:

• 1.73 billion Internet users (as of Sept 2009)
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.

and much more. . . . [more]

I believe that the oldest use of media other than print to teach legal research was a videotape with voice-over by Stephen Borins back in the academic year, 1970-1971 in which he ran through a legal research problem which touched on Priestman v. Colangelo and the liability of police officers. It stressed the reliability of the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest and touched briefly on Butterworths Ontario Digest and the Canadian Abridgement.

The tape required a technician from York’s AV division to run it, and was very much talking head with some close-ups of book pages. It might be in a dusty . . . [more]

This week in biotech focused on cost effectiveness, as everyone from Ontario to Florida and from VCs to pharma companies continue to look for ways to squeeze the most out of every dollar.

In Florida, a report assessing the state’s progress in attracting high value life science jobs showed that in the first six years of its efforts, legislators have spent about $1.4 million for each of the 1,100 jobs created. In the year we’ve been tracking similar data, this is the highest per-job spending we’ve seen.

The Florida report recommended more spending to assist with early-stage capital, . . . [more]

This past week, the Government of British Columbia announced that Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis would be leaving that post to take on the role of Deputy Attorney General of the province. The transition will be effective February 1, 2010 though his resignation as Commissioner [PDF] was effective immediately.

David was appointed Commissioner in 1999 and he has overseen a dramatic transformation in privacy laws affecting British Columbians. The Personal Information Protection Act came into being during his tenure and his report on the effect of the USA Patriot Act on the privacy of Canadians is known around the . . . [more]

Here is the link to the story – no references to Canada.

And the Wall Street Journal and the ABA Journal are following the same developments. . . . [more]