I read this a few days ago now, but it has been on my mind ever since. It is an attempt to take what “The Office” has to say about workplace dynamics at least somewhat seriously. Not being well-versed in management theory, I’m not sure how good this thinking is, but it is provocative. It is The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to “The Office”.

The Office is not a random series of cynical gags aimed at momentarily alleviating the existential despair of low-level grunts. It is a fully-realized theory of management that falsifies 83.8% of the business

The lines in the sand seem firmly drawn when it comes to social media blocking. Some firms have taken the view that accessing websites such as Facebook during work hours is an attack on business productivity, and have locked down access. Detractors identify the fact that any personal smart phone can access these sites, and that blocking is not only ineffective, but is taking young lawyers ‘off-grid’ and restricting their ability to communicate with peers and business contacts.

So who’s right? Unfortunately, the answer may be everyone.

The Case for Lockdown

Let’s start this piece by facing facts. Having worked . . . [more]

The Uniform Law Conference of Canada is considering upgrading its web site – at least within its modest means. What do you think a legal reform and harmonization site needs to offer? Some ongoing projects are more accessible to the public than others, but once something has been discussed at the annual conference, any documents are in principle available.

What is lacking in your view? What needs to be kept? What should be improved?

Does a creative commons licence make sense for it? (We might not be able to provide that retrospectively for commissioned studies, but at present the policy . . . [more]

The business section of the Globe and Mail today was something of a bonanza for pieces on information technology, and I thought that I’d pass the links along for those of our readers too busy to digest the (or that) morning paper.

First off, of course, is the story about the launch of Windows 7 in Canada. Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, showed up in Toronto to give a talk to a bunch of IT professionals, hoping to help them forget about the Vista disaster. The Globe has a whole section online with a dozen or so articles about Windows . . . [more]

The newest version of the University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation, known as the Maroonbook, is available online in PDF. This brief — 77 page — competitor to the Bluebook is not directly applicable to us here in Canada, of course, but may assist with material filed in the United States. And it serves to remind us that we, too, ought to have available to us a free, online manual.

We’ve mooted this on Slaw a number of times, and, if some irons I’ve got in the fire at the moment get hot in the next few weeks, . . . [more]

I attended a great workshop on Wednesday looking at KM from novel perspectives, part of the ARK Group Knowledge Management for the Legal Profession 2009 Conference.

Workshop theme and goals:
For KM to continue to grow in law firms, we need to move beyond “traditional” projects and technology initiatives.
This full-day workshop will dive into those areas that lie at the innovative edge of KM. Our goal for the day is simple. We want each attendee to leave this workshop with tools they can apply to the expansion and improvement of KM’s reach within their respective firms.

I believe the . . . [more]

I will be speaking at LawTech Canada on November 16th in Toronto.

Although my talk may differ slightly from the paper I submitted, I ended up submitting a paper called “The 7 Faces of Legal Knowledge Management.” The paper reflects my current thinking on the topic of legal KM, influenced in part by discussions with colleagues in the industry. Many of us wear quite different hats as legal knowledge managers depending on the type of firm where we practice, our individual backgrounds and experiences, and staffing and resources.

The 7 “faces” of legal KM I identified are:

1. Document / . . . [more]

A couple of releases from Thomson-West and Reed Elsevier that may interest Slaw readers.

The first radical search innovation in a while from Dayton is the use of semantic search methodology to enrich searching for prior patent art. Here is a slide show advert – which sadly doesn’t explain how it all works. And Kindles are coming to West’s monograph series. . . . [more]

South of the border we’re seeing moves to go well beyond the traditional depository of government documents in how public information is presented.

Most immediately a new site called Data.gov which includes a complete redesign of the Federal Register attracted even the attention of the Washington Post.

The key feature for Slaw readers is that it is based on XML, so can be built into other applications. More detail below the fold.

The second development is the launch of Law.Gov which takes Carl Malamud’s bold pamphlet on public access to legal information We The People and makes it real. . . . [more]

The Federation of Law Societies of Canada Task Force on the Canadian Common Law Degree has submitted its final report [PDF]. According to the Report:

The Federation appointed this Task Force in June 2007 to review the existing academic requirements for entry to bar admission programs and to recommend any modifications that might be necessary.

The Report recommends, among other things, that the law societies across the country adopt a “uniform national requirement for entry to their bar admission programs.” The proposed national standard comprises requirements that direct themselves at Canadian law schools, effectively controlling aspects of the curriculum of . . . [more]

I don’t make a practice of taking others’ copyrighted images to show you, but I’m going to make an apologetic exception here, because I love what Stephan Pastis does with some of his Pearls Before Swine comic strip, particularly his delightful pink porker. Today’s strip was about the Google, and I often feel rather like the pig, so I thought I’d share. Click on the image to see the full strip.

  . . . [more]

The cloud computing, or software as a service model has compelling attributes – such as low cost, ease of use, and scalability. But the downside is that there are issues around the security, integrity, and longevity of both the data and the software behind it.

Google has taken a step in the right direction with its promise that any cloud application it provides will have as a prime directive the ability of the user to pack up their data and take it anywhere, including a competitor.

At least that helps solve the issue of the risk of losing data, as . . . [more]