The Economist magazine has a short writeup on the billable hour’s demise, and the growing use of fixed fee billing.

One of the more interesting statements noted, “If the billable hour does perish, it will be at the hands of the clients, rather than the private-practice lawyers themselves.”

This may be partially true, but tends to paint law firms in a poor light. The demand for alternative billing could come from clients, and it could also come from law firms. There are many firms experimenting with alternate pricing models, and have been for quite some time. Where the shakeout . . . [more]

Good news from Austlii, which has had a rocky year since some of its core funding was cut off. There is a good explanation of just how the legal profession benefits in a letter from the Law Council.

From a Canadian perspective, Austlii has effectively supplanted the commercial services for our access to Australian law. It’s financial troubles are deeply troubling, and one hopes that Canberra will follow Victoria’s lead

The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is to receive nearly $840,000 to expand the scope of Victorian legal information, such as legislation, decisions and interpretive material, that was

Not yet, according to widely reported remarks from Bangalore over the weekend, to the graduating class at the National Law School. See the Hindu ((Not the Hindu Times, Simon, as you blogged in August)),Economic Times and Mangalorean reports.

National Law School of India University Vice-Chancellor A. Jayagovind on Sunday expressed concern over decline in the number of students pursuing higher studies in law.

The Vice-Chancellor went on:

“Our law schools are however yet to make a mark in terms of advancement of knowledge. Hopefully, most of us have been able to impart reasonably good legal education which was

At ILTA last week, Lexis teamed up with Interwoven to announce a new product that they claim will solve the vexed problem of e-mail management, including the ability to automatically file by subject and client, as well as support for archiving and disposing of e-mail as appropriate. The tools integrate tightly with Microsoft Exchange Server and Open Text’s document management tools.

Here is the announcement: . . . [more]

In Canada we celebrate Labour Day on the first Monday of September. Most of us treat it as the last long weekend of the summer, before the kids go back to school. We tend to forget the origins of this day. According to Wikipedia:

The origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to April 14, 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union’s strike for a 58-hour work-week.[2] The Toronto Trades Assembly (TTA) called its 27 unions to demonstrate in support of the Typographical Union who had been on strike since

There’s quite a bit of buzz this week about open source software.

Earlier this summer Google banned open source code on Mozilla Public License,  claiming spiraling legal costs.

Chris DiBona of the Open Source Team says,

We did this because we have been trying as a company to make a statement against open source license proliferation. You see, we feel it is damaging to the larger world of open source development if there are too many duplicative licenses.

This week Google reversed the ban, looking for greater collaboration through the Eclipse Public License. . . . [more]

Despite a public apology and acknowledgement of responsibility, the tragedy from tainted meats in Canada may not yet be over.

Even in light of this incident, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) seems to be following through with a plan that would lower inspection requirements for domestic meat products, while maintaining higher standards for exports.

Although safety issue don’t appear to be a concern, consumer confidence is at stake. This would affect already cash-strapped beef farmers.

Susan Bourette, a journalist who worked undercover for Maple Leaf in 2004 to write her book, Carnivore Chic: From Pasture to Plate, . . . [more]

CMAJ, the publication of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), is doing a series examining medical malpractice in Canada. The CMA drew national attention this month when a private health care advocate was elected their president, drawing criticism from various quarters.

Part one in the last week’s issue describes the emotional difficulties, isolation and stress that physicians undergo when dealing with professional litigation.

They then compare tort-based systems around the world and note that our system is not as user friendly.

The pros and cons of a no-fault compensation scheme are then reviewed, and they claim that 50% of . . . [more]

Steven Matthews already mentioned last month Kevin O’Keefe‘s new law blog aggregator, LexMonitor.

I was checking out my profile this week and noticed that they already added Slaw. As a new contributor here, I was really impressed with the timeliness in which they did this.

Kudos.

Of course a little link love thrown his way earlier in the month probably didn’t hurt either. . . . [more]

Labour Day Weekend. See you Tuesday. photo: unfurled / flickr . . . [more]

This is only within Slaw’s remit by the merest toenail — that of traffic laws. But because it’s (still) Friday, I thought the ROC might enjoy watching Torontonians experience their very first “pedestrian scramble” at Dundas and Yonge St. Click on the image to see a time lapse video by Sam Javanrouh of how the controlled chaos is working.

Calgary, of course, had a scramble first. And I seem to recall from a childhood visit that Medicine Hat had what was then called kitty-corner or katy-corner crossings way back…then.

[via Spacing Toronto] . . . [more]

As many of you are already aware, the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility released an ethics opinion on legal outsourcing this week.

That report is now public on the ABA website thanks to some keen blogger griping by our Slaw friend Ron Friedmann. The key points, as noted by Ron, were:

• “U.S. lawyers are free to outsource legal work, including to lawyers or nonlawyers outside the country, if they adhere to ethics rules requiring competence, supervision, protection of confidential information, reasonable fees and not assisting unauthorized practice of law.”
• “Outsourcing can reduce client costs and enable