Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

How to Take a Full or Part Screenshot on a Mac or PC
Dan Pinnington

On a PC it is easy to grab an image of what is on your computer screen (aka a “screenshot”), just hit the dedicated PrintScreen key on your keyboard (sometimes abbreviated as Print Scrn, Prnt Scrn, Prt Scn, Prt Scr, Prt Sc or Pr Sc). …

Practice

Mobilegeddon: Is Your Law Firm Website Ready . . . [more]

Privacy Awareness Week runs from May 3 – 9 and is an event hosted by the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities forum (APPA) each year to “promote awareness of privacy issues and the importance of the protection of personal information.”

Do you ever long for an excuse to zip your Android phone into a Faraday bag, paint your face with irregular lines and slip into incognito mode to evade facial recognition software? Well, now is the season!

Canadian participants this time-around included the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which is promoting a few nifty resources, as well . . . [more]

I worked with a client the other day to figure out what strategy she should put into place to maximize the 60 business cards she picked up during a 2-day conference that was truly filled with people who are her target market. First and foremost it’s about building relationships, so where do we begin?

The first “touch” needs to be a very personal email, referring to the interaction at the conference. This presented a problem for my client since she couldn’t remember something specific about each of the 60 individuals she met. It’s not unusual… 60 people are too many . . . [more]

Following up on his previous posts on lawyers’ personality traits (autonomy, skepticism and urgency), Ian Hu (practicePRO and Claims Prevention Counsel at LAWPRO) discusses “sociability”, a person’s desire to meet new people and make new friends.

The average lawyer scores on the bottom 12% on measures of sociability, according to lawyer/psychologist consultant Dr. Larry Richard. This trait measures a person’s desire to meet new people and make new friends. A low score means that a lawyer is uncomfortable going in cold in social situations. He is slow to warm up to people, but happy in his existing . . . [more]

The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law will take place at the University of San Diego next month. ICAIL has been held biennially since 1987 and provides a “forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest research results and practical applications and stimulates interdisciplinary and international collaboration.”

The proceedings are published by the Association for Computing Machinary (ACM) and the abstract from the proceedings of the 14th meeting has this to say about how research in this area has emerged and the complimentary nature of AI and law:

“It is not a coincidence that

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. AvoidAClaim Blog 2. Legal Post 3. Pension & Benefits Law 4. Double Aspect 5. Canadian Appeals Monitor

AvoidAClaim Blog
Inside the Lawyer’s Mind Part 6 (Conclusion): Managing Our Traits

We have seen in this 6-part series that we, as lawyers, exhibit a number of traits that help us in . . . [more]

I’m not one much for the hype around royal babies, who as of now remains unnamed, but this one has some special significance for Commonwealth nations. The birth of the baby girl yesterday to Prince William and Kate Middleton signals the first royal born since the enactment of new succession laws in the U.K.

The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 ended the centuries-old practice of primogeniture. This can be traced in law to the Act of Settlement 1701, which states,

The Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

Sampley v. Sampley, 2015 BCCA 113

Areas of Law: 

Family law; Parental abduction; Hague Convention

~An appellate court will not disturb the factual findings underlying a chambers judge’s order under the Hague Convention, in the absence of palpable or overriding error or the application of the wrong legal test or principle.~

BACKGROUND:  The Appellant, Michelle Sampley, and the Respondent, Matthew Sampley, were married in Alberta in 2010. The . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Dans une affaire de complot suscitant un débat sur l’exception au ouï-dire des actes manifestes de coconspirateurs, le tribunal conclut qu’il est permis de mettre en preuve les paroles et les gestes des coconspirateurs, malgré l’absence de certains de ceux-ci lors de certains échanges, pour autant que . . . [more]

For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 9
Crawl

Lawyers need to find information, the faster the better. As the years go by, your electronic files expand and your ability to retrieve information quickly can suffer. I’ve already looked at desktop search by itself and want to look at search that incorporates your e-mail this time around. A search tool that digs into your inbox and, potentially, everything else on your computer, can eliminate the need to repeat searches in more than one place.

Search Your Email

All of the e-mail clients I’ve used have included search. Most, like Microsoft’s Outlook or Mozilla’s Thunderbird, will search your local . . . [more]

Our non-Ontario readers will be thrilled that in an hour the polls close and you won’t have interminable discussions about Ontario’s election and its implications. This post responds to and builds on Mitch’s prescient post from 18 months ago, and Alice Woolley and Alan Cliff’s posts which dealt with the Ontario Benchers’ Election which wraps up today at 5 PM

My focus isn’t on the substantive issues that Alice focused on yesterday but rather on an underlying governance issue that no-one appears to be talking about. It’s about convocations, cabinets and the tyranny of geography

What are the most . . . [more]