Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Nested Ethics: A Tale of Two Cultures

Milton C. Regan, Jr.
Hofstra Law Review, Vol. 42, pp. 143-174, 2013

(Excerpt: pp. 143 – 148)

I. INTRODUCTION

As law firms have become larger and more complex,[1] many of them have adopted more sophisticated programs to ensure that lawyers in the firm comply with their . . . [more]

I’ve sung the praises of inter and cross-sectoral collaboration here and here in terms of addressing the gaps that exist in access to justice across the country. But recently I was reminded again of the value of collaborating within my networks of legal colleagues across the country.

Wearing my Canadian Lawyers Insurance Association risk management hat, I met last week with legal malpractice insurance program directors and staff from across Canada. This group meets in person at least once per year and I always leave that meeting with pages of notes and numerous good ideas. Our in-person meetings provide opportunity . . . [more]

The Case:

On June 5th, 2014, a jury ruled in the St. Lewis v. Rancourt defamation action. The decision before the Ontario Superior Court found that, the Defendant’s actions were malicious. They awarded $100,000 in general damages and $250,000.00 in aggravated damages. The Defendant has been ordered to take down his blog articles, cease defaming Professor St. Lewis and to assist in having the materials removed from Google and other search engines. The decision is likely to be appealed by the Defendant and awaits the imprimatur of the Ontario Court of Appeal and perhaps the Supreme Court of Canada. . . . [more]

CASL – Canada’s new anti-spam legislation – becomes law on July 1. It is a sledgehammer to kill a fly approach to spam that requires attention by almost every business and not for profit. In my view, the significant amount of time, effort, and money that it will take for legitimate businesses and not for profits to comply with the act will come nowhere close to justifying any meagre benefit.

Many business have complied, many are just waking up to it now, and many are ignoring it. It doesn’t help that the act has a broad definition of spam that . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Dr. Robert Grossman v. The Toronto-Dominion Bank, 2014 ONSC 3578

[25] The Bank submitted the one must assess the legal tenability of the plaintiffs’ negligence claims through the lens of the two-stage analysis re-affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in Cooper v. Hobart[9] for determining the existence of a duty of care in negligence. Restating the test from Anns v. . . . [more]

Businesses that do not encrypt their information risk losing it. Legal professionals risk private and confidential client information when they do not take steps to secure it properly. Your operating system has encryption built in, through Windows Bitlocker or Mac File Vault II. If you are one of those lawyers on an older version of Windows, use Truecrypt or Diskcryptor to encrypt your hard drive.

Full disk encryption is a baseline now for legal professionals. If you must use portable drives, use your encryption software on them as well. In reality, all computers and drives are portable, which means . . . [more]

I am usually the first person to start fidgeting in any meeting. I blame it on my short attention span and my impatience. But sometimes I blame it on the meeting leader’s poor facilitation skills.

Apparently, I’m not alone in my frustration. According to a May 2014 Harvard Business Review article:

• 15% of collective organizational time is spent in meetings. This percentage has only increased since 2008.
• Executives consider 56% of these meetings to be unproductive
• 49% of attendees admit to doing other, unrelated work during meetings

Meeting facilitation skills will become increasingly important as firms try to become . . . [more]

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

Canadian Weather Radar Will Answer the Question: Will It Rain Today?
Dan Pinnington

Predicting the weather is both an art and a science, and getting it right in the longer term can involve some luck. But in the shorter-term, knowing for sure whether some rain is coming your way can be very helpful. Should I head to the golf course? Is my kid’s baseball game going to get cancelled? . . . [more]

In April, I summarized an annual spring cleaning process that I recommend to clients in a post entitled “6 Steps for Small Firm Spring Cleaning”. The final step that was recommended for small firms was the development of a strategic plan. In the April post I stated that “Strategic plans do not have to take an inordinate amount of time to develop and they do not have to become unwieldy documents that nobody uses.” I then promised that my next post would include some basic tips for developing a strategic plan and below is my attempt to do so.

The . . . [more]

Many wills include one or more bequests to charitable or religious institutions. In spite of the testator’s good intentions, these bequests often lead to claims when there is confusion over which institution was to receive the bequest. These mistakes often come to light only when the estate is being distributed – and they can lead to costly and time-consuming litigation when charities fight over the bequest.

Many of the claims reported in this area could be avoided if lawyers took steps to confirm that the information given by the testator is correct when the will is being drafted. Often testators . . . [more]

I’m pleased to welcome our newest blogger at Slaw, Nate Russell. Nate will be joining our Monday team of writers.

For those of us stationed on the west coast, you may already recognize Nate as the liaison lawyer at Courthouse Libraries BC. Working with local practitioners, Nate has been involved in a number of CLBC initiatives over the years, including Clicklaw Wikibooks, CPD program development, and initiating new programs to help lawyers access research materials.

In addition to writing for the CLBC blog, The Stream, Nate is also a regular contributor to the widely respected Vancouver Bar . . . [more]

Anyone following the possibilities of visualizing law will be interested in Robert Ambrogi‘s recent cover story in the ABA Journal, “Visual law services are worth a thousand words—and big money.” Ambrogi is a lawyer and consultant who has been writing about legal technology and social media for a couple of decades.

He provides a nice overview of the current players working in the visualization of legal research. He begin’s with Ravel, the “legal research alternative” developed by David Lewis and Nicholas Reed at Stanford Law School and Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. When . . . [more]