Many law firms manage their trust and regular bank accounts on the Internet, and some firms have the ability to initiate various banking transactions online, including account transfers and wiring funds. While the convenience and efficiency of online banking are huge benefits, the downside is that online banking exposes you to security risks. The steps outlined below will help law firms to understand, address and reduce online banking risks – for both your firm and personal accounts.

Know and understand the terms of your banking agreements: As a starting point, carefully read your bank account and electronic banking services agreements. . . . [more]

Registration is now open for the 2014 edition of the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is an intensive, week-long program aimed at developing skills in the key competencies of law librarianship developed and presented by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

The program will feature expert instruction from leading law librarians and law professors, small class size, a mix of lectures and practical sessions, hands on sessions, and valuable take-home materials. This year the Institute will be held at the Brian Dickson Law Library, University of Ottawa with accommodation in the university’s residences.

Despite the name, this program . . . [more]

“Why is the ‪@LawsocietyLSUC donating to political parties? Why is my membership fee used to support the Conservatives.” This tweet by Ottawa criminal defence lawyer Michael Spratt caught my eye on an otherwise slow Tuesday in February. It had never crossed my mind that the Law Society might be in business of making political donations. The concept seemed strange, if not a bit troubling.

The tweet linked to an article published in the Law Times just over a week earlier on February 10, 2014. Although mostly detailing Elections Ontario data about donations made by law firms to political parties, the . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. National Magazine   2. Ontario Condo Law Blog   3. Slater Vecchio Connected   4. Environmental Law and Litigation    5. First Reference

Those of us who keep our confidential information in the Cloud will be pleased with the announcement last week by Microsoft General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Brad Smith that “effective immediately” Microsoft will no longer inspect their customers’ private content.

The change is to be included in Microsoft’s Terms of Service and will be binding on Microsoft.

The new policy is the result of criticism of Microsoft over its investigators accessing Hotmail content in connection with alleged theft of Microsoft’s intellectual property.

Although, according to Smith, Microsoft was lawfully entitled under its terms of service . . . [more]

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This week's summaries concern: Workers' compensation / Copyright fees / Labour law:

Areas of law: Insurance law; Subrogation; Income replacement plan; Statutory exceptions ~The Insurance Act’s provisions excluding subrogation in cases where the insured receives income continuation or replacement payments apply where the party paying the benefits is an insurer under an insurance contract, but do not extend to employers ~

Requête en jugement déclaratoire afin de faire déclarer la Loi sur le recouvrement du coût des soins de santé et des dommages-intérêts liés au tabac inopérante. Rejetée.

The Ontario Court of Justice recently had occasion to consider the different grounds on which documentary evidence might be admitted or not admitted into evidence in a criminal case, in HMQ v Mondor.

Mr. Mondor was charged with accessing child pornography via a web site. The police had reconstituted the web site in order to trace certain purchases to the accused. As a result, the electronic records they used were not business records of the seller of the pornography for the purposes of s. 30 of the Canada Evidence Act. The Crown looked instead to what both it and . . . [more]

I’m guessing that of the readers of Slaw that there is a substantial subset that are fans of the BBC series Sherlock. So, fair warning if you haven’t seen the 3rd episode of Season 3 – “His Last Vow”, stop reading before you make the jump.

Now that I am sad that there will not be any new episodes for about two years, I have been thinking more about past episodes and I have a very simple question based on Episode 3. Let’s just say for the sake of my flight of fancy that Mary shoots Charles Augustus Magnussen and . . . [more]

Everybody wants to be somebody else. At least it sometimes seems that way to me. I must lack the drive to alterity that motivates a lot of folk: so, for instance, on Twitter I am @fodden — than which few handles could be more staid and stolid — while the Twitterverse is decorated with millions of colourful keladinyms, such as @DeweyDecibel, @sarahcuda, @brundle_fly, @TheTweetOfGod, @sassygal22 (arriving a little late, it seems), and @etcetera.

Now, were I to pick a nickname, I wouldn’t go for brevity but rather for sonority — what someone (Twain? Dickens?) describing a law firm name . . . [more]