You may have read yesterday that the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that a man who covertly took photographs and videos up the skirt of a woman sitting opposite him on a trolley did not violate the local peeping tom law. The court felt it was unable to subsume the accused’s behaviour under the particular, and admittedly awkward, wording of the statute. This is a creepy matter, a creepy subject, and I raise it here for no salacious reason but out of a sense of frustration that such behaviour “could not” be proscribed under Massachusetts law as currently written. And I . . . [more]

The recent Law Society Committee report on Alternative Business Structures has resulted in much excitement across the world among legal innovators.

I wish I could share that joy.

The report is thorough – and lengthy. One wonders how, with two jurisdictions having adopted ABS (Australia a decade ago and the UK over 2 years ago) there could be any debate on the rationale behind allowing such structures?

Why do we need a uniquely Canadian solution?

What is so unique about the Canadian legal environment that Australia and the UK do not already provide a well-researched, well-documented and well-experienced solution?

I’ve . . . [more]

The February 2014 issue of Connected is available online.

The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media on courts.

Most of the items are about the United States, but there is coverage of other jurisdictions from time to time. The bulletin is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

In this issue:

• NCSC’s Social Media and the Courts Network gets an update (a new site that provides information on how courts are currently using social media)
• Courts using social media to warn public of scams
• Harvard’s

. . . [more]

There is a great live webcast from Harvard today (March 6) on disruption and the future of law. It is a must listen if you are interested in these topics.

Live stream is here: http://video.isites.harvard.edu/liveVideo/liveView.do?name=plp

Conference Hashtag: #PLP_Disrupt

Featured Speakers are:
Chris Kenny, Chief Executive, Legal Services Board, Harvard Business School
Clay Christensen, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
William Hubbard, Incoming President of the American Bar Association
Mike Rhodin, Senior Vice President, IBM Watson

Conference Schedule

10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. The Nature of Disruptive Innovation in Professional Services

Keynote: Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of . . . [more]

When the Accessibility Standards Advisory Council/Standards Development Committee was formed in 2013, one of its first orders of business was to review the Customer Service Standard as required under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA). The AODA requires that each accessibility standard be reviewed five years after it becomes law to determine whether the standard is working as intended and to allow for adjustments to be made as required. The council has proposed several changes to the Customer Service Standard and is asking interested stakeholders for feedback.

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.

Solicitor-Client Privilege for Ethics Counsel: Lessons for Canada from the United States
Stephen G.A. Pitel and Jordan McKie
(2013) 91 Canadian Bar Review 313

(Footnotes omitted; they are available in the original, via the CBR link, and in the pre-publication version via the main hyperlink above.)

(c) Privilege and Ethics Counsel

While there . . . [more]

Without your clients you don’t have a firm and yet, according to the findings of the recent Canadian Lawyer Corporate Counsel Survey, most clients (80.4% of those who responded) aren’t being asked for feedback from their main law firm in a structured and meaningful way.

So let’s agree that every firm needs to implement some form of a client feedback program. Depending on your firm goals, size, resources and budget your program will look different. It should have elements of the type of formal program to which Canadian Lawyer alludes, but a robust client feedback program has to be . . . [more]

One of my correspondents is a law firm with three offices across the Ukraine.

They posted this open letter this morning:

Dear friends, colleagues and partners,

Herewith we would like to draw your attention to the current political crisis between Ukraine and Russian Federation and the current situation in the Crimea. Being a Ukrainian company we are concerned a lot about the future of our State. We kindly ask you to spare 5 minutes of your time for the issue, which is incredibly important to every person in the world, and read this message to the end.

All the politicians . . . [more]

While many might have given up on AI in law due to its special challenges, interest is stirring nearby. IBM’s Watson ingestion of millions of journal pages, medical evidence and patient records, means that it is allegedly better at diagnosing cancer than human doctors. Meanwhile Google has been buying up the world’s top machine learning experts and their companies, with the latest being UK-based DeepThink. It is in part explained by the fact that Google’s engineering director Ray Kurzweil is a relentless inventor and an artificial intelligence pioneer. While Google helps make us smarter now, Kurzweil believes that AI will . . . [more]

I’ve noticed that a lot of lawyers are suffering from information overload in all the advice about what to focus on when building a practice. Clarifying basic concepts is a good place to start. And truthfully, it’s also a relief to simplify some of the jargon.

Here’s a guide to the four concepts that most lawyers and firms need to consider.

Who you are: your identity and brand

The attributes that describe who you are and what you have to offer are grounded in the concepts of identity and brand. Lawyers often feel anxious about marketing because so much of . . . [more]

What phone, that is.

At one time a Blackberry was the de facto standard for lawyers. (For the record, I have used various types of portable device over the years, but never a Blackberry. I’m now using an Android phone. I have an iPad as well, which you couldn’t pry away from me, but when it dies I won’t replace it with another iPad.) Lawyers in our firm who use a Blackberry are dwindling in number. Our IT department tells me that Android phones are becoming more popular. Even some iPhone users have switched to Android.

For some reason, Windows . . . [more]

If the current gaps in access to justice across Canada are to be filled, we will need to see a greater degree of collaboration between sectors and professions. As I wrote here, instead of legal services and supports provided in “justice silos,” such supports need to be integrated or provided in concert with other social services.

The National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters recognized the need for greater cross-sectoral collaboration. In their October 2013 report, Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change (the “Roadmap”), they emphasized that:

“We can and must

. . . [more]