The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) was founded 20 years ago and has become a popular place for legal academics to share their research. The SSRN objective is “to provide rapid worldwide distribution of research to authors and their readers and to facilitate communication among them at the lowest possible cost.” The success of their efforts sees SSRN currently listed by the Ranking Web of Repositories site as second in the world.

So it’s not surprising that the SSRN download count has fast become a valued measure of an author’s readership and the potential impact he or she might . . . [more]

Because a cybercrime attack can cause irreparable harm, law firms should be prepared to take action immediately. Being able to do this requires an Incident Response Plan (IRP).

An effective IRP can put a firm in a position to effectively and efficiently manage a breach by protecting sensitive data, systems, and networks, and to quickly investigate the extent and source of the breach so that operations can be maintained or promptly restored. Many firms design IRPs so that they address inadvertent breaches as well – for example, a lost USB key, or a misdirected email. An IRP can help avoid . . . [more]

I’ve tended to stay out of the disruptive innovation discussion as it pertains to law if for no other reason than that my experience with large law firm and “Bay Street” practice is essentially nil. I understand — as anyone might, experienced or not — that new approaches that shake things up could bring about beneficial change, and that change, beneficial or not, will occur willy-nilly because it’s just the way things are. And I understand that the proponents or prophets of disruptive innovation mean something rather more precise by the phrase — perhaps something lying in the gap between . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Susan On The Soapbox 2. Wise Law Blog 3. Slater Vecchio Connected 4. Canadian Appeals Monitor 5. Toronto Estates and Trusts Monitor

We all remember the three years we spent in law school. If one of your parents attended law school, their experience likely wasn’t very different from yours. It would likely hold true for a grandparent too.

The structure of legal education in Canada has not changed significantly for over 50 years. You attend class for three years, you article for about a year, you write the bar exams, and then you are called to the bar.

Law school courses have not changed much either. The basic courses are the same, with some new courses added from time to time. Teaching . . . [more]

I have long been an advocate for greater diversity in law, in all of its forms. One of the main barriers we faced in the legal industry in the 20th century was gender diversity, and it’s a barrier that is still with us today.

Yesterday we celebrated International Women’s Day. Two recent studies out of Ryerson University help illustrate contemporary obstacles.

The first looks at leadership roles in the business sector by examining female representation in senior positions at major corporations in Toronto. Although there has been some growth between 2009-2014, women still remain underrepresented. Gender disparities have even . . . [more]

A couple of weeks ago Monday (the third Monday in February to be exact) as I toiled away at my desk here in Nova Scotia it occurred to me that my electronic distractions were uncharacteristically quiet that day. My twitter feed was silent, and my inbox was actually manageable. I did not spare this much thought until later in the day when it dawned on me that in most of the of country it was a statutory holiday, be it Family Day or Islander Day or Louis Riel Day. My bitterness at being one of the few jurisdictions that required . . . [more]

Only a fool says “nuncle.”

Used to be part of my favourite mock Elizabethan phrase, feeling good in the mouth: “Prithee nuncle…” But now I know that there never was a “nuncle”. I had thought it was one of those English words that shed the initial “N” because of the possessive “mine” or the indefinite article “an” on account of the way the combo got pronounced: “My nuncle” / “A nuncle” –> “mineuncle” / “anuncle” –> “mine uncle” / “an uncle”. In the world of linguistics this is known as rebracketing (or metanalysis, which sounds too grand to me), where . . . [more]

Professor David Post’s 2009 book , In Search of Jefferson’s Moose, is one of my favorites. Professor Post juxtaposes ideas about creativity and risk-taking as embodied both in the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and in the development of the Internet. It sounds like an odd pairing but it works. Post tells the reader at the beginning that the book represents ideas he has juggled throughout his career, so he writes freely. Reading it brought home to me important truths about the Internet. Post’s thesis is that the band of engineers who created the end-to-end freeway that is the Internet, . . . [more]

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]