You may already have been peppered with these—I’m not the person most tightly in the loop—but I thought you’d like to see what one of the big firms is doing by way of compliance with Canada’s Anti-Spam legislation. This arrived by email, allowing for an email reply. And there’s also a companion version on the Blakes website: . . . [more]

From my discussions with insiders, it appears that the carnage from the dissolution of Heenan Blaikie continues as professional administrative staff (IT, HR, marketing, support staff, etc. ) are left in limbo as to what will happen to those not moving with the mass exodus of lawyers to other law firms.

There have been allegations that the dissolution was not managed well by the firm’s executive team. From the descriptions I have heard, it very much seems like an “every man/woman for his/herself” situation with panicked lawyers desperately calling around for a job while support staff were left to watch . . . [more]

The old adage is that there are three things that matter in real estate; that being location, location and location. But a recent item here in Nova Scotia caught my attention for turning that axiom around a bit. That being the story of a man who is appealing his property tax assessment due to the availability of high speed internet access or more specifically the lack thereof. The linked story contains most of the details but I’ll try to impart the readers digest version (or perhaps we should change that axiom to “the blog version”) here. In short, his house . . . [more]

The snow that’s currently blowing every which way is going to taper off at 5 p.m. and stop two hours later at 7. Then it’ll be partly cloudy for an hour (though dark, and, so, hard to tell in the city), after which the skies will be clear for the remainder of the night. This is not just my fond hope; it’s the hyperlocal weather forecast for this portion of my street taken straight off the face of my smart phone. We’ve come a long way, it would seem, from squinting up at the sky and asking the nearest farmer. . . . [more]

Recently the NY Times reported in an article titled “Wall St. Shock: Take a Day off, Even a Sunday” that Bank of America Merrill Lynch has issued an internal memo to its junior analysts and associates that they should try to spend four weekend days away from the office each month as part of an effort to improve working conditions. JPMorgan Chase plans to increase its staff of junior bankers by ten percent to help spread out the workload to ensure that its young employees have one “protected weekend” set aside each month. No such “relief” is planned . . . [more]

On February 6, 2014, the federal government tabled Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts to update eligibility requirements for Canadian citizenship, strengthen security and fraud provisions and amend provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions. According to the government, the new measures should ensure new Canadians have a stronger connection and attachment to Canada.

In The Lincoln Lawyer, lawyer-hero Mickey Haller learns from his father that “there is no client as scary as an innocent man”. In an interview, author Michael Connelly explained that for the lawyer defending an innocent man there can only be one acceptable outcome: Not guilty. “There can be no middle ground. No deal. No plea bargain.” According to Connelly, this places enormous pressure on the lawyer because if the lawyer fails and the client is convicted and goes to prison, the lawyer “has to live with their own guilt in knowing that an innocent man is in . . . [more]

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.

ARBITRATION ACT: STAY AND APPEAL ISSUES, FINAL REPORT
Alberta Law Reform Institute
ISBN 978-1-896078-58-8

Excerpt pp. 40-43, 43-45

2. WHEN SHOULD COURT APPEALS BE POSSIBLE?

[124] The decision whether to allow appellate access to the courts has always been a balancing act between competing policy considerations. What are the most prevalent, although sometimes . . . [more]

Formitis [form – eye – tis] To cling blindly and unwaveringly to a document while ignoring reality.

OK – I made that up – but lawyers and clients often get frustrated when the other party to a document steadfastly refuses to change something that makes no sense. It may be presented as a standard form they can’t change, or that their corporate policy dictates that form be used, or they may be reluctant to get legal or senior business advice. On the other hand, the person resisting the change may just be lazy and not want to deal with it. . . . [more]

Stewart Butterfield, a co-founder of Flickr, has taken his communication tool Slack out of beta and opened it up to the rest of us. So far as I can gather, the idea is that if you’re working with a team (however defined) you might wish to have all your communications in one searchable place, whether they originated as emails or SMS texts. Slack is meant to provide just such an all-purpose communication function. The story in Gigaom will explain it better than I can, because I’ve not had a chance to try it yet.

Functionality depends on subscription level, but . . . [more]

I recently had the pleasure of addressing the Edmonton Law Office Management Association, a chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators, on the topic law librarians and the services they provide to law firms. Law librarians most often serve lawyers in firms. I think it is pretty important that the business managers of law firms understand what law librarians do.

Here is a PDF of my presentation on Private Law Libraries. . . . [more]

The day is not far off when the providers of free legal information services will be able to match the services provided by Lexis, Westlaw and Wolters Kluwer.

There was a time when I would have said that this was not possible. My belief was based on the idea that the free services would always be playing catch up to a moving target, as the major legal publishers continued to enhance their products with high quality content and product innovation.

The scenario that makes the seemingly impossible possible is the “attack” on all things “Editorial” in the major legal publishing . . . [more]