The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is currently seeking input from lawyers on two proposed new practice standards. The draft standards, proposed by the Law Office Management Committee, relate to lawyers’ responsibilities in the areas of timekeeping and data maintenance:

TIMEKEEPING
1. A lawyer’s accounts must be fair, reasonable and lawful.

a) The assessment and reasonableness of a lawyer’s account will depend on many factors, of one which is the time and effort “required and spent”.

MAINTENANCE AND BACKUP OF ELECTRONIC DATA

Lawyers must ensure there is a system in place for the maintenance, backup, and access of all electronic data.

As I write this, annual conference season is in full swing. Lawyers, hastily arranging their speaking notes, are wondering how they got involved in the first place. Marketing departments are finding out at the last minute that the conference hosts need the firm’s logo, the lawyer needs a PowerPoint presentation, and the booth at the accompanying trade show needs staffing. Wait, what booth? Trade show? Nobody told us…. 

Yes, that’s how it usually goes down. It shouldn’t be any surprise, therefore, that both lawyers and marketers feel cynical about the value of trade shows in the marketing mix. Like . . . [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. Cheetham v. TD Life Insurance Company 2013 ONSC 4892
   

   [1] This action arose as a result of a denial of the payment of life insurance on a line of credit with TD Canada Trust. The plaintiff claims $97,500 on account of a contract of life insurance on the life of her late common-law husband John Foreman. The $97,500 is money owing on a

The end of a calendar year is a good time to reflect, assess and plan. One aspect of this reflection for me is looking at learning: what have I learned in the last year, what has adjusted based onthat learning, and what should I consider for 2014. I am a law librarian and just like every year, there are many items to add to the “things I learned this year” list. Some of that learning came from conferences and webinars offered by professional associations, some came from discussions at CBA conferences, Legal Education Society of Alberta events and . . . [more]

As you may recall, I promised to report back on my efforts to get organized and deal with all that information overload. I would like to say that I can report a near 100% success rate. My system is working pretty well, but I feel I am not there just yet. Going through this process though, I have been reminded of a couple of pretty simple lessons, and I hope you will not mind my repeating them.

You have probably heard the old adage, give a job to a busy person if you want to get it done. I don’t . . . [more]

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at a law firm somewhere in Toronto. John is reading the Huffington Post on-line. He feels stuck. Unmotivated. With no pounding deadlines this week he just can’t get around to doing the important but not urgent work on his desk.

Tina in Vancouver is also stuck. She’s so stressed out and anxious about the deadlines she has to meet that she is frozen. Her inner dialogue is about how hopeless she is, and useless, and the worst lawyer ever, and under this harsh litany of criticism she is immobilized.

Frank in Calgary has some urgent client . . . [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

Protect Your Data by Putting a Password on Your Screensaver
Dan Pinnington

Activating a password-protected screensaver is a simple and very effective way to prevent an unauthorized person from rifling through the data on a computer or other device that’s been inadvertently . . .

Research

Finding Previous URLs
Shaunna Mireau

Today’s Tip is a story: I was asked to find what a particular web-available document would have read . . . [more]

In a news release dated today, the Law Society of British Columbia has announced approval in principal of three recommendations made in the final report of the Legal Service Providers Task Force, to wit:

• The Law Society and the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia seek to merge regulatory operations.
• That a program be created by which the legal regulator provide paralegals who have met specific, prescribed education and/or training standards with a certificate that would allow them to be held out as “certified paralegals.”
• That the Law Society develop a regulatory framework by which other providers of

How do you use social media in conjunction with events, whether “live and in person” or online? The upcoming Twitter Moot always impresses me in how they have redefined an in-person event for the virtual space, holding the actual moot online–and publicly!–so that others can follow along and even participate. It changes the whole dynamic of the event.

How else can social media be used in conjunction with events–to plan them, promote them, engage people at the event or people just observing, how to “capture” or record the event, and how to allow everyone to learn from the event? Daniel . . . [more]

The December 2013 issue of LAWPRO Magazine focuses on the issue of cybersecurity and law firms. As a supplement to the magazine, practicePRO has added a number of model policies and articles to our Technology page. Written policies that clearly establish guidelines and requirements governing the acceptable use of firm technology can help reduce cyber exposures and give staff clear direction on what they are permitted and not permitted to do with law firm technology resources.

These resources and sample policies can be adapted to create polices for your firm. The model policies are also available in Word and . . . [more]

First as law students and then as lawyers, we repeatedly hear about the need for zealous advocacy. To take one example, the commentary to Rule 5.1-1 of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada Model Code of Conduct states, in part:

In adversarial proceedings, the lawyer has a duty to the client to raise fearlessly every issue, advance every argument and ask every question, however distasteful, that the lawyer thinks will help the client’s case and to endeavour to obtain for the client the benefit of every remedy and defence authorized by law.

The commentary also states “[t]he lawyer’s function . . . [more]

Let me say, up front, my post this week is a shameless promotion for the civil litigation program I am co-chairing at the OBA Institute on Thursday morning, 6 February 2014.

Those of you interested in the future of the civil trial, put it in your diaries.

The speakers include Justice David Brown, Justice Mark Edwards, Marty Teplitsky and Tom Curry.

Much has been written in the last decade about the “vanishing trial” in Ontario, and other jurisdictions. The newest generation of Ontario civil litigators may retire without ever having conducted a civil trial to judgment. The most common explanation . . . [more]