Legal Futures this week posted on the results of the third annual survey of what clients want from their legal service provider, conducted by legal technology service provider Peppermint Technology in the United Kingdom.

The post included two points that caught my eye. First, the survey found that clients are concerned about whether their legal advisor is able to provide online accessibility:

“There is now a significant body of businesspeople for whom online access has become a necessity of their working life,” the report said. “If their legal advisers are not perceived to be up to speed with this development,

Yesterday Google Scholar Blog announced the launch of Google Scholar Library, a feature that allows a user to:

. . . save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar’s full-text search to quickly find just the one you want – at any time and from anywhere . . .

You’re able to use “labels” to organize the material you’ve saved to your library.

A user must log in to Google and via this link activate the Library feature.

This is clearly of potential benefit to the profession, because Scholar’s database includes . . . [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. Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board 2013 HRTO 440
   

   [2] In a prior decision, 2012 HRTO 350 (CanLII), 2012 HRTO 350 (“decision on liability”), I found that the respondent discriminated against the applicant because of disability contrary to ss. 5 and 9 of the Code, by failing to accommodate the applicant’s disability-related needs from April 2003 and then by terminating her employment on July 9,

 [I]l est l’heure de s’enivrer! Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous sans cesse! – Charles Baudelaire

[T]his is a case about beer and a case of beer is a serious matter. – San Miguel Brewing International Limited v. Molson Canada 2005, 2013 FC 156, Phelan J, February 14, 2013.

People are really serious about their beer. In ancient days, you were flogged in the public square if you sold bad-tasting beer. Bad beer was considered to be “a fraud and a hazard to health”. In Germany in the 15^th & 16^th centuries, those . . . [more]

Legal citation to the courts for the past few years has, in some jurisdictions, been different than legal citation in academic works. Here in Alberta, on November 12, 2013 there was a Notice to the Profession from the Court of Queen’s Bench adopting the 7th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (Toronto: Carswell, 2010). There is a lovely example of a law library’s description of the Guide (aka the McGill Guide) from the Lederman Law Library (Queen’s U).

Bob’s column this month references the incongruity of law students being responsible for editorial oversight of law reviews, I . . . [more]

This past summer, the Federal Court considered whether Imperial Tobacco could register as a trademark “the colour orange” on its packaging, under the Trade-marks Act. Imperial Tobacco’s application was contested by JTI MacDonald on the grounds that, inter alia, the colour claimed was not sufficiently specific and that the design claimed was not distinctive. The Imperial Tobacco case is just one of many recent instances in which companies have sought to protect a colour within an unclear legislative framework with regard to protecting colour as a distinctive mark. The Court dismissed JTI’s appeal and sided with Imperial Tobacco, . . . [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

Two Simple Rules for Avoiding the Dangers of Email Attachments
Dan Pinnington

While email attachments are frequently used to share documents between lawyers, law firm staff, and clients, they are also one of the most common delivery mechanisms for malware. While most . . .

Research

Contact Us
Shaunna Mireau

Through opportunities presented by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries and through my firm, I was able to attend . . . [more]

If your law firm maintains a blog, or if you blog personally, there’s a reasonably good chance that you’ve received one of these emails:

Hi Steve!

My name is Joe Schmo and I am a writer at somewebsite.com, a relatively new social media agency.

I was just wondering if you would be interested in us contributing a guest post for your site?

We’ve done many before, and can provide examples of published work if desired. Looking forward to hearing from you! :)

Joe

My advice? Don’t do it. Don’t publish guest post content on firm-owned blogs, and don’t let marketing . . . [more]

This week I’m attending my first Dreamforce conference, the annual Salesforce.com “user conference.”

I put user conference in quotes because, although that’s where Dreamforce started, over the years it has evolved into something much, much larger. There are nearly 100,000 attendees and over 1,000 sessions covering topics ranging from starting up a new company to collaboration to meditation. Keynote speakers include Marissa Meyer from Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook. Green Day and Blondie are playing a concert for attendees. The breadth and depth of the topics is simply mind-boggling.

The vibe and energy at the conference is amazing. . . . [more]

Lawyer Ethics Alert Blogs has a post describing an Illinois appeals court case in which the court ruled that a law firm had no recourse against its financial institution in a counterfeit cheque matter.

While the laws dealing with financial institutions in the U.S. are different than here, the takeaway for lawyers is to make sure they’ve read the fine print of the contract with their banks (and of course, learn how to recognize the red flags of these scams). The LAWPRO counterfeit cheque coverage may offer a measure of protection if a lawyer is victimized (lawyers outside Ontario should . . . [more]

Richard Susskind’s popular book “The End of Lawyers” highlights a future where disruptive technological change and increased commoditization of legal services fundamentally changes the practice of law. Susskind and others have written on the power of automation, of computers not just changing the way we practice law, but possibly bypassing lawyers completely.

As algorithms take over an increasing amount of the investment market, and surgeons rely more on the precision of robots, what is to stop computers from taking over the practice of law?

There are examples of this sort of automation already occurring in Canada, with companies like Diligence . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has just held that the collective right to freedom of expression in a lawful strike situation trumps an individual’s right to control their information in a public setting, striking down the Alberta Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

In its decision, Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401, 2013 SCC 62, the Supreme Court weighed the collective rights of a union’s freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms against the rights of individuals whose personal information was collected, used and disclosed without consent by the . . . [more]