When a partner leaves a law firm for another practice, what should happen to his or her email account at the original firm? Should, or must, the original firm continue to read and respond to the emails? Must it forward all or some of the emails to the former partner? Should it say how that person can now be reached? Or should it simply send an automated bounce-back message that the email account is now closed?

These questions were the subject of an official ethics ruling of the Philadelphia Bar Association last month. Here is a news report on it. . . . [more]

At any given time there are many trends in the legal industry. Current topics include everything from alternative fee arrangements to e-discovery to virtual law firms. Some topics die away without much fanfare whereas others stay around and eventually take hold. My focus today is on social media at the highest level, which is definitely part of the latter group.

Social media is here. It is here to stay and you need to be part of it to ensure a growing practice.

That said you don’t have to do everything and you will want to be realistic about your goals. . . . [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

Avoid Data Disasters by Properly Ejecting USB Devices Before You Remove Them
Dan Pinnington

How many of you take the time to “eject” your USB devices before you remove them? I know some of you didn’t raise your hand. Does it really matter? Yes it does. Why? Because you can end up with corrupt data if you yank a device out while data is still being written to it. . . . [more]

Not that we’re competitive or anything . . .

Today we’re taking a break, pushing the chair back from the desk — only to get it closer to the groaning board. We wish all our readers a Happy Thanksgiving.

Slaw’s regular posting will return tomorrow. . . . [more]

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) was first established in 1966, but came under national scrutiny during the SCC labour decision in Fraser v. Ontario. The migrant workers under this program, primarily brought to Ontario from Mexico and the Caribbean, have won another small victory in a recent Health Services Appeal and Review Board (HSARB) of Ontario decision.

Kenroy Williams and Denville Clarke were under contract under the program with Chardy Produce Ltd. until Dec. 15, 2012. Within days of starting their jobs the two workers from Jamaica were in a serious motor vehicle accident on August 9, 2012 . . . [more]

Reproduced in the September 2013 issue of LAWPRO Magazine is a sample of the report we get when a lawyer reports a claim using our online claim report form. It is a classic textbook example of a bad cheque fraud where the lawyer was duped. Upon discovering these frauds, banks generally reverse the credit that was given on the deposit of the fake cheque. Because the lawyer already disbursed funds in reliance on the fake cheque, this reversal removes trust funds belonging to other clients and/or leaves the lawyer’s trust account with a negative balance.

Please read the claim report . . . [more]

Droits et libertés : e refus de Bombardier de donner suite à une demande d'un citoyen canadien, d'origine pakistanaise, pour une formation de pilote sous licence canadienne n'était pas discriminatoire (C.A.).

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week's summaries concern: Public interest evidentiary privilege / Criminal law restitution:

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (September 14 - October 4, 2013 inclusive).

with the Ontario Court of Appeal playing the role of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

See R. v. Metron Construction Corporation, 2013 ONCA 541.

A fine which bankrupts a corporation is the equivalent of a beheading.

I’m not slighting the tragedy that resulted in charges but, given what happened in Metron and why — all you need to do is read paras. 1 – 15, particularly paras. 9-15 — do you agree with the general deterrence rationale? It seems questionable, at best, to me. General deterrence of whom? (Consider the aphorism about “stupidity” in “Forest Gump”.) . . . [more]

Industry standards are wonderful things. They help keep us safe in myriad contexts; they promote economic efficiency; they form a kind of “democratized” and rational element to a lot of legislation, typically by being incorporated by reference.

And they’re really rather expensive to consult.

So, according to an article in Next City, Carl Malamud is buying copies of safety standards across the US, scanning them, and putting them online for anyone to consult for free. The folks who develop these standards object. They’ve launched a lawsuit claiming that Malamud is infringing on their copyrights. In order to defend the . . . [more]

It has been held in a US case that allegations made in comments on blog posts are not sufficiently reliable to be used in cross-examination. In this case an expert was testifying in a product liability case that the defendant’s products had never caught fire before (as the plaintiff’s had). The plaintiff’s counsel wanted to point to a number of comments in blogs about fires in some of the same manufacturer’s products. The court denied the right to use those examples.

Is that right? How much reliability do you need? Are blog comments the cross-examiner’s Wikipedia? (It was not suggested . . . [more]