Apple’s latest and greatest operating system is launching today. There will no doubt be a rush for iPhone and iPad owners to install the update. Apple fans may scoff at this advice, but if you are updating anything other than a current model, it might be prudent to wait a few days before upgrading.

The odds are that all will go well, but sometimes issues appear in the real world that don’t show up in testing. Typically those issues are more annoyances than anything – such as sluggish performance, or incompatibility with some apps. And typically they are resolved quickly. . . . [more]

This post was originally published on the CBA Legal Futures Initiative website, and is authored by Omar Ha-Redeye, a lawyer with Fleet Street Law, a part-time professor at Ryerson University and Centennial College, and a blogger here at SLAW.

One aspect of the future which hasn’t received as much attention is the significant demographic shift occurring in Canada.

Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of The Big Shift, The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future, spoke at the CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon recently on how the entire face . . . [more]

Communication-based claims and complaints against lawyers remain remarkably common despite the increased ease with which we can communicate with clients through use of technology in addition to more traditional modes of communication.

Strong and effective communications between lawyers and their clients are an essential component of the lawyer-client relationship. Some of the issues that might be flagged as problematic in a communications based claim include:

• Failing to obtain and follow a client’s instructions;
• Failing to keep a client informed of progress, or lack of progress in complying with instructions;
• Failing to advise a client of all settlement offers;
• Confusion as

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. Garacci v. Ross 2013 ONSC 5627
   

   [1] The defendant brings this motion for an order that the plaintiff Christina Garacci (“Christina”) produce approximately 1100 photographs located on the private portion of her Facebook account and related profile pages. The defendant argues that the photographs are relevant to matters in issue in this action and ought to be produced. Christina opposes the relief requested

On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons met in the Committee of the Whole to allow the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, the Leader of the Opposition, Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québecois to each offer apologies for the harm done to First Nations and other Aboriginal students through their residential school experiences.[1]

Two new issues, related but readily distinguishable, have arisen in the past few months, about the residential school experience, neither of which were public knowledge at the time of the apology and certainly . . . [more]

“Are we happy being lawyers?” That’s the question Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder tackle in The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010). Lawyers themselves, they have anticipated your next question:

What do you mean by “happy”? On a scale that runs from having root canals to a night of fine wines and sex on a tropical island, where does “unhappiness” turn into “happiness”? Do you mean “happy” right now as I write footnote 17 on this brief for Acme Investments or “happy” during the course of my ten-year legal career? … Also, . . . [more]

CanLII launched their new site today. After several months of beta testing, plenty of opportunities for feedback, and some direct user surveys, CanLII has a new look and new functionality.

I highlighted my favourite function, the ability to have a field based search functions right up front. My use of the system will most often be the “advanced” searching. I have to acknowledge that the wide searching offered by the single entry box search interface is backed up with some excellent filtering and narrowing options that make the system flexible and user friendly.

A nice feature fo the new site . . . [more]

IP Osgoode and Osgoode Hall Law School’s Pierre Genest Memorial Fund are presenting a day-long symposium on User-Generated Content Under Canadian Copyright Law  on Thursday October 10, 2013. The featured speaker will be Professor Victor Nabhan and, according to IP Osgoode,

[s]ome of the topics for discussion include an analysis of the UGC [user-generated content] exception under Canadian copyright law, the interaction of the UGC exception with fair dealing, specific legal aspects of fan fiction and appropriation art, and whether the UGC exception is in conformity with international treaty standards. Representatives from SOCAN, YouTube and BCE will also provide some

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

Pin Programs to the Windows 7 Taskbar to Be More Efficient
Dan Pinnington

Any program on your computer can be “pinned” to the Taskbar. This makes it visible as an icon on the Taskbar and allows easy access without having to use the Start Menu. To pin a program to the Taskbar, right-click on the program or shortcut to the program and in the menu choose the Pin to . . . [more]

The Internet has eroded traditional sources of authority. Where once the Encyclopedia Britannica was a final word on many subjects, Wikipedia now reigns supreme. A decade or two ago, the annual Information Please almanac with its sweet index could settle all arguments, now a Google search will do. A highly articulated structure of editors and review panels once guarded the mountain top of cognitive authority. But no more. The retrieval of information no longer troubles us, sorting out the glut of data is the trick. Yet one source holds sway in the world of legal information: The Uniform System of . . . [more]

In a few weeks (on Friday Oct 4, 2013) the Pacific Legal Technology Conference will be taking place at the new West Convention Center on the waterfront in Vancouver.

I think this is the best legal technology conference in the country. And even better – this year people from right across Canada can easily attend because all the sessions at the conference will be webcast.

I am disappointed that I can’t attend or speak this year because of conflict. As a past attendee and speaker, I can say you will get the same high quality content, speakers and materials that . . . [more]

I am interested to see what comes out of the CanLII hackathon that took place this weekend. F. Tim Knight kindly shared slides and notes from his presentation on Friday, Linked Data and Canadian Legal Resources.

Don’t know what linked data is? Tim walks us step-by-step through what it is, some of the theoretical background of this concept, how linked data could be used, and how it might apply to Canadian legal resources (such as case law), especially using CanLII.

I especially recommend his slides with notes. In them, he encourages more open contributions of legal data:

If