We are closing in on the dog days of summer and so I was thinking about what greater efficiency, technology and new players do to large firms in Canada.

If a law firm invests more heavily in process improvement, it becomes more efficient – in other words it can do more work with less people or through a different mix of skill sets. The firm will no longer need to hire huge swaths of new lawyers every year as most of any annual growth will be accommodated either by efficiency gains or by better use of non-lawyer personnel to do . . . [more]

On July 15, 2013, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched a new policy on removing the 'Canadian experience' barrier in recruiting. A requirement for Canadian experience, even when implemented in good faith, can be an impenetrable barrier in recruiting, selecting, hiring or accrediting, and may result in discrimination.

One interesting scrap of legal news that passed under the radar recently was a testy exchange involving Hideaki Ueda, Japan’s human rights envoy to the United Nations at a session of the UN torture committee in Geneva, Switzerland. The donnybrook arose when a fellow envoy called-out the Japanese criminal system for not mandating electronic recording or the presence of counsel at police interrogations. Mr. Ueda sprang to his nation’s defence, only to be met by the audience’s muffled laughter. In true diplomatic fashion, Japan’s emissary responded by telling his esteemed colleagues to “shut up” not once, but twice. . . . [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.

Evolutionary Road: A Strategic Guide to Your Law Firm’s Future
Jordan Furlong
Boulder Colorado: Attorney at Work, 2013

Excerpt chosen by author. Reprinted with permission from Attorney at Work, www.attorneyatwork.com

Stage 3: The Fully Open Market, 2016-2024

Features

(a) The Market

Multiple legitimate providers are now fully active the in legal market. Lawyers . . . [more]

Conventional models of regulating lawyer conduct tend to be largely reactive. In most cases, law society disciplinary regimes respond after a complaint is filed alleging that a lawyer has engaged in some kind of professional misconduct. One obvious shortcoming to this approach is that concerns are addressed only after they become problems. For clients and affected third parties, this type of “after the fact” regulation often provides little solace: lawyer discipline can be a lengthy, time-consuming process that yields little in the way of meaningful relief. Obviously, it would be preferable if the problem never occurred in the first place. . . . [more]

Many of us enjoy attending and sharing knowledge gained at conferences, and several fellow Slaw bloggers recently have done so in respect of last week’s American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting. An understated newer highlight of the AALL annual meeting is the poster sessions exhibit, introduced in 2012. I took a couple of turns through the exhibit and was impressed by the depth and range of projects and studies carried out by fellow law librarians, instructors, and researchers. The AALL annual meeting site contains the full list of accepted poster sessions, with descriptions. Below are brief notes . . . [more]

The long-standing monopoly on delivery of legal services is eroding across Canada. The current of consumer demand is steady and strong, seeking out a broader range of legal services and information, driven largely by cost, supply issues and technological change.

There is evidence of this erosion all around us, both within and without the bounds of the formal legal profession. Paralegals, notaries and agents provide specified legal services across the country, assisting with real estate transactions, wills, traffic offences and more. Courts are recognizing the needs of the self-representing litigant by providing self-help centres and creating online resources. Administrative tribunals . . . [more]

As David Whelan says in today’s post on his blog, Finding Legal Information, law is “powered by words.” David directs us to WolframAlpha’s word information function, which is pretty impressive. You tend to think of WolframAlpha as the home of mathematical and scientific data — at least I do. So it’s a welcome surprise to find that they do “dictionary” better than anyone else online at the moment. Look up a word and you get the definition, the proper places for hyphenation, pronunciation, word frequency (from 1539 to 2007 using Google’s one million books sample), synonyms, antonyms, narrower and . . . [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. Berg v. Loblaw Properties Limited 2013 ONSC 4803
   

   [1] The defendant seeks its costs following its successful defence of the plaintiffs’ personal injury action. The matter proceeded over the course of four weeks in Woodstock. The jury found the defendants not liable for the plaintiff, Wendy Berg’s orthopaedic injuries arising from a misstep and fall at the Zehrs store in Woodstock. They assessed

. . . [more]

In one of my recent columns I discussed the idea of measuring marketing effectiveness. As an adjunct to that piece, I want to comment this time out on a trend I’ve noted in the marketing industry that I think is noteworthy for law firms – the rise of the digital marketer.

In-house marketing roles in law firms have historically focused largely on “the classics” of professional services marketing – business development (co-ordinating RFP responses and assisting with client pitches), event management (client seminars and firm receptions) and brand identity projects as well as oversight of firm print collateral (brochures, . . . [more]

While travelling home from Seattle last week after the AALL conference, which Connie, Kim and I blogged about here and here and here and here, I had an interesting seat mate. More than one interesting person actually. My philosophy is that if you are stuck on a plane and there is someone conversationally inclined, it is a good idea to put down your novel and learn. Every conversation is an opportunity to learn something, whether it is with a student travelling for the first time, someone on the way to visit a grandchild, or someone travelling on a business . . . [more]

Lawyers tend to think of themselves as strong communicators, but they don’t always get their message across to clients.

It doesn’t help that clients aren’t always clear about what they want from lawyers.

This was evident at the mid-winter meeting of the CBA Council, when the Legal Futures Initiative took advantage of the gathering of lawyers from across the country, representing most sizes and types of practice, to find out what lawyers think clients want.

Presented with results from the Initiative’s own survey of client expectations, some lawyers present were a bit taken aback by the idea that clients wanted . . . [more]