Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw byMaritime 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:
Civil Rights / Criminal Law / Trademarks, Names and Designs / Income Tax / Admiralty / Municipal Law:

Jordan Furlong published another great column recently about how the word the word “disruption” is being used to describe many changes in legal practice and technology. He points out that the word is most often used to describe legal process innovation. The comment boards lit up with discussion of what may or may not be disruptive. I agree with Jordan and other commenters that improving legal process or process innovation is not really disruptive. Examples of legal process innovation abound, but they mostly just introduce efficiencies into practice (for example, by standardizing steps in common procedures). On the other hand, . . . [more]

I billed 2,400 hours last year because I have the perfect work-life balance.

Since its adoption into mainstream North American vocabulary in 1986, the term “work-life balance” has caused hypertension in and the impression of decreased work-ethic by senior lawyers and firm managers. Its use by an applicant in an interview is usually fatal. Yet firms spend thousands of hours and dollars seeking the Holy Grail for law firm management: equilibrium between “work-life balance” and business interests. Why? Because “work-life balance” equates to associate retention.

With all the focus on work-life balance, why have so few managed to achieve the . . . [more]

Microsoft has done some good things. Even as an Apple fan boy I can say that. One such Good Thing is Slate magazine, founded in 1996 (and a strong influence in my naming of Slaw, as it happens) under the auspices of Microsoft’s MSN. In 2004 Slate passed into the hands of the Washington Post, under whose umbrella it still shelters today. But even a simple encomium to this news and popular culture magazine would be too . . . earnest, perhaps, for a Friday fillip. So it’s to Slate’s Vault that I want to point you today.

The Vault, . . . [more]

Do you know of any means by which prosecutorial documents – like a notice of compliance or notice of laying of charges – can be delivered electronically? If a regulator, for example, wanted to require one of its regulated bodies to appear at a hearing, how can it ensure that the addressee has received the notice?

The regulator would have an email address of the regulated body, but assume that there is no contract or statute that allows for ‘originating process’ to be presumed to be delivered if delivered electronically.

I am aware that the Rules of Civil Procedure allow . . . [more]

One of the big themes running through many of the workshops at this week’s CALL conference in Montreal was the redesign of products, platforms and processes. The conference ended yesterday.

The Monday session entitled “Please Don’t Make Me Think: User Testing a Faceted Search Engine” was about how the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (CAIJ), Quebec’s Courthouse Library Network, conducts user testing sessions to validate the ergonomic and design aspects of many of its tools, including its new faceted search engine JuriBistro UNIK.

I served as a guinea pig at the session. I volunteered to go up on stage . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada (“LSUC”) held its annual general meeting last night. The meeting garnered more attention than it otherwise might have due to the mysterious last minute pulling of a motion that was received on March 28, 2013. This motion dealt with a study to enlarge the paralegal scope of practice. You can read the motion here.

There has not yet been an explanation behind the pulling of this motion–a motion that was proposed well in advance of the meeting.

So we are left to speculate.

It has never made any sense to me as to . . . [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.

The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis
Steven J. Harper
New York: Basic Books, 2013

Excerpt from the Introduction chosen by the author.

INTRODUCTION

When I applied to law school in 1975, the nation was recovering from a severe and prolonged recession. Even so, I always assumed that I’d be able to make . . . [more]

Though my column focuses on legal information, in the United States legal education is intimately bound up with the trends in legal information. LEXIS and WESTLAW maintain a stranglehold on the marketplace by heavy investment in law school training. By putting boots on the ground in the form of dedicated training representatives, student advisors and, of course, free access 24/7 to the relevant systems, the big commercial data bases win hearts and minds. New law students are highly energized and very impressionable. What they find upon arrival in law school is, as far as they see it, the way things . . . [more]

UPDATE: The hyperlink to the study was changed by the Project and has now been updated here. The hyperlink to the executive summary remains broken. (September 12, 2013)

The National Self Represented Litigants Project headed by University of Windsor prof Julie Macfarlane has released its report, “Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants.“. There is also available an executive summary of the report.

The Project interviewed 283 self-represented litigants from Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, as well as 107 providers of advice or other legal service.

Despite the presence of a large amount of online information relevant . . . [more]

What do readers think about wearable computing? Is it cool or creepy? Where is the technology headed? What legal or other issues might arise from it?

I’m thinking about this because I find the intersection of technology and law interesting, and I’ve been asked to speak about it this fall. Google Glass privacy concerns is a popular topic today, especially around the issue of the ability to record and save images and video, and what might happen with all that. In addition to Google Glass we are seeing the debut of the smartwatch. The Pebble was a very successful . . . [more]

I did a quick and unscientific bit of research a couple of days ago, comparing use of the terms non-lawyer and non-doctor in the Twitter-verse.

It seems that for the most part (on that day, at least), recent tweets referencing “non-doctor” were focused on the television serial, Doctor Who. I noted a few exceptions, pointing to other related professions, especially physiotherapists, but those tweets were from tweeters who did not appear to represent the medical profession, and in fact, appeared to be part of the client-group.

On the other hand, I found references to “non-lawyer” only in tweets from lawyers, . . . [more]