Many professionals find developing a business plan a daunting and somewhat scary thing to do. In law, so much of what a professional does is taught and yet one of the most important parts of practice – finding and keeping clients – is not. Lawyers like things that are definable and business plans can be made to be just that.

If we break down a business plan to its simplest form, there are three areas: Objectives;
Strategies; and Action Plans.

Well conceived Objectives will help focus towards specific results, provide targets, define success, minimize subjectivity and establish a framework for . . . [more]

This week’s issue of the Weekly Checklist of Canadian Government Publications includes the Handbook for Police and Crown Prosecutors on Criminal Harassment:

“Criminal harassment, which includes ‘stalking,’ is a crime. While many crimes are defined by conduct that results in a very clear physical outcome (for example, murder), the offence of criminal harassment prohibits deliberate conduct that is psychologically harmful to others. Criminal harassment often consists of repeated conduct that is carried out over a period of time and that causes its targets to reasonably fear for their safety but does not necessarily result in physical injury. It may

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.

Shelley A.M. Gavigan
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012

[Footnotes have been converted to endnotes.]

[Note: UBC Press has kindly offered Slaw readers a 20% discount on this book. The discount code to enter when ordering is SLAW-20.]

Excerpt #1, Poundmaker’s Horse Race, pages 88-91

On 7 August 1878, a man named Oo-pie-too-kah-han-up-ee-weyin, . . . [more]

A long time ago – sometime back in the last millennium, as a I recall – Michael Enright, the C.B.C. host and motorcycle rider – during yet another debate on gun control, said of the bill then before Parliament, “I should think it would be an obviosity.” Besides any other criticism of this neologism, the case for (or against) gun control is anything but obvious. Any legislative proposal that divides the country almost evenly in half does not deserve to be called an “obviosity.” I have not heard this noun used since, and I remain, by and large a . . . [more]

A few months ago we blogged about Rob Ford when he was removed from office and we asked all the haters to hold back from castigating the mayor for the wrong reason. Back in November we were disappointed to see so many people making fun of Ford for his weight and appearance.

Well, we still hate Ford as much as the next guy, and would like to again remind folks that there are so many valid reasons to dislike the him and to think he’s not suited for public office and yeah, to think he’s an overall disgrace. We all . . . [more]

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” asked Sheryl Sandberg in her bestseller, Lean In.

And what is it you’re afraid of? There are the common fears that many of us can relate to: heights; falling; spiders; darkness; silence; being alone. In professional life, your fears may include: forgetting something important; making a significant error; not meeting expectations; looking foolish; not having enough work or maybe having too much work.

The concept of courage has been front-of-mind lately. I am reading Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly, which focuses on living a whole-hearted life and in that context, . . . [more]

On Mother’s Day, I sat down to write this blog – and reflected on the extra challenges that women associates still face in making it to partner. This is despite the fact that most law firms have generous maternity leave policies. From the firm’s perspective, their greatest challenge in developing more women partners is the loss of very good senior women associates from the partnership track, particularly at the six year call level – just when firms are considering associates for partnership. Why is this? It is not because women lose interest in becoming partners after six years of call, . . . [more]

This ars technica article points out that Microsoft scans Skype message contents for signs of fraud, which means that Microsoft can read them. While Skype messages may be encrypted to prevent third parties from reading them, that apparently does not apply to Microsoft. 

This is not just a Microsoft issue. Other providers of communication and data storage may also be able to do that for certain services (Facebook, Google). A close read of various service provider terms of use and privacy policies show they have the option to review data. It is usually intended as a way to control things . . . [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 the week of May 14 – 21:

1. R. v. Duncan 2013 ONCJ 160
   

   5. At heart, Mr. Duncan’s case was unremarkable. A minor alleged Highway Traffic Act offence led to a police-citizen interaction in the parking lot of Mr. Duncan’s apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. A request that Mr. Duncan produce his licence led to an alleged refusal, which led to an

On May 1^st, a Texas law student uploaded the specs for 3D printing of a single-shot pistol to the web – specs that were downloaded over 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department asked that he remove them from his site. That same day, May 9^th, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order “Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.”

The juxtaposition highlights how open data efforts are generally considered contributions to freedom of information and the advance of human liberty, but occasionally thought of as dangerous incursions into . . . [more]

We learn from the redoubtable Howard Knopf that the Couchiching Institute is having one of its celebrated roundtables in Ottawa on May 27 with Ottawa U law dean Bruce Feldthusen on The Future of Legal Education.

As the announcement says:

This comes at crucial time, when enrolments in American law schools are sharply down due to decreased demand for graduates. Opportunities for new graduates in Canada are decreasing, and many competent graduates cannot even find articling positions. Yet, we are seeing the creation of new law schools in Canada. There are many challenges and opportunities ahead for legal education