Considering a recent announcement that the European Parliament voted, on March 12^th, to go forward with the development of an EU-wide online dispute resolution (ODR) platform, and that said platform “will be operational at the end of 2015”, it seems that ODR is poised to reach new heights in the next few years.

What this entails for the legal community and how this and other initiatives will impact traditional legal structures are therefore topics that need to be addressed shortly if lawyers want to adapt their practice to this emerging trend.

This is why the Université de Montréal’s . . . [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

Give Me My Old-Fashioned Windows’ Control Panel
Dan Pinnington

While computer newbies may find the categorized Control Panel helpful for navigating the ever more complex configuration and appearance settings for Windows, more tech-inclined individuals may prefer the old version of Control Panel which displayed all items at once. Getting to the old or “classic” view of Control Panel is easy. In Windows XP or Vista, open the Control Panel . . . [more]

I’m pleased to announce the creation of the deClawedbies – the Canadian law blog version of the “igNobles” – to be awarded annually on April 1 before noon (PST*).

Notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to nominate candidates for a deClawedbies will be restricted to “human” persons (as defined by Ontario civil procedure: see Joly v. Pelletier, [1999] O.J. No. 1728 [QL], 1999 CarswellOnt 1587, 1999 WL 33187845 (Ont. S.C.J.)) who maintained Canadian law blogs during the preceding lunar calendar (Jewish, Chinese or Mayan calendars) year who, if they participate, . . . [more]

Lateral hiring of partners or associates occurs at firms of every size, and is becoming far more common. In addition to reviewing the transferring lawyer’s credentials and suitability, the transferring lawyer and firm will need to identify and deal with potential conflicts of interest that may arise with respect to clients at the transferring lawyer’s previous firm, and in particular, clients for whom the transferring lawyer worked.

This critical task is not as easy as it might seem on first thought. The hiring firm must have sufficient information to complete an internal conflicts check, while at the same time making . . . [more]

I love this time of year: many companies traditionally announce some of their more “out of the box” improvements right at the end of the first quarter or beginning of the second quarter. Here are just a few I noticed in my mailbox; you will see Google is the real leader in 2nd quarter upgrades:

Google Fiber to the Pole

Making the Internet more accessible when you are on the road. . . . [more]

Most American lawyers became aware of British Professor Richard Susskind after he wrote The End of Lawyers? in 2008. The book generated a lot of controversy among lawyers with some proclaiming that he had indeed “seen” the future of law and others protesting that the practice of law would certainly not undergo the kind of radical changes that Susskind foretold.

Susskind is back generating controversy once again in his latest book, Tomorrow’s Lawyers. We are unabashed fans of Susskind’s prophesies, even those we may not wholly agree with, because he forces the legal profession out of its natural complacency. . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Entertainment & Media Law Signal   2. Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style   3. Slater Vecchio Connected   4. Legal Feeds    5. Off the Shelf

Nobody said starting a new law school would be easy.

Lakehead University plans on opening the first new law school in Ontario in over 40 years in September 2013. The school stylizes itself as the law school “in the North for the North,” and will focus on pressing issues in rural Ontario, including:

1. aboriginal law and understanding of aboriginal issues
2. the needs of small practitioners
3. natural resources law, such as mining rights and employment standards

Development of this specialized curriculum has sparked controversy, before it has even started. The conflict started when the university Senate replaced a mandatory 1st-year full . . . [more]

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: Disability insurance / Expungement of trade mark / Retroactive maintenance order / Real property boundary / Requirement of leave to appeal:

As we said last year on Good Friday, there are five nationwide holidays in this country: Canada Day (July 1), Labour Day (1st Monday in September), Christmas Day (December 25), New Year’s Day (January 1)—and Good Friday, today (which is two days prior to Easter, which in turn falls, roughly speaking, on the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the vernal equinox).

There will likely be no new entries on Slaw today.

See you all on Monday—which is not a statutory holiday in any province or territory and not a holiday within the Canada Labour Code . . . . . [more]

If you haven’t read about the LAC’s new Code of Conduct, the National Post has the issues well covered. The following section in particular is the portion of the Code (available online) that has most Librarians up in arms:

4.4.2 Teaching, speaking at conferences, and other personal engagements

On occasion, LAC employees may be asked by third parties to teach or to speak at or be a guest at conferences as a personal activity or part-time employment. Such activities have been identified as high risk to LAC and to the employee with regard to conflict of

. . . [more]

In the large business arena, we are starting to see some interesting developments that impact the way law firms are selected for work – which in turn is starting to impact the role of rain-makers in firms.

In larger companies, procurement teams are becoming more active and influential in the legal field. General Counsel are being pushed harder to do more with less and C-suite executives are becoming less convinced that selecting law firms is different from selecting property managers or other suppliers.

Procurement brings a more disciplined and rigorous approach to selecting firms that focuses on costs, but also . . . [more]