Lawyers’ eyes usually glaze over when marketers talk about the six Ps of marketing: Product, Position, Package, Promotion, Price, and Place. You can’t sell legal services the same way you sell soap, they declare, because the products are different. 

OK, so how would you define your product?

That’s where the fun starts. The usual first words are some combination of the three E’s—education, expertise, and experience. Well, the fact is, while each of these has a role in making a good lawyer, none of them is actually the lawyer’s product. Education is nice to have and it makes your mother . . . [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

Don’t Embarrass Yourself: Read Before Retweeting
Dan Pinnington

You can retweet something in an instant with just a few taps or clicks. Tap, tap and zoom – the RT goes to all your followers. You get a good feeling when you retweet something that your followers will enjoy or find really helpful. But, what if the link in the retweet doesn’t exactly say what the tweet suggests it does? . . . [more]

We’re proud to announce that Sandra Petersson is joining Slaw as a regular blogger.

Sandra is research manager at the Alberta Law Reform Institute, a writer and a former Supreme Court of Canada clerk. She travelled to New Zealand as a Commonwealth Scholar to earn a Masters Degree in legislative drafting and gender equality, and stayed on in New Zealand as a senior lecturer in law at Victoria University of Wellington, teaching courses in legal theory, legislation and torts.

Please welcome Sandra to Slaw. . . . [more]

Last week a new applications for this year’s award for members of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries was announced: the Janine Miller Fellowship established by CanLII to provide funding each year for one CALL/ACBD member to attend the Law Via the Internet conference. I think this is a fabulous opportunity for Canadian legal information professionals to get more involved in the free access to law movement.

From the announcement:

Janine Miller was an integral part in the vision and development of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) and served as Project Manager from its inception and later as

. . . [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. Rule of Law   2. BC Injury Law Blog   3. SOQUIJ | Le Blogue   4. Clicklaw Blog    5. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

The recent news of PLC being acquired by Thomson Reuters is a most significant indicator of change and direction, certainly inasmuch as it affects the state of play competitively in the UK.

Finally Thomson Reuters, in its Sweet and Maxwell and Westlaw UK guises, has woken up to a world that combines a deep commitment to electronic delivery of primary and secondary content, with related workflow in the form of guidance and documentation driven by clever software. This, alongside the timely new launch of Westlaw UK Insight, seems to me to take the UK business, in one leap, . . . [more]

Although we are all excited to try out the new iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III, or Blackberry 10, few of us think what it means for us to be carrying this enormous amount of information in our pockets.

The Canadian Charter grants the “right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure,” but one of the main exceptions to this is a search incident to an arrest, which allows a police officer to frisk a person who has been lawfully arrested. This exception exists largely because it has been considered a minimal intrusion on individual rights necessary to ensure . . . [more]

Almost a year ago I remarked here that the Ontario Reports, long a staple — and privilege — of membership in the Law Society of Upper Canada, were freely available online. (The reaction at the time was one of mild interest: CanLII provides all the free access we’re likely to require. And, too, the online ORs are delivered up in what I regard as a less than user friendly fashion that takes awkward advantage of what the web has to offer a publisher.)

For what it’s worth, I noticed the other day that the ORs are indexed by Google . . . [more]

A criminal case was recently decided in which, I’m sure, many people reading this saw in the national media. It created a brief stir and the news cycle went on. What it left behind is a disturbing glimpse into our national obsession. In this case a minor hockey coach intentionally tripped a player on an opposing team in the handshake line at the end of the game and causing him injury. The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to the individuals involved in this incident or even the case itself, but to highlight the actions that would . . . [more]

First Peoples Law, a BC law firm that’s just over a year old now, has launched a new blog that essentially forms the main page of their website.

According to the firm’s principal, Bruce McIvor, they’re aiming to inform First Nations readers directly, and not just other lawyers. Bruce is unusual, perhaps, among lawyers in that he has a doctorate in history, something particularly useful in his chosen field, where so much depends on understanding how to approach the past.

It’s a well designed site, and if they can continue to post with some regularity — the big difficulty . . . [more]

“The promise of arbitration is choice, and in order to fulfill that promise, choice must be deliberatively and effectively exercised,” Thomas J. Stipanowich, in Arbitration: the New Litigation.

“I am a firm adherent to the school of thought that denies acceptability of a person who has mediated subsequently filling the role of arbitrator, notwithstanding statutory recognition of this possibility.” Sir Laurence Street, “The Language of Alternative Dispute Resolution” [I992] ADRLJ 144.

Kari Boyle and I are writing columns this month about mediation at adjudication, commonly known as med-arb: she from the mediation perspective and I from the adjudication . . . [more]

I wasn’t so hot at algebra but I kicked azimuth in geometry. It’s a visual think / thing I guess. Which probably explains why Venn diagrams give me a kick. They say a whole lot about as laconically as it’s possible to get, rather like a joke when you come to think of it.

I recommend two sites where you can feast on these set pieces: a Tumblr: Fuck Yeah Venn Diagrams; and the delightfully witty Indexed. But herewith a bunch of my favourite Venns (and a bit of earnestness toward the end). You’re seeing thumbnail versions below, . . . [more]