Law societies in Canada should be preparing to share their monopoly over the provision of legal services, i.e., preparing for government regulation. In the interim, should they be allowed to prosecute the offence of “the unauthorized practice of law,” given that such prosecutions now aim to protect a monopoly over the provision of legal services that is greater than that granted them by law?

Until the problem of “the unavailability to the majority of the population of legal services at reasonable cost” is solved, the prosecutors of this offence should be Crown counsel, or at the least such prosecutions . . . [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

How You Can Improve Your Mobile “Touch” Keyboard Typing Skills
Dan Pinnington

I am a Blackberry person, and I’m holding out (with great patriotic hope) for a new BB10 Blackberry with a real keyboard (apparently there is a model with a real . . .

Research

New Government Publications Resource
Shaunna Mireau

A press release received in my email inbox inspired today’s tip. Because I subscribe to an email . . . [more]

Every year Working Mother Magazine publishes a survey of the NAFE / Flex-time Lawyers 50 Best Law Firms For Women Lawyers in the United States.

This year there is a noticeable shift away from maternity leave policies and flexible work arrangements towards preparing women for leadership roles especially around business development. This is an interesting trend and may signal a new phase that women lawyers and their firms are entering.

The founder of Flextime Lawyers, Deborah Epstein Henry, notes that women lawyers have been waiting to achieve critical mass in the profession on the assumption that the sheer weight . . . [more]

Grantham, Carson and Jarvis LLP, located in downton New York City, was established in the 20th century and there have been Granthams in the role of managing partner since 1962. The founding partner Grantham attracted corporate clients in the financial services, entertainment, insurance, communications and manufacturing sectors. The firm served these clients well over the years and was rewarded with faithful loyalty. There were occasional troubling signs in the 1990s, though, that the clients found the cost of litigation prohibitive, especially the fees paid for document review. By 2005, some were talking about Alternate Fee Arrangements and Outside Counsel Guidelines, . . . [more]

Congratulations to Lexis-Nexis Canada and a squadron of Canadian legal authors for achieving what many of us doubted that we would ever see, a contemporary Canadian legal encyclopaedia. Halsbury’s Laws of Canada has reached its seventy-seventh volume as a statement of common-law Canadian law in English.

Lexis took over the ground floor bar at Toronto’s Trump Hotel and flew in from the sunny California campus of Pepperdine University, the grand old man of Canadian tort law, Allen Martin Linden. And of course a Butterworths author and latterly a Lexis-Nexis author.

While AML delivered the one-liners, Halsburys is testament to the . . . [more]

Don Tapscott, author, speaker and advisor on new technologies and media, was interviewed by McKinsey Quarterly back in September 2012, and a video excerpt plus transcript of the interview was released last month. See: Making internal collaboration work: An interview with Don Tapscott. This interview has been raising questions around the web, and thought it would be useful to look at it here on SLAW.

Effective file management provides the foundation for timely, valuable client service and appropriate management of client matters. Here are some resolutions to help you complete the critical steps in file management:

• I will complete a conflicts check before opening a file: Conflicts of interest can lead to ugly and expensive malpractice claims. The best time to catch and avoid a conflicts claim is during a thorough conflicts search before a file is opened. A thorough search looks for conflicts involving both the client(s) and others connected with a matter.
• I will open a file for every matter I handle

. . . [more]

This interesting question is raised by Richard Susskind in his newest book “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” (Oxford University Press). In this book, as in his 2008 work “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services”, Susskind explores the implications of Information Technology on the practice of law. You can read an excerpt here.

The prediction that there will be more electronic filing of documents, more screens in the courtroom so all participants are looking at the same page and real time transcripts, come as no surprise, but if Susskind is right we can also expect to see virtual courtrooms  . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from thirty-five 2010 & 2011 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. Canadian Legal History Blog 2. Entertainment & Media Law Signal 3. Clicklaw Blog 4. Slater Vecchio Connected 5. Social Media for Law Firms.

The pivotal role of Scot Beckenbaugh, Deputy Director of the United States Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, in resolving the 113-day National Hockey League lockout provides an excellent case study in the art of high-stakes mediation.

Published accounts of Beckenbaugh’s role in the final week of make-or-break negotiations illustrate the key attributes that disputing parties should seek in any mediator.

Subject matter expertise:

Beckenbaugh was brought into the negotiations for his mediation skills, not his knowledge of the specific financial issues in dispute. He is not a “hockey guy”. His bio on the FMCS website mentions “extensive experience in public . . . [more]

Far too often we hear the stories of tragedy and demise when discussing the future of the legal profession. Some room for optimism is always warranted as well though. According to CareerBuilder and the Economic Modeling Specialists in an article in The Globe, lawyers are one of the professions in Canada with the most positions added since 2012.

But not everyone with a law degree wants the traditional legal practice. Kim Covert of CBA’s PracticeLink has a new article on opportunities outside of practice. She touches on articling shortages, as well as the significant numbers of women who leave . . . [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 are in Criminal law and duress / Adoptions and artificial insemination / Custody and language of education / Medical malpractice / Fatal accidents legislation and equality / Duties of insurance broker / Discovery and privileged documents: