We remember Robert Wilkins who died in Lexington, South Carolina last week.
Bob was a pioneer in the application of technology to the practice of law. In 1979 (that is not a typo), he published “Word Processing for a Law Office”. He was the editor of the Lawyer’s Micro-Computer, The Lawyers PC, The Perfect Lawyer and Shepard’s Elder Care Law newsletter. When I started going to ABA Tech Show almost 30 years ago, Bob Wilkins was a legend, since he had designed his entire Trusts and Estate practice around his technology.

Without pioneers like Bob, today’s practice is almost unimaginable. . . . [more]

At New York Legal Tech this week, Thomson Reuters will unveil an interesting basket of software products for the legal market. While a lot of hard innovative work has gone into the products to be released at the start of February, the most notable feature is the elements that they share in common.

The most significant development was not the suite of products that were unveiled but the change in strategic direction that they embody. I’ve commented before on how Thomson Reuters acquisitions appear somewhat disjointed. But this was evidence that the central vision of products like Serengeti has . . . [more]

While reading about Newegg’s victory over patent troll Soverain Software over the weekend, I was reminded of the Three Billy Goats Gruff fairy tale I read to my children just a week ago.

Soverain claimed three patents it owns gave it intellectual property rights over the “shopping cart” technology that virtually every e-commerce site depends upon. Sorverain filed lawsuits against Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Home Depot, Victoria’s Secret, Avon and even e-retailing giant Amazon.com.

While Soverain successfully extorted millions of dollars from these e-commerce companies, it picked one last fight that would prove to be the patent’s troll’s undoing. That fight was . . . [more]

An important case on the scope of the duty to avoid conflicts of interest, Canadian National Railway v. McKercher LLP and Gordon Wallace (on appeal from the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal), was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada on January 24. The Canadian Bar Association and the Federation of Law Societies appeared as interveners.

You can watch video of the submissions here.

You can review more information about the case, including the parties’ factums, on the SCC site. . . . [more]

A new video about the Certified Specialist designation for lawyers was released last week by the Law Society of Upper Canada. This is the seventh video in the series aimed at the public.

From the January 22, 2013 press release:

In the new video, the seventh of the series, Certified Specialists highlight how the public can benefit from hiring a lawyer who is recognized by the Law Society for their specialization in an area of practice.

Offered by the Law Society for several years, the Certified Specialist Program recognizes lawyers who have met high established standards of experience and

. . . [more]

The Canadian Anti-Spam Act was passed in December of 2010, and is expected to come into force some time in 2013.

If you think it won’t affect you because you don’t send mass emails trying to sell random products, or don’t infest other people’s computers with spyware, you would be wrong. It creates tools to fight spam, but unfortunately defines spam so broadly that it will affect how most of us conduct business. The definition of spam is so broad that goes far beyond what the average person would consider to be spam.

My personal view is that this Act . . . [more]

The European Legal e-access conference Paris 21-23 November 2012.

There is much that is written that may falsely lead folk far from Europe to think that the EU vision is no longer successful, and that old Europe is slowly imploding. This meeting sure dispelled some of those myths. There is energy, enthusiasm and innovation going on in European circles that we English speakers are rarely exposed to. The European Digital Agenda is seen as a tool for economic growth, and this free conference provided an understanding of the legal e-access work underway.

It was organised by Juriconnexion, the French . . . [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 Securities Law   2. Finding Legal Information   3. First Reference   4. Environmental Law and Litigation    5. Avoid a Claim

The Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice allowed the appeal of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on Friday in Magder v. Ford, reversing the decision of Justice Hackland, which had ruled that Ford had violated s. 5 of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act (MCIA). The implications of Justice Hackland’s decision is that Ford’s seat as mayor could have been vacated under the City of Toronto Act (COTA).

Ford argued that the pecuniary interest of donations to a football team was not a violation of the city’s Code of Conduct, which would have allowed for his . . . [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 Natural justice, Government pensions, Testifying in niqab, Definition of disability, & Right to counsel:

R. v. Stonefish (S.T.) 2012 MBCA 116
Criminal Law – Sentencing – Considerations on imposing sentence – Time already served
At his preliminary inquiry the accused pleaded guilty to one count of possession of . . . [more]

Clients can be demanding and will sometimes have expectations that will be unreasonable. Unmet expectations, even if they are totally unreasonable, are a recipe for unhappy clients. Setting and controlling client expectations is one of the best things you can do to ensure that you have a happy and satisfied client at each stage and the conclusion of a matter. Follow these resolutions to better set and control your clients’ expectations:

• I will carefully explain how the matter will proceed: While you may have handled a particular type of matter hundreds of times before, remember that your client is

. . . [more]

I would like to take this opportunity to suggest a few of you perusing this post pause for a just a moment to consider an earlier age, a more simple age and a device that set many of us on the path to our constantly connected state that we now occupy. If the names Pong, Missile Command, Frogger, Asteroids, Centipede, and Burgertime mean anything to you, then I’m willing to bet that you belong to Generation X and that you just may have got your start on the road to reading a blog about technology and law by playing Atari . . . [more]