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

For a Quick Exit Remember to Use the Escape Key
Dan Pinnington

In the top left corner of most PC and Mac keyboards is the humble and underused Escape key. It is labelled Esc on PC keyboards and esc on Mac keyboards. On both PCs and Macs, pressing the Escape key usually cancels or aborts the current operation. To put it another way . . .

Research

Dead Space . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association’s Access to Justice (A2J) Committee is currently working on its Envisioning Equal Justice project. There are 5 “building blocks for change” they are working on. Currently under Building Block #5: “Alternatives for increasing access to justice for the middle class”, the committee is circulating the paper Unexplored Alternatives for the Middle Class [pdf] for commentary. Comments are requested by March 31st.

These are some of the issues being covered in this discussion paper:

• Promising innovations to increase access to legal services
• Re-engineering dispute resolution processes
• Affordability of lawyers’ services

Discussion papers for Building Blocks #1-3 are . . . [more]

Debate about lawyers’ incivility – whether it’s on the increase, whether it’s worthy of concern, how it should be handled – caught the attention of many of us in 2012. The subject continues to be discussed, and we can expect to hear more about it in the coming months and years.

But high-profile cases aside, when does a lawyer’s conduct cross the line into unprofessional conduct, and what are the costs and other implications?

These questions are answered in a paper by Daniel Naymark of Lax O’Sullivan Scott Lisus LLP and LAWPRO’s litigation unit director and counsel Jennifer Ip. It . . . [more]

I receive between 100 and 1,000 business-related e-mails per day. Out of necessity, over the last few years I’ve developed a numbers of systems that help me manage my inbox effectively. This is the third in a series of posts describing the systems I utilize to stay on top of my inbox.

Most months I spend at least a few days the air, traveling from Vancouver to one of the many destinations Clio’s business brings me. Surprisingly, I find the time on the plane to be some of my most productive, as I’m without the myriad distractions of the office . . . [more]

My Slaw colleague Ian Mackenzie suggested that we each explore the topic of med-arb – I would take the perspective of mediation and Ian the perspective of arbitration. I thought that would be a great way to spur more discussion about this “hot” topic.

When I taught “Introduction to Dispute Resolution” to first year students at UBC Law School a few years ago we spent some time collaboratively constructing the “DR Continuum”. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the linear chart showing dispute resolution processes along a line from “avoidance” on the far left to “war” on . . . [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. Le Blogue du CRL   2. Environmental Law and Litigation   3. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada   4. Thoughtful Legal Management    5. Entertainment & Media Law Signal

The past week former Supreme Court Justice the Hon. Frank Iacobucci released the Issues Report on Improving First Nations’ Representation on Ontario Juries. Iacobucci was appointed by Hon. Chris Bentley, Attorney General of Ontario, on Aug. 11, 2011 to review the jury process for First Nations living on reserves. The report concludes that Ontario’s justice system is in a state of crisis, as First Nations are overrepresented in the prison population and significantly underrepresented on jury lists and those who work in the administration of justice,

If we continue the status quo we will aggravate what is already a

. . . [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: Mens rea / Criminal law forfeiture / Company windup and pensions / Direction to jury:

All Evernote users should immediately change their passwords.

The following text appeared in a post on the Evernote blog this morning (March 2, 1013) and is also being sent to all Evernote users as an email communication:

Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.

As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset. Please read below for details and instructions.

In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that . . . [more]

I maintain several personalities on social media. I am a different person on Facebook than I am on Twitter than I am on Google+ than I am on LinkedIn, and I like to keep it that way. And even within particular media, I maintain multiple personas with different names and different passwords. I do this to keep my work life separate from my personal life, to be more efficient, to freely explore new technologies, and to reflect different interests. I also do this to explore the potential freedom to be anonymous on the Internet – to not be confined by . . . [more]

Human beings are sensitive to scale. Makes sense, I guess: more is better — to a degree; big is dangerous — much of the time. And when impressive size is combined with intensity, a scale of its own, the result can be awe-inspiring. Let me give you a couple of visual examples.

The first is a set of narratives cut in stone. It comes from the far north, in Russia, just about where that red dot appears on the map below.

Add to the scale of “far northness” the time scale fact that the work in question is 5,000 years . . . [more]

Cicero (106-43 BC) the great Roman politician/philosopher considered gratitude the greatest of virtues.

Modern psychology argues that there is a correlation between gratitude and wellbeing. That is, a grateful attitude can lead to increased wellbeing.

Gratitude is not the same as being indebted to someone. Gratitude can be expressed when one is thankful for things such as fair weather or good health.

Gratitude has been the focus of several world religions but here I would like to focus on the kind of gratitude that Warren Buffet speaks of when he says that he has won the ovarian lottery. Buffett says . . . [more]