If you missed the 2012 Futures Conference and Annual Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in Washington, D.C. late last month (as I unfortunately did), then you also missed out on an extraordinary exploration of change and innovation in the legal marketplace.

Here are two excellent summaries of what went down at the Futures Conference:

• Ron Friedmann of Fireman & Co., co-chair of the conference, published an extensive report at his Strategic Legal Technology blog titled “Overview of the New Legal Normal.” Key quote: “One panelist noted that given how many consumers cannot afford . . . [more]

There have been times, as a legal and professional publisher, when I have mused on a life without troublesome and quirky authors who take holidays, have families and sometimes put their professional work before their writing commitments. I speculated as to how it would be in an entirely automated world in which the nature of the problem was entered into one end of the over-sized computer and out the other emerged the single correct answer, as was seen in films of a bygone era. Expressed in books, perhaps each chapter or topic would end with “the answer, therefore, is . . . [more]

We brought you timely news about Iceland’s crowd-sourcing of constitutional reform. Now we invite you to look at what Finland is trying. This time it’s not the constitution but rather legislative initiatives that well up from the citizenry. A project called Avoin Ministeriö (Open Ministry) funded by the Ministry of Public Affairs invites citizens to place a legislative proposal online, where others can then vote to approve or disapprove of the idea. A successful idea will be put before the legislature.

The Slate magazine story on this experiment explains “success” this way:

Each suggested law gets six months to gather

. . . [more]

Universities across the country are struggling with how to deal with their students’ use of social media. I previously covered the Alberta case of  Pridgen v. University of Calgary, where the court quashed a decision by the university to discipline students who made critical comments on Facebook about a professor. Key to this decision was the university’s actions lacked procedural fairness.

Earlier this year the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld this decision, with three separate decisions. Justices McDonald and O’Ferrall indicated that the Charter analysis undertaken by the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta was unnecessary, and upheld the . . . [more]

A lot of attention has been paid lately to ‘cybersecurity’, much of it aimed at system-wide security or ‘critical infrastructure’ security, but a good deal also to individual questions of authentication, identity management, vulnerability to hacking/phishing/malware and so on. Among the solutions at the individual level, one finds suggestions about using locked-down versions of documents in PDF, various degrees of encryption and so on.

To what extent is the use of these measures problematic for people who rely on technology to make information accessible to them because of physical or other disabilities? The simplest example is the inability of text . . . [more]

Chances are really good that a few of you among the thousands (yes, thousands) reading this are celebrating a birthday today. It can’t be a dead cert, of course, because there’s no law of nature that requires that anyone in our readership be born on a ninth of November. There is, though, a law (or maybe a regulation) of nature that seems to dictate that approximately the same number of people get born every day. And that being the case, I should be able to estimate the chances that some of you will indeed be blowing out candles today.

Trouble . . . [more]

November 10, 2012 is approaching. Tomorrow, in fact.

So? (No, it’s not my birthday.)

In Canada, tomorrow’s date is written 10/11/12.

That’s too good a coincidence to ignore.

Therefore, with no authority to do so whatsoever, I hereby proclaim November 10, 2012 Numeracy Day in Canada.

Behold the power of numbers.

Behold the power of bad statistics to lead us astray. Behold the awesome grip upon us created by throwing around numbers, even when those numbers are cut from whole cloth and do not add up.

Behold the power of metrics. He or she who can wave metrics around truly . . . [more]

This is the last post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. Plans are well underway for a redesign for Slaw that will, among other things, see the end of this series after nearly a year of entries. More on the redesign later in the month.

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Today I went to the dentist – an experience that most people loathe as much as going to a lawyer.

As I lounged in discomfort, I had several thoughts:

First, I knew exactly how much I was going to pay for the professional services being rendered. Most dental work is done on a fixed fee basis, no matter how long, or how little time, the procedure may take. Some work, could, as my dentist explained to me take longer, but it all balances out in the end by other quicker work.

Small legal practitioners like myself understand the concept of . . . [more]

Sometimes a website’s message is bad because there’s so little behind it. As Bruce MacEwen puts it, there’s “no window into the strategic planning process”, and a lack of true differentiators.

I think most of us recognize that good writers can make a difference; occasionally generating that ‘homerun’ sound bite out of nothing. Even in the examples MacEwen uses, I can sense a little wordsmithing at play with a phrase like “getting into client’s heads”. But the critique here is sound. Just because you write something on your website, doesn’t make it true. And whether intended or not, a . . . [more]

The Quebec Bar Association has teamed up with Montreal radio station CIBL 101,5 and the Juripop legal clinic to organize a weekly radio debate program called Droit de Cité.

Every week, 2 teams of university debaters face off on a controversial public topic. Members of the public get to vote online to determine which team wins. All shows are archived on the Droit de Cité website.

The show started in the second half of October and will last 31 weeks.

Topics so far have included:

• Should Quebec set up its own firearms registry?
• Should the City of Montreal install

. . . [more]

The first installment of Quebec's 40th Parliament is now in session. Quebec's new Premier Pauline Marois delivered a speech from the throne that established zero tolerance for and a commitment to fight against corruption within the government. The theme: “Integrity”!