A sailboat is an incredibly complex machine made up of other machines. It’s full of expensive parts whose cost seems to run proportionately with the length of their names – e.g., a “fiddle block with ratchet, cam, and becket.” Even something as apparently simple as the sail itself is a complex feat of engineering, with complex curves sown into the fabric. And the “ropes” these days are made of high-tech materials that can run many dollars per meter.

All of those expensive, complex, and absurdly named parts have to work together properly for a sailboat to even approach maximum performance. . . . [more]

♬ It’s been a long time comin’, my dear
It’s been a long time comin’, but now it’s here
And now it’s here..♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by Bruce Springsteen.

My friend Bob Ambrogi noted it first. The American Bar Association amended the commentary to Model Rule 1.1 dealing with competence:

Rule 1.1 Competence

A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.

The amended commentary is as follows:

Maintaining Competence

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of

An article in the Montreal Gazette (see here) summarized well the situation of women in private practice in Quebec, citing interesting statistics:

• women make up 65 percent of law school graduates
• women make up nearly half of the members of the Barreau du Québec
• women make up 30 percent of lawyers in private practice
• women make up 20 percent of partners in private practice

It certainly isn’t surprising that work-life balance or accessibility to partnership are cited as reasons for leaving private practice. An ongoing project by the Barreau du Québec – “Projet Justicia” – seeks to  . . . [more]

The International Legal Technology Association conference is happening right now in Washington, D.C. In addition to the conference blog, Mary Abraham of Above and Beyond KM is sharing reports of the conference on her blog. Mary’s recent posts include:

• Compass and Cloud: Autonomy’s New Direction #ILTA12
• #SharePoint Innovator Award #ILTA12
• Extranets:The Client Disconnect? #ILTA12
• JAG Connect:Army Lawyers go Social #ILTA12
• Frans Johansson Keynote #ILTA12
• Overcoming Law Firm Irrationality [#ILTA12]
• The Alternative Side of #ILTA12

As you can infer from Mary’s post titles, you can also follow the conference by its Twitter hashtag #ILTA12

You can follow the conference by . . . [more]

Residential tenancies are governed in Ontario by the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (the “RTA”). Whether you are pro-landlord or pro-tenant it is hard to argue with the fact that the RTA heavily favours the rights of tenants over the rights of landlords as property owners and service providers. In Ontario, it is illegal for a landlord to, among other things, require (or even obtain on consent) a damage deposit, require the tenant provide post-dated cheques, or prohibit a tenant from owning a pet. If a tenant vandalizes a rental property and up and leaves in the middle of the . . . [more]

For most law libraries, the percentage of the library budget representing subscriptions to online databases has been increasing. Many of these subscriptions represent multi-year contracts and there is little flexibility in the contracts to accommodate budget cuts.

For law firm libraries, one way of alleviating the effect of the increasing cost of these databases is to pass some of it on to clients. How this is done varies amongst law firms; some pass on all online costs to clients, some charge back a percentage of costs, and some just treat them as overhead. My 2011 survey of Vancouver-area law firm . . . [more]

The following article from the August 2012 issue of LAWPRO Magazine introduces LAWPRO’s new domestic contract matter toolkit. The toolkit can be downloaded in full or in part at www.practicepro.ca/checklists

Between 2007 and 2011, 830 family law claims were reported to LAWPRO. These claims are costly. Resolving them will cost LAWPRO approximately $21 million. Some of these claims arose due to real (or alleged) problems with domestic contract matters. That is the bad news.

Domestic contracts are complex documents that deal with complicated issues involving emotional clients. The dangers are real and there are many places that errors can . . . [more]

Way back in 1989 Canadian patent law changed from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. Now the United States, a last hold-out along with the Philippines, will soon switch in the same way, pursuant to §3 of the America Invents Act, which will come into effect in March of next year.

A recent article in the New York Times (Steve Lohr, “In Canada, the Impact of America’s New Patent Law Is Seen“) points us to an article by two University of Pennsylvania professors (economics, law) that uses the Canadian experience in the years before and after . . . [more]

 Mediation is gaining popularity in Canada but promotion of mediation is still mostly anecdotal. To develop further, the field needs a more solid foundation of deep empirical research. Mediate BC is attempting to fill some of the gaps based on fourteen years of data collection by its Court Mediation Program (the “CMP”). The CMP has administered the mediation program in the Provincial Court of BC, Small Claims Division, since 1998 and now mediates claims up to $25,000 in Vancouver and up to $10,000 in four other locations. The CMP recently celebrated its 20,000th referral! It has thousands of mediations in . . . [more]

Dropbox is still the most popular cloud-based file sharing and storage system, so its success and failures will inevitably signal how quickly the legal community warms up to the cloud.

Dropbox has recently come under scrutiny for a number of security failures. In response to breaches discovered earlier this summer, they have just introduced a new two-step verification on their accounts.

The two-step verification will be optional for users, and allows them to impose a new security code on top of passwords. The code is sent directly to a cell phone, and can be used whenever the account . . . [more]

Law students are increasingly frustrated with the utility of legal education during a difficult economic market. As Cooley law school graduates realized recently, their lack of foresight over job prospects may not be compensable by law.

But still law students and prospective law student are still trying to figure out what the purpose of law school is supposed to be. Law schools insist that the philosophical underpinnings of law are an essential background for entering practice, arguably one of the several distinguishing characteristics from paralegals or other professionals working in the legal field.

Michael Plaxton discusses this question in a . . . [more]