Cloud-based Practice Management Systems (PMS) roll on as an increasingly alluring option for law firms. Packages such as CLIO and Rocket Matter have attracted serious investment this year, while adding features standard in their more mature desktop rivals, such as document merge. Other PMS available in the marketplace are also surprisingly powerful. ActionStep, for example, started life as a workflow engine, but has grown into a full-feature PMS.

For those in smaller firms who are reluctant to let “strangers” manage their server, I remind them that I would certainly prefer to occasionally lose access to my data, than to . . . [more]

Following the inspiring lead of Connie Crosby and Shaunna Mireau, I’m sharing a summer project list. I have quite a long summer project list, and it has had to face regular trimming. Summer rarely seems to offer the generous spare time foreseen during the hectic days of the late spring term.

My summer project list contains standard mundane tasks like reorganizing files – physical and electronic – as well as institutional projects difficult to achieve during the academic term, and taking a bird’s-eye view of library collections and services. I won’t bore anyone with those.

Some of the invigorating . . . [more]

Helen Woganowski is mad as hell and she’s not going to bake it anymore.

This poster went up recently on hoardings near me:

At first I thought Helen might have been done for nicking a bag of cookies and was making a sort of Twinkie-cum-necessity defence. But no. Turns out the allegation is that she’s the aggrieved because, in her opinion, Mississauga-based Allan Candy has used her recipe for its Desert Bites. I gathered this from the blog, Justice for Helen, set up to make her plaint.

Trouble is — well, troubles are —

• she doesn’t explain how she

. . . [more]

Over the last few years there has been much controversy over the negotiation of the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Problems included that it was being negotiated in secret with little information being disclosed, lobby groups were granted unequal access, and the substance of the agreement proposed heavy handed enforcement.

It was signed last October, but apparently needs to be ratified by a certain number of signatories before it comes into effect. And even after that, the substantive provisions of international treaties such as this are not binding on individuals in any country until that country adopts laws that . . . [more]

As some people will have heard, CERN researchers have announced that they have seen evidence of particle which they believe to be a boson and which may be a Higgs Boson, aka the “God” particle. In related news, a contingent of Fleet St. reporters (some of whom might have once worked for Rupert Murdoch) have been dispatched to the Quad to interview the entity who is always about. . . . [more]

As short as 6 weeks ago in a SLAW post on my most frequently used iPad apps I bemoaned the fact that there was not a robust word processor for the iPad.

Either I overlooked what must have been a recent update to Pages for iPad at that time or in fact there was an actual update in the last 6 weeks, since it is now relatively easy to add footnotes (and headers and footers, among other things) while word processing in Pages.

The online help from Apple here discusses how to do this (it is simply a matter of . . . [more]

On June 25th, 2012, the Federal Court of Appeal denied the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) appeal of the decision by the Minister of Immigration to appoint the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC) as the Regulator of Immigration Consultants.

Today is July 4, an important day for a number of reasons, not least of which is the celebration of U.S. Independence Day: on July 4, 1776 the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, an appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the world,” one of the great legal documents of all time and well-worth re-reading.

Today the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced that as a result of billions of “appeals” to the universe, the long sought “God particle” — the Higgs boson — has (almost certainly) been found. The level of confidence is described . . . [more]

It’s not hard to find those who argue that the end is nigh for legal and professional information publishing. The security and strength of “need to know” and “have to have” information appears to have diminished, with content seeming to be down to “prince” or an even more lowly status in the monarchical hierarchy. Those who argue in those directions do so effectively, showing how the Internet, changing profitability and competitive models and the shift in favour of workflow solutions render the publishing component no longer core. Informed commentators see the current fortunes of the main professional publishers, . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of June 22 – 30.

♨ 1. Clements v. Clements 2012 SCC 32

[1] The parties to this appeal, Mr. and Mrs. Clements, were motor bike enthusiasts. August 7th, 2004, found them en route from their home in Prince George, British Columbia, to visit their daughter in Kananaskis, Alberta. The weather was wet. Mr. Clements was driving the bike and Mrs. Clements was riding behind on the passenger seat. The bike was about 100 pounds overloaded. Unbeknownst to Mr. Clements, a nail had punctured the bike’s rear tire.

. . . [more]

July has brought some relief to my workload. A few major projects have moved to the done list and there are only 5 items on my July projects list. Connie’s Summer Reading List is a great idea, but I can’t copy it, so I have decided to create a Summer Writing List.

My writing list has been rattling the cage for some time now. It consists of material that is frequently requested by lawyers in my office and will be crafted for use by my law firm. Can you guess what it is?

A hint: there are not enough annotated . . . [more]

In Tunisia they are working to build the law of the future. Law that does not oppress, that is fair and not applied capriciously, and that is applied even-handedly. The challenges are enormous because the law most people in Tunisia know is not like that.

I was in Sousse, the third largest city in Tunisia, and was being driven up a hill, down an asphalt road that looked slightly nicer than the one we just got off, and not just because it was lined with lights that looked as though they had been taken straight from a centre ville Paris . . . [more]