[This is the text of a LAWPRO Alert sent to real estate lawyers in Ontario June 13, 2012.]

Do any of these names ring a bell: Kin Hang Cheung, Haru Hayate or Hideki Kazuhiro?

OR – is someone from overseas asking you to act on a real estate matter? Is a real estate agent you know sending you new business from an offshore client?

Be wary: Real estate lawyers like you (as well as real estate agents) are being targeted all over the continent by a new fraud scam.

To date we’ve heard from lawyers in Toronto (purchase of a . . . [more]

Unless it’s just a glitch in the DRM system, the online version of the Ontario Reports looks to be freely available. Historically, the ORs are a benefit earned by membership in the Law Society of Upper Canada. If so, it’s a pleasant development. (Although, the digital ORs have been the subject of criticism aimed at their failure to take advantage of the functionality that the web offers: they are essentially a photographic image of the print service.)

[hat tip: @davidpwhelan] . . . [more]

Like lots of issues confronting judges, sentencing is no easy matter, tied as it is to the facts of the instant case yet bound within loose limits set by similar-fact precedents. A new service, Rangefindr, aims to make it easier for lawyers and judges to estimate the impact of precedent in a given case.

Research lawyer Matthew Oleynik and his team have analysed and tagged thousands of sentencing cases, double checking their results with computer indexing, to create a database from which relevant precedents can be easily retrieved. The manner of using the service is illustrated in a video . . . [more]

June 6, 2012 was chosen by the Internet Society as the world IPv6 launch day. Major ISPs, web companies and home networking equipment manufacturers have now turned IPv6 on permanently.

IPv6 is a new internet addressing scheme that will replace IPv4, the current scheme. The main issue was that IPv4 only allows 4.2 billion addresses, which is not enough to meet world demand – especially given the number of smartphones, computers, servers, and the future of the internet of things. IPv6 allows for 340 undecillion addresses (3 followed by 38 zeros).

More information can be found in this cnet . . . [more]

In my last posting, I presented a two unusual management metrics, specifically challenging readers to look at the amount of management “time spent exploring new opportunities” and to examine how many “new revenue ideas were launched” by the firm in the past year. In this second column, I want to explore with you some of the other metrics that may make sense for you to consider examining:

Metric #3: Defining Distinctive Attributes That Clients Value

One of the most difficult questions that we all face, that is sometimes articulated but always on a prospect’s mind is: “Why should I . . . [more]

According to dictionary.com, communication is “the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs.” That sounds pretty simple, but wait, can a word with that many syllables and so many modes of connectivity really be that simple? In the library world we know that if communication were easy, straightforward and not prone to misinterpretation, a lot of our time would be saved. Library school was all about the “reference interview”, and if I’ve learned anything since then, it is that the art of understanding and deconstructing someone else’s question is one of the most difficult . . . [more]

A comment by Karen Sawatzky on Simon’s Scrolling post inspired me to think about the language that is most appropriate when teaching law students legal research. Sometimes a funny anecdote is more than just a funny anecdote!

I used to use the expression “it’s a gong show” until a law student asked me what I meant by that. Thanks D. for asking what you thought was a silly question and what became a realization that I was totally pop-culture-less.

Articling student intake is mostly in June at my firm, and by my calculations, this year’s students might be as young . . . [more]

Last week LinkedIn suffered a major security breach where millions of “hashed” passwords were leaked. Dan Pinnington wrote an excellent post last week outlining how you can tell if your LinkedIn password has been compromised.

This security breach has prompted many to reset their password at LinkedIn and other sites. However, as Dan points out, you shouldn’t reset your password to a password you use at other sites. Why? The LinkedIn password leak gives us a perfect case study.

What was leaked at LinkedIn was not your exact password, but rather a hash of your password. A hash is . . . [more]

There has been a bit of discussion on a couple of Canadian lists lately of the appropriateness of commissioning an affidavit (or declaration or affirmation) by video link or by Skype (which is just another form of video, at least for the purposes of this question, is it not?).

Ontario law, and most other Canadian common law at least, requires that the person making the affidavit must be “in the presence of” the person commissioning it (notary, lawyer, commissioner for taking affidavits). See Commissioner for Taking Affidavits Act (Ontario) s. 9.

Question: Is one sufficiently “in the presence” of . . . [more]

A short post for today – a New Jersey woman alleges having been fired for being too attractive (she worked at a lingerie) store. ABC News reports… An interesting concept and interesting law suit. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. . . . [more]

My involvement in law publishing spanning now over 15 years, it was difficult to resist a title like “How West Law Was Made: the Company, its Products, and its Promotions” (Ross E. Davies, Charleston Law Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 231-282, Winter 2012; George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 12-34. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2034499). Who in this industry is so distracted by their daily toil so as to neglect reading a paper promising to share such an important piece of wisdom? How indeed was West Law made? Maybe some know, but I didn’t. So when I . . . [more]

In what the London Times describes as a “groundbreaking” decision, the UK High Court last week ordered Facebook to disclose the email and IP addresses and other information of anonymous internet tormentors – “trolls” – who set up a fake profile of a woman using her photograph.

The order must now be served on Facebook in the US. It has declared it will comply with the order.

How easily Nicola Brookes became a target is described by Women’s Views on News. She was labelled a paedophile and drug dealer. (She has since set up a face book page Trolls . . . [more]