by Tom Ullyett*

Cross country skiing is Canada’s sport. This is almost sacrilegious to say within living memory of the recent national celebration of hockey known as “Hockey Day in Canada”. Don Cherry would beg to differ and probably label me a wimp (until he found out that I was the penalty leader in my 9-team hockey league). But folks, really, “xc” skiing has been with us for over 100 years. Consider Exhibit A: The Montreal Ski Club started to offer xc ski trips into the Laurentians as early as 1905. To top it all off, any Canadian with Scandinavian . . . [more]

The following article by Cleo Kirkland, senior recruitment consultant at The Counsel Network in Toronto, is featured in the January 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. The article includes a number of sidebars featuring insights from firms that excel at recruiting and retaining lawyers. The sidebars can be viewed in the full version of the article.

When candidates approach our firm about a lateral move, they all tend to ask a variation of the following questions: which firm is the best for me? Which will make the greatest difference in my career? which offers me the greatest opportunity for . . . [more]

An ever-increasing body of ethics opinions and reports on the suitability of cloud computing for lawyers aim to provide guidance that may appear deceptively straightforward. Take the following as an example:

Cloud computing is acceptable, but make sure you first undertake an appropriate level of due diligence on your prospective cloud computing provider.

While this doesn’t appear onerous on the surface, the cumulative expense of performing due diligence on multiple cloud providers could prove to be prohibitive for solo- and small-firm lawyers – the very demographic that benefits most directly from cloud computing.

Take the simple task of reviewing privacy . . . [more]

The unique and indefatigable Tom Bruce is the Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell – no need for a geographical adjective when you were the first on the block.

Yes, LII was the first – and it’s coming up to its Twentieth Anniversary – or at least an excuse for a party in Finger Lakes.

Tom explains:

The LVI conference started out as a rather clubby event for a smallish group of open-access publishers largely based in the academic world. More recently, we’ve been joined by some academic researchers in legal informatics and by a few government

One of the most popular uses of libraries and archives–especially public libraries and municipal archives–is genealogy research. I had never seen law libraries, however, used for this purpose. I was therefore surprised when watching the celebrity family history research show Who Do You Think You Are? on Friday to see Jennifer Frazier, Kentucky State Law Librarian, filling in some of the last vital pieces of the puzzle for NFL superstar Jerome Bettis.

Some of the key pieces of information in researching his family history were found in a court decision: his ancestor Abe Bougard had taken on the Illinois Central . . . [more]

Is the lawyer’s preference for the word “client” instead of “customer” anything more than protectionism for the arcane?

The UK Office of the Legal Ombudsman doesn’t seem to think so.

Three years ago the first press release issued by the Ombudsman’s office deliberately chose the word “customer” to symbolize the change which its arrival heralded. So explains Adam Sampson the UK’s Chief Ombudsman in the Guardian last week.

The view of the Legal Ombudsman, it seems, is that the word “client ” trails behind it habitual thinking about the provision of legal services that neither can, nor should, survive:

The

What lawyer wouldn’t want to hear these words from a prospective client? “You had me at hello!” A personal brand is what gets you there. Most lawyers can’t conceive of themselves as a brand. But, let me tell you… YOU already have a personal brand! And I guarantee… 99.9% never give it a thought. Everything one does, adds to his or her personal brand… positively or negatively. But we don’t often see it that way.

The question here is… can you change your personal brand? Sure you can. You can create it with purpose. Ask yourself these questions. What does . . . [more]

Slaw readers will have noticed a tendency among some of us who write here to geek out from time to time — about things other than law, I mean. I’m going to indulge here about a new bit of tech, so fair warning. (There is a slender link between the tech discussed here and law, if that helps you stay involved…)

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer invented in England and selling for $35. It was conceived and built by a charity with the aim of making computers available to schoolchildren in order to have them learn how to . . . [more]

Michelle Alexander, a lawyer and professor at Ohio State, wrote an editorial in The Times yesterday, Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System. She provides some background on the current crisis in the American justice system, and how few accused actually realize their constitutional right to a jury,

 …in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these [jury] rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical.

Because I use computers a lot and tend to have more than a few of them, I get asked from time to time to help a friend choose which computer to buy. Should she spring for more RAM? Should he pick this brand? And because there are perhaps half a dozen or more features in play, each of which can have a number of modulations, the “perms and coms” are large and much anxiety can ensue, even after I point out that the differences between package A and package B are so small that either would be just fine. The . . . [more]

This is a 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. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

Tuesday January 24, 2012, First Nations chiefs from across Canada met with the Prime Minister and an array of his cabinet ministers. Was there an expectation of material results? The chief of Attawapiskat attended; her deputy chief, when interviewed by the C.B.C. asked rhetorically whether anything would be different “tomorrow” because of the meeting.

It may be better that the meeting happened than not having had the meeting. It lends credibility and legitimacy to the demands of First Nations leaders. But there are a series of fundamental obstacles that will prevent significant change until those obstacles are removed. This column . . . [more]