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]

A group of Ottawa area students and young professionals has launched Zegov.ca, which describes itself as a “content aggregator designed to provide the public, the media and public-service employees with a continuous flow of information generated by government institutions through social media.”

Zegov.ca offers a single gateway to content from federal government Twitter and Facebook channels and official blogs.

According to the creators, there are 222 government Twitter accounts, 95 Facebook pages and 11 official blogs right now. Zegov.ca soon plans to add content from official federal YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn accounts.

On the Zegov.ca site, you can find . . . [more]

It has now been six months since the “first step” Google+ API was released; and unfortunately, it remains a read only tool. Six months! That’s an incredibly long time for a company trying to innovate and play catch-up with a competitor that is so far in front. If Google wants continued loyalty from the grass roots developer community, they need to enable this basic aspect of interoperability — writing into the Google+ ecosystem from outside applications and websites is critical to its evolution.

For the legal community, this means lawyers and firms will continue to spend time manually sharing content. . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 35 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• The exchange between Emily Vella and Connie Crosby on the latter’s post, “New Social Media Darling Pinterest and Copyright Law”
• Comments by Robert Richards and Robert McKay in which they share links to their Slaw pieces that touch on the topic explored by Susan Munro in “The Context of Legal Information.”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or . . . [more]

This January, Silicon Valley got political, and effectively so. The giants of the valley were soon credited with saving the Internet from the threat of Hollywood-inspired legislative clamp-down on online piracy. Google – “End piracy, not liberty” – as well as Facebook and Wikipedia, actively opposed two draconian bills Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that were seen to pose threats to the free flow of information that opened the door to censorship. The bills were effectively “defeated” by the corporate and non-profit outcry.

However, what was left standing is the Research Works . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of March 1 – 7.

♨ 1. R. v. Grant 2009 SCC 32

[1] Mr. Grant appeals his convictions on a series of firearms offences, relating to a gun seized by police during an encounter on a Toronto sidewalk. The gun was entered as evidence against Mr. Grant and formed the basis of his convictions. The question on this appeal is whether that evidence was obtained in breach of Mr. Grant’s Charter rights, and if so, whether the evidence should have been excluded under s. 24(2) of the