Let’s take the opportunity to make a few Law Tech resolutions.

Resolution #1 – I will test my backups!

Backups are crucial and you don’t want to find out whether they worked or not when you really really need them. So in addition to checking periodically to make sure your backups are actually running (You *DO* check don’t you?) you should actually test your backups from time to time.

How? Create a dummy file – just a Word document will do – and put it in your file system. Call it “Backup Test” or something like that. Let your backup . . . [more]

This could be The Year of Access to Justice in Canada. Whether it is a good year or a bad year for Access to Justice is TBD. The fate of Access to Justice is to be determined by governments, by the courts, by the legal profession and yes, by lawyers ourselves.

Dark Clouds on the Horizon: Justice Budgets 2012

In 2012, we are likely to see serious fiscal pressures on Access to Justice through budget freezes or cuts to legal aid plans, courts and other justice programs. Serious cuts to legal aid have already been proposed in the UK . . . [more]

Fronterion, an international management consultancy which focuses exclusively on advising law firms and corporations on outsourced legal services recently published a report on the Top Ten Trends for Legal Outsourcing in 2012.

The Top Ten Trends for LPO in 2012 are:

1. Profitability Squeeze for LPO

The shrinking gap between wages in the developing and developed countries will squeeze margins for LPO vendors in 2012.

2. Growth Beyond Litigation Support

Large‐scale litigation was one of the first outsourced legal services to gain widespread adoption and remains by far (particularly in the US) the most popular. In 2012, LPO vendors . . . [more]

Pending legislation always makes good fodder for lawyers to comment on in annual predictions articles. The pending anti-spam legislation has resulted in several such comments.

In my predictions article scheduled for publication next week, I comment that:

The Federal anti-spam legislation that was expected to be in force in 2011 is still waiting for regulations to be passed before coming into force. The draft regulations received a lot of criticism, and may be revised prior to the Act coming into force. The Act will be a compliance headache for many organizations, unless the regulations effectively narrow the broad definition of

I attended an interesting webinar on “Content Curation on the Social Intranet.” given by Shel Holtz of Holtz Communication + Technology on December 13^th.  While the concept is not new and several articles have been written on the topic, it did make me wonder why law firms have not utilized content curation to bring together commentary that they have published on their websites, blogs, twitter feeds, email blasts, videos and podcasts. Curating the best content by topic would make it much easier for clients to find all of the information produced by a law firm on a particular subject. . . . [more]

“Her Majesty’s Counsel, learned in the law, for the Province of Alberta”

The designation of Queen’s Counsel was bestowed recently on some members of the Alberta Bar. Though the tradition of recognizing outstanding expertise, work and contributions in a lawyer’s public life has ceased in some Canadian jurisdictions, being appointed a QC is worthy of congratulations.

The legislative authority for Queen’s Counsel appointments exists in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan

Quebec stopped making Queen’s Counsel appointments in 1976, and Ontario stopped the practice in . . . [more]

The tents are gone. The communal food kitchen, the library, the media center, the mic checks, too. Occupy Wall Street has been swept away, from Zucotti Park, off Wall Street, to the Vancouver Art Gallery. The incipient movement is now a matter of sporadic occupations, port blockades, and a media campaign. It may just be me, but the mainstream media attention that has followed in the aftermath seems to reflect a sense of wanting to hold on to this moment.

Certainly, I felt myself wanting to believe that here was a social movement that was showing some promise of . . . [more]

The new year starts with a lot of news about wages.

As reported in various newspapers, including the Globe and Mail and La Presse, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published a report entitled “Canada’s CEO elite: the 0.01%” (available here) regarding the annual compensation of Canada’s highest paid 100 executives in 2010. The titles of the newspaper articles alone reveal that these salaries are not insignificant.

Of interest is also the fact that Gildan Activewear Inc.’s Board of Directors will offer shareholders an advisory vote during the 2012 annual shareholders’ meeting on the corporation’s approach to executive . . . [more]

right? right?

Members of the legal fraternity could start with the second right.

On the other hand, as reported on the Globe and Mail’s web site

The Harper government is preparing to carve out a new role for Canada as a champion of religious rights abroad …

Early in 2012, the Tories will finally flesh out a campaign promise to install the Office of Religious Freedom within the secular confines of the Department of Foreign Affairs …

The article adds

The new Conservative office – which will publicly criticize regimes that mistreat religious minorities – is in part a workaround

Last May I attended a talk by Ron Deibert, Director of Citizen Lab, part of the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, at the annual Mesh Conference in Toronto. He talked about cyber crime having become one of the world’s largest growth sectors, with savvy young coders from poorer nations leading the way. Cyber crime, he explained, takes advantage of:

• mobile networking and reliance on the web for our computing
• lack of controls (i.e. regulation and legislation) internationally
• proper security practices and policies not yet in place

Deibert has written a report for GISWatch (Global Information . . . [more]

When Heather Peters was dissatisfied with the proposed class-action settlement for her 2006 Honda Civic hybrid, which didn’t provide the promised fuel economy, she opted for Small Claims Court instead.

She is taking Honda Motor Co. to court this Tuesday in in Torrance, CA for $10,000, the new limit in California starting January 1, 2012, which by far exceeds the $100 and rebates she would have received from the class action. Best of all, the rules of the jurisdiction require Honda to provide an employee representative who is not a lawyer,

Small Claims Court is a special court where you

I’m feeling lazy this Friday — something to do with too much holiday merriment, I’m certain. So today’s fillip is pretty much a do-it-yourself flip to the week’s end. All I’ll do is point you to a site that gathers sites, some of which in turn gather sites. . . .

My target website is Open Culture, and, as you might suspect from the name, it’s a place where you can find free access to a lot of interesting stuff. As Dan Colman, site founder (and incidentally Director & Associate Dean of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program), says:

Open Culture