You’ve probably seen the movie by now, and you might even have read the book; in either case, you’ve likely seen the clear potential for the application of Moneyball principles to the legal market. Several smart observers (and one not-so-smart) have already seen it and written about it, including Paul Lippe, Patrick J. Lamb, Lisa Salazar, and the good folks at Lawyer Metrics and the Harvard Business Review. I recommend all these articles to you and encourage you to adopt the “thinking differently” approach that they embody.

For myself, I want to write what will . . . [more]

Last week I was half-listening to a CBC radio interview in the “Gamechangers” series on the Current, in which a physicist was explaining parallel universes and quantum computing. There was something about his delivery that made me pay more and more attention. His language was simple and clear. I was being drawn in to what felt like relatively effortless understanding (listen especially around the 12 – 16 minute mark). I turned up the volume and gave the radio my full attention, realizing I was being captured by excellent advocacy.

It is of course the fundamental goal of all advocates to . . . [more]

For the record here is the Prime Minister’s announcement of Justice Andromache Karakatsanis and Justice Michael J. Moldaver as the Government’s nominees for the Supreme Court of Canada. Both nominees have agreed to appear at an ad hoc parliamentary committee to answer questions of Members of Parliament on October 19. Blatchford’s reaction in the National Post is here, the Post’s editorial reaction and CTV’s story.

Justice Moldaver’s CV and Justice Karakatsanis’ CV

  . . . [more]

Hats off to the judges present and past (four retired judges) of the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal who are giving up evenings in November to provide educational sessions for islanders on PEI’s courts, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, public law, criminal law, civil law and family law. It will also include a tour of the Sir Louis Henry Davies Law Courts building where participants can see the courtrooms, holding cells, law library and public areas.

The free sessions will take place November 8, 15 and 22 starting at 6:45 p.m. and registration is limited to 50 people. . . . [more]

Last week the most severe outage in RIM’s history crippled BlackBerry users’ abilities to use e-mail, BBM, and the Internet in general for over three days.

The outage highlighted two deeply concerning issues with RIM. First, it is almost beyond comprehension how a single point of failure could bring RIM’s global network down for this period of time. In the face of fierce competition from Apple and Google, RIM had been able to depend on real-time and reliable e-mail delivery as one of its key competitive differentiators. Not any more.

Worse, the company’s response has come across as arrogant, aloof, . . . [more]

The Law Foundation of Ontario is helping to coordinate articling positions in the Public Interest community, in conjunction with Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC). From the LFO’s information page:

The Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO) is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications from prospective host organizations for its groundbreaking Public Interest Articling Fellowship Program for the 2013-14 articling period.

The Public Interest Articling Fellowship was conceived to meet both a significant need for legal assistance within the public interest community and to allow law students to gain valuable experience in public interest law. The program expands

In 2008 Parliament passed the Statutes Repeal Act, aimed at clearing out those portions of federal legislation that have passed, assented to, but not declared in force for, effectively, a decade. That Act was itself proclaimed in force in June of 2010.

Under its provisions, each year the Minister of Justice is to draw up a list of appropriate candidates and present it to the Senate and Commons within five days of the first sitting in the calendar year. Specifically, a target is any statutory provisions that

2….
(a) was assented to nine years or more before the December

If I offered you a free means of advertising your name, profession and contact information every time you sent an email, would you leap at the chance? Surprisingly, many lawyers don’t.

I’m referring to the email signature—an electronic version of your business card that you can attach automatically at the end of an email message. It’s a neat and tidy way of letting everyone know your name, your firm, your contact information and anything else you care to add—every time you send an email message. Many lawyers still send emails without an automatic email signature. At best, this is a . . . [more]

Persons Day this year falls on Tuesday, commemorating 82 years since women were made persons under the law following the Persons Case. LEAF, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, is holding its annual gala Persons Day breakfast in cities across Canada over a number of mornings (Ottawa’s was already held on Friday). There is still time to book your ticket. Last year 5,000 people across Canada attended the breakfast, with 800 in Toronto alone.

The Government of Canada’s Status of Women Canada website has additional information about the “Famous Five” and the Persons Case at http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dates/gg/case-affaire-eng.html (English) and  . . . [more]

In the latest chapter of the online defamation case by UofO law professor, Joanne St. Lewis, the plaintiff proceeded recently with a motion to compel a response from undertakings and refusals. These motions are rather commonplace in civil litigation, except that the defendant, Denis Rancourt, sought to have a blogger accompany him to report on the proceedings.

The undertakings and refusals emerged from the cross examination of an affidavit, submitted to oppose a motion by the plaintiff to abridge the time for mediation and require the parties to use an experienced private mediator rather than a roster mediator.

Counsel . . . [more]

Google provides a dashboard where you may view and edit the information it collects about you, and set policies for its collection of info in future. Google also describes data it collects that is not editable here.

It’s an interesting interface as much for what it implies as for what it states. Since multiple services, such as Gmail and Picasa, collect personal information independently, any inaccuracies in the various profiles could potentially be identified and corrected. For instance, my gmail profile lists Afghanistan as my location, but I’ll bet that, between Picasa, my calendar info, and various other indicators, . . . [more]

The moon today is waning gibbous and 95% of full — whether or not you can see it through the rain or past the city lights where you are. I suspect that, if you’re at all like me, you don’t often look up and note old luna’s phase. Nor, I suspect again, are you likely able to say just by looking at the image on the right whether the moon’s on its way to or from full. That fact struck me the other day; not only have we in the city — and, I dare say, in nearly all of . . . [more]