When I started law school in 1997, I was spurred by an interest in public affairs and advocacy for women and children. By 2003, I found myself as an associate in the commercial real estate group of a large law firm, which was a total mismatch for my interests and skills. Through a journey of reflection, research and trial and error, I ended up starting Heritage Law in 2005. I found out I was expecting our first child shortly after opening the doors, and the firm was designed around how to effectively manage the competing demands of starting new law firm and being a new mother.

In contrast to where I was in 2003, I have been able to build a career and a firm that mirrors my skills and interests. Based on what I have learned through this journey, here are some initial thoughts on tips for “defining success on your own terms” in law:

1. Know yourself.

There are a lot of subtle and not so subtle messages in law school, in the workplace, in the media, from colleagues, friends and even family members about constitutes professional success. After awhile, it can be difficult to distinguish where ideas have come from and whether they are external or internal. There is a strong sense in the legal community that a successful legal career means certain things, whether it’s a partner track position at a prestigious boutique or large law firm, being corporate counsel, a professorship or becoming a judge. Maybe one of these paths is right for you – or not. The challenge is to do your best to drown out the external noise, spend time assessing what your true skills, interests and aptitudes are and then hopefully fashion a career path doing something you’re good at and like to do. Spending years practicing an area of law you dislike because that was the position open when you completed your articles is depressing to contemplate.

2. Be creative.

Similar to the comments above, a successful career does not necessarily mean a traditional path or even having the same job for more than a few years at a time. We live in a rapidly changing economic, technological and professional landscape. While the pace of change can be daunting, it is also a source of incredible opportunity. There are many different options available now and in the future if you are willing to look outside of the traditional box so to speak.

3. Seek out mentors, both informal and formal.

A recent Ontario study found that almost all women lawyers who were singled out as notably successful or rising stars in their firms identified a strong mentor who championed them to the firm and provided valuable training and client introductions. In addition to paving a pathway to success, mentors can be a valuable source of inspiration and advice. I have had a number of mentors over the years whom I didn’t actually know personally, but who inspired me with their achievements and example from afar.

4. You don’t have to do it all at once.

For women lawyers, who often have young children during the early building years of a legal career, the traditional law firm “up or out” promotion system may not work out well. This inherent conflict is likely one of the biggest reasons why only approximately 16% of equity partners of large law firms are female. That said, a thirty plus year legal career can be a fluid one, with different stages and opportunities for success. Sandra Day O’Connor spent several years at home with her young children. Success doesn’t mean you have to do it all at the same time.

5. Be brave! and failure is often an opportunity.

There is that old truism that nothing worth having comes easy. Take risks. Leave your comfort zone. The worst thing that will happen is that you will fail – which may be a wonderful opportunity for growth, learning and a new path forward.

Please share your own thoughts on defining success on your own terms in law.

The InnovAction Awards, which have been given to small firms, global giants and non-firm entities in five countries on four continents, can cover everything from legal service delivery to legal marketing, from technological systems to client communication, and from law firm management to access to justice. The criteria are simple:

1. Absence of precedent (The innovation must have never been done, or done quite this way, before)
2. Evidence of action (An innovative idea was transformed into action, and not merely reflective of best intentions.)
3. Effectiveness of innovation (There is some measurable outcome that indicates the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do.)
4. Recent implementation (Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry)

Last year, the College instituted an Honourable Mention category for innovations that, while they might not be completely original, were executed or delivered in a unique way or to an unprecedented degree. So even if your innovation wasn’t the very first to appear, the way in which you did it might very well meet the Honourable Mention criteria.

The entry fee for each submitted innovation is $US325; send in your entry before the early-bird deadline of May 3, 2010, and that fee falls to US$250. Complete details of the Awards, including the entry form, FAQs, the benefits of winning and a list of past winners, is available at the InnovAction home page.

Please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions. This is my third year serving as Chair of these Awards, and I can tell you that the variety and creativity of submissions never ceases to amaze year to year. If your firm or organization has done something original and innovative that made things better for your firm, your clients, your community or the legal marketplace, you deserve to be recognized for it — and we want to hear about it!

This question is interesting to me because Heritage Law currently offers simple estate planning services to clients entirely over the internet through a secure online portal on our firm web site. We received approval to do so from the Law Society of BC in January.

In the interest of hopefully avoiding a precedent such as the recent New Jersey ethics opinion , which I believe discriminates against solos and particularly many women lawyers who practice law from home but for security or optics reasons and do not want to provide their home address to clients, I thought I would quickly set out some thoughts on the current issue on Slaw.

Legal services are increasingly only available to individuals who are very low income through legal aid or who are very high income and can afford high hourly rates. Small businesses and middle income individuals are increasingly finding that basic legal services are beyond their budgets. On top of these financial pressures, law firms are grappling with technological changes and new competitors that are altering the business landscape. The democratization of information and access to forms through the internet has started to level the playing field between lawyers and clients.

Non-lawyer competitors are taking an increasing share of the traditional legal marketplace, particularly in more commoditized areas of law such as wills and estates. During the last decade we have seen the emergence of a new category of non-lawyer, legal information web sites, that offer very low cost solutions directly to the consumer. Unconstrained by the ethical rules that govern the legal profession, non-lawyer entities are providing wills to the general public at very low cost without the benefit of the quality, knowledge, professionalism and insurance protection available from a practicing lawyer.

Approximately 50% of Canadians die without any will at all. By offering basic estate planning services online or via phone, email and fax, lawyers can reduce costs and enhance access to this critical service for an unserved client base.

Meeting Our Ethical Duty

Identity and Retainer Issues

Despite the lack of an in person meeting, proper procedures can be put into place to ascertain client identity. For an estate planning matter, there is no barrier to meeting the current Law Society of BC client identification rules even though the client is exclusively “on-line” or on the phone. Specifically, a lawyer practicing in BC is currently only required to inspect and make a copy of a client’s driver’s licence, birth certificate or other similar record if the matter is classified as a “financial transaction” (defined as the receipt, payment or transfer of money on behalf of a client or giving instructions on behalf of a client in respect of the receipt, payment or transfer of money). The lawyer practicing online or on the phone could make it a uniform policy to request that a client scan and email or fax their drivers licence for added security. A valid credit card is usually required for payment which is a further level of identity confirmation.

A client can accept and agree to a retainer agreement outlining the scope of legal services at the time they become a client via the internet, fax, email or regular mail. The acceptance of the retainer agreement establishes the lawyer/client relationship.

Capacity and Undue Influence Issues

Many jurisdictions have older professional rules of conduct or ethics opinions that require that a lawyer meet with a client in person before drafting a power of attorney for that client to ensure capacity and that there is no undue influence. The majority of these rules were created without consideration of how newer, often web-based technologies, in combination with other best practices may be used to address these issues.

Through communications on the a secure web site, via email and on the phone, a lawyer can assess whether a client appears to understand, for example:
- the extent and value of her property;
- The persons who are her natural beneficiaries;
- The disposition she is making; and
- How these elements relate to form an orderly plan of distribution of property.

If from the communications a concern arises with respect to a client’s capacity, the presence of undue influence or there appears to be any red flag at all, the lawyer can refrain from acting further and refer the client to a lawyer who can see the client in person or else schedule an in person meeting with the client themselves if possible.

In the case of Heritage Law Online, our online screening questionnaire asks questions such as if the person is a Status Indian or US citizen, whether assets are over a certain amount, if it is a blended family, if there is a disabled beneficiary, if an expected beneficiary such as a spouse or a child is not receiving a typical distribution etc. If any of these answers are yes, then the client is directed to obtain legal advice from a traditional firm with an in person meeting. Further, if during the course of the retainer it becomes clear that a simple will is not appropriate for the client for any reason, the process is stopped, any payment is refunded and the client is advised to seek traditional legal advice with a detailed explanation as to why that is the case.

It should be noted that there are now numerous online and paper self help resources available for members of the public to acquire legal documents without a lawyer ever communicating with the client or reviewing the documents. By lowering access barriers to legal services, the public in fact will likely be better served by the higher duty of care offered by a lawyer versed in potential problems in an estate planning file.

Access to Justice Issues

Offering legal services online or over the phone means more affordable pricing, convenience and less intimidation for a large segment of the lower to middle income people who are currently not being served at all.

If the Law Society’s mandate is to act in the public interest, then surely that must include enabling the delivery of affordable and convenient legal services to lower and middle income clients to meet their basic legal needs. Further, there are well documented lawyer shortages outside the urban centers of Vancouver and Victoria. Permitting BC lawyers to practice online or over the phone will enhance access to critical legal services for the rest of the province.

So my plea to the Benchers is as follows: let’s not be a profession which restricts our ability to provide affordable legal services to an unserved public. While recognizing the legitimate professional issues to be addressed, the overarching benefit to the public is worth the challenge.

The amount of information we receive on a daily basis has grown dramatically, but the amount of control we have over that information seems to have decreased exponentially. The Pomodoro Technique may be a good filter from internal and external distractions to keep you focused on the task at hand.

The Pomodoro Technique, a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo, breaks down periods of work into 25-minute intervals, separated by breaks. The Pomodoro Technique is named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that was first used by its creator Francesco Cirillo when he was a university student (Pomodoro is Italian for tomato).

The aim of the Pomodoro Technique is to use time as your ally rather than your enemy to more efficiently accomplish tasks. For each 25 minute interval, the goal is to focus on the task at hand while avoiding internal and external distractions as much as possible.

You need a timer, paper and a pencil to get started.

The basic steps are:

1. Create a to do list of the tasks to be accomplished that day and prioritize them;
2. choose the first task to be done;
3. set the timer to 25 minutes (or one “pomodoro”);
4. work on the task until the timer rings;
5. take a five minute break;
6. When the five minutes are up, keep working, pomodoro after pomodoro, until the task is complete. Once the task is complete, you can cross it off your list. Then move on to the next task;
7. every four “pomodoros” take a longer break (15-20 minutes).

Many people find it difficult to concentrate on one task for 25 minutes at a time. Francesco reassures us that with his technique, “the next pomodoro will go better”.

You can download a free PDF detailing the technique here.

I haven’t personally tried this technique yet, but I’ve read convincing testimonials about it during late night internet browsing sessions. I’ll put it first on tomorrow’s to do list.

Don’t get me wrong – there is a tremendous torrent of innovation occurring in the SaaS space; there are now SaaS delivered applications for most of the major pillars required to run your law practice, and they are comprehensive and increasingly feature rich. But it’s also important to remember that the web browser – when running an interactive SaaS application – is really just acting like a proxy for some small part of a remote desktop. A remote desktop, you say? Yes, just like a remote desktop, except one which delivers a relatively limited subset of the functionality we’ve come to expect from our desktop PCs. Certainly, there’s nothing particularly surprising about that – except to note that you still need your actual local desktop to stitch together the results: someplace to word process, someplace to crunch your spreadsheets, someplace to craft your next slide deck. And sure, you could just use Google Apps for that, but where are you saving the result at the end of the day? How are you going to get your Google document from Google’s world into your Document Management System without having it pass through your local desktop? And so long as it’s traversing your local desktop universe, why not simply consider moving your entire desktop into the cloud at the same time?

And so I come to the crux of the argument for hosted desktops, or at least a hosted desktop infrastructure: Gartner recons that no fewer than 66 million desktops will be virtualized and hosted by 2014, representing 15% of all professional desktops, period. Those would either exist in the enterprise datacenter or be delivered by a 3rd party service provider, or managed jointly with infrastructure offered by a managed service provider. And the beauty of it all is that you don’t have to give up anything: you get to access everything in the cloud from anyplace, and you get to best of the SaaS applications integrated all on the very same desktop. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the key benefit to our firm is the fact this model literally enables our virtual practice for the flexibility to hire and retain work-from-home talent. But the benefits apply equally to larger firms interested in consolidating infrastructure, reducing IT management costs, and enabling increased remote worker flexibility.

And so if you consider SaaS and hosted desktops mutually exclusive, you may want to think again.

The central premise of the book is that creating a strong team is one of the few remaining competitive advantages available to organizations. Functional teams make better decisions and accomplish more in less time. Talented people are less likely to leave organizations where they are part of a cohesive team.

Politics is defined as when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. Politics and other dysfunctions get in the way of the effective teamwork which is critical to a firm’s success. The book states that if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

So how to you make a strong team? To reduce politics and confusion in an organization, you need to address the five common dysfunctions:

Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust
This occurs when team members are reluctant to be vulnerable with one another and are unwilling to admit their mistakes, weaknesses or needs for help. Without a certain comfort level among team members, a foundation of trust is impossible.

Strategy for Overcoming:
- Identify and discuss individual strengths and weaknesses
- Spend considerable time in face-to-face meetings and working sessions

Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict
Teams that are lacking on trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate about key issues, causing situations where team conflict can easily turn into veiled discussions and back channel comments. In a work setting where team members do not openly air their opinions, inferior decisions are the result.

Strategy for Overcoming:
- Acknowledge that conflict is required for productive meetings
- Establish common ground rules for engaging in conflict
- Understand individual team member’s natural conflict styles

Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment
Without conflict, it is difficult for team members to commit to decisions, creating an environment where ambiguity prevails. Lack of direction and commitment can make employees disgruntled.

Strategy for Overcoming:
- Review commitments at the end of each meeting to ensure all team members are aligned
- Adopt a “disagree and commit” mentality—make sure all team members are committed regardless of initial disagreements

Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability
When teams don’t commit to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven individuals hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that may seem counterproductive to the overall good of the team.

Strategy for Overcoming:
- Explicitly communicate goals and standards of behavior
- Regularly discuss performance versus goals and standards

Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
Team members naturally tend to put their own needs (ego, career development, recognition, etc.) ahead of the collective goals of the team when individuals aren’t held accountable. If a team has lost sight of the need for achievement, the business ultimately suffers.

Strategy for Overcoming:
- Keep the team focused on tangible group goals
- Reward individuals based on team goals and collective success

Application to Law Firms

Partners in law firms essentially own their own individual businesses under the firm banner. Compensation mechanisms are often a source of firm politics. Law firms can be heirarichal and more junior lawyers may not be comfortable being totally transparent with more senior colleagues. Also, lawyers as a group are not representative of the greater population, most notably that they are often highly autonomous individuals. The saying that managing lawyers is like herding cats reflects that law firms and lawyers individually present unique challenges to team building.

According the Lencioni, teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Members of functional teams overcome the natural tendencies that make trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and a focus on results so elusive.

Possibly, even lawyers.

A good example comes from call I got early last week from an Ontario lawyer that was in the middle of dealing with a matter that was clearly an attempt to dupe him with a bad cheque.

The lawyer was initially contacted by phone (not email) by a woman who wanted to retain him for help with collecting support from her ex-husband. For the initial identification she provided (a scanned copy by email) an Illinois driver’s license that looked legit. Things were otherwise looking normal at this point, although there was no apparent connection with Ontario. This made the lawyer hesitate and he asked for further identification so as to verify the identity and location of the woman. At this point the story changed a fair bit. The woman indicated she was actually on assignment in Japan and, you guessed it, her ex-husband was willing to make an immediate payment.

At the time the story changed, there was still no apparent rationale for the ex-husband to be making a payment through an Ontario lawyer’s office. This prompted the lawyer to ask some more pointed questions in calls with the woman to get some more background. The woman always had a quick and somewhat reasonable answer to the lawyer’s questions, but all the answers fell short of being entirely satisfactory.

Next, without any warning or indication it was coming, the lawyer received by registered mail (in an envelope that had a hand-written addresses on it) an uncertified cheque for $198,280. It appeared to be from an insurance brokerage and was written on a Brampton branch of BMO. The cheque looked totally legit to the lawyer. The head teller at the lawyer’s bank (not BMO) told him that the cheque appeared to be fine. The lawyer then called the insurance brokerage named on the cheque and a cross-check of the cheque number confirmed that it was a real cheque that had been issued to someone else for $280.00.

The woman called just after the lawyer got the cheque (Good timing!!) and told him to take his fees from the cheque after it had been deposited. The woman now asked that the remaining funds be wired to an account in China. Her reason was simple – she indicated that she had already pledged the funds to a charity there.

At this point the lawyer advised the woman he would not be acting on the matter as it was clearly a fraud and that he was returning the cheque to the real issuer. This did not deter her. The woman called back again and pushed hard for the lawyer to cash the cheque – and the explanation got more urgent – please pay up as I have pledged money to an orphanage and they need it to finish some building they are doing. Unbelievable!

There are several lessons to be learned from this and the other similar fraud attempts I am seeing:

• Initial contacts from the fraudster may not be via an impersonal and badly worded email. In this case it was by phone (and we have seen attempted and successful frauds where the fraudster came to the lawyers office multiple times). And the emails are getting better too. Some of the initial contact emails provide background that establishes a connection to Ontario.
• Carefully check and cross-verify client identification, especially if there are any questions as to where the client is or if there is not apparent connection to your jurisdiction
• Carefully gather relevant background facts and information, especially if the information provided by the fraudster is incomplete or inconsistent
• Carefully look at the labelling and sender’s address on the package or envelope that the cheque was delivered in. Handwritten addresses are common and it often appears that the packages were sent from a location that has no connection to the people involved in the matter.
• Carefully inspect the cheque or bank draft. Take it to your bank to see if they can verify it. If you think you are dealing with an inexperience teller ask for a more senior person to look at it (I really wish banks would be more willing to help verify cheques). Call the branch which holds the account the cheque was written on (and don’t use the phone number or address on the cheque (they will put you in touch with the fraudster) – get it from the bank or financial institution’s website). Call the payor named on the cheque to see if it actually made the payment (and get contact info from an independent source – not off the cheque), especially if the payor doesn’t look connected to the matter (from the example above, a insurance brokerage making a spousal support arrears payment).

The bottom line: If things don’t add up – ask more questions and don’t let the client bully you into making a payment on matter that is a real or apparent fraud.

From articles like these it is clear that thousands of lawyers are being targeted: Bad-Check Schemes Targeting Lawyers Are Increasingly Sophisticated and How to avoid becoming a fraud victim. Take precautions and don’t be one of the unlucky ones that are fooled.

Use the free fraud prevention resources on the practicePRO Fraud Page (www.practicepro.ca/fraud) to help the lawyers and staff in your firm avoid being duped. In particular, these resources will help you and your staff avoid being duped:

Download our Fraud Fact Sheet and give it to the lawyers and staff in your office. It lists the common types of bad cheque and real estate frauds and the red flags that will help you spot a fraudulent matter.

Listen to the archived LAWPRO webinar presentation on what frauds look like and how to avoid them. Access the MP3 (audio) file and the program PowerPoint and materials.

Cross posted on Avoid A Claim

As a cloud computing supporter, I mentioned that even a couple of years ago, the idea of achieving full in-office productivity over the internet seemed difficult to imagine. The laptop, smartphone, cloud infrastructure, and internet access technologies simply weren’t capable or ubiquitous enough to match in-office facilities and resources. Now, the confluence of advances in these technology areas enable lawyers to be just as productive from practically anywhere as they are from traditional bricks and mortar offices.

Here are the slides from my two presentations.

Several Canadian provinces and territories have enacted or are in the process of enacting legislation that will eliminate internal trade barriers and enhance labour mobility to ensure all Canadian workers have the freedom to be able to work in their fields anywhere in Canada. These endeavours stem from the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), signed in 1994 by the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments (except Nunavut), which came into force in 1995. Specifically, Chapter 7 of the AIT deals with labour mobility and states that any qualified worker in an occupation in one province or territory must be granted access to similar employment opportunities in any other Canadian jurisdiction.

Chapter 7 of the AIT and accompanying provincial and territorial legislation target three main barriers that prevent or limit workers from moving among provinces:

• Residency requirements
• Practices related to occupational licensing, certification and registration
• Differences in occupational standards

The AIT mandates that any worker certified, licensed, registered or officially recognized in one province or territory, upon application, will be certified, licensed, registered or officially recognized for that same occupation by any other province or territory without the worker being required to undertake any material additional requirements, such as education, training, examination or assessments.

However, provinces and territories have the right to maintain specific occupational standards and can adopt exceptions to certification requirements based on legitimate objectives. The meaning of legitimate objectives and lists of known exceptions by jurisdictions and occupations are published on the AIT website at www.ait-aci.ca/index_en/labour.htm. The legal profession is one of the occupations that needs to be recognized among the provinces and territories, but is also one of the professions with exceptions to full labour mobility in Canada.

Lawyers
The legal profession is among the exceptions because of the differences between the legal systems of Quebec (civil law) and the rest of the country (common law).

The rationale for the exception is that there are significant foundational differences in the legal systems, including the way the law is developed and codified. Persons prepared to practise in the civil law system will not possess the necessary knowledge or expertise to practice in a common law system, and vice versa.

This generally means that lawyers that are members of the Barreau du Québec may require additional training and examinations to ensure competency to practise in provincial/territorial common law. And, a lawyer in a common law province or territory who files a request for certification to the Barreau du Québec will have to demonstrate that he or she has mastered the competencies, knowledge and abilities related to the practice of law according to the Quebec Civil Code, through evaluation, education, training and exams.

As a result, many were unconvinced that anything would come out of the labour mobility strategy as it relates to the legal profession and the province of Quebec. That’s why it was encouraging to read in the March 13, 2010, issue of The Lawyers Weekly that the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) has developed a special licence for lawyers in Quebec in order to practise in Ontario. It is called an L3 licence. Lawyers wanting to get an L3 will have to be in good standing with the Barreau du Québec and pay their dues in both Quebec and Ontario. L3-category lawyers will have the same professional responsibilities and be subject to the same by-laws as L1 practitioners. However, they won’t have to get liability insurance from both provinces. In essence, the “home” jurisdiction will continue to cover the lawyer for his or her work in the other jurisdiction.

L3 lawyers are limited to:

(a) Giving legal advice on:

(i) The law of Québec and matters involving the law of Québec,
(ii) Matters under federal jurisdiction, or
(iii) Matters involving public international law, provided his or her home jurisdiction’s insurer covers such services,

(b) Drawing, revising or settling a document for use in a proceeding concerning matters under federal jurisdiction,

(c) Appearing as counsel or advocate before any tribunal with respect to matters under federal jurisdiction.

Quebec has also reciprocated. The Barreau du Québec has created a form of membership known as Canadian Legal Advisor; allowing members of the LSUC to provide legal advice on matters dealing with public international law and the laws of their own province as well as matters under federal jurisdiction.

Certain agreements still need to be signed between Ontario and Quebec, and by-laws drafted to give full effect to this strategy that meet the goals of national mobility under the AIT.

It is important to note that the labour mobility strategies will not guarantee anyone a job in any province or territory, or any increase in wages or salaries. People who want to move to another province or territory will compete for jobs and local wages and salaries as they always have. Also, there are no guarantees that law firms in Ontario will need lawyers who can only deal with the law of the province of Quebec, and matters under federal jurisdiction, and vice versa.

Right now it is difficult to determine the precise economic and other impacts the AIT will have, but the openness and flexibility that the LSUC and the Barreau du Québec have shown suggest that provinces and territories that are most open will be competitive and deal with the labour market needs of the future.

They complain of incidents of violence against lawyers, witnesses and other people.

Court house security committees composed of lawyers, Crown attorneys, judges, Department of Justice officials and sheriffs made recommendations to the government in the spring of 2009 on how to improve courthouse safety.

Saying that the government has done nothing, the Crown Attorneys Association has decided to file an official complaint with the Department of Labour.

Cross-posted to Library Boy.

I do think it odd, but perhaps no odder than having the Library report to IT as in some organizations. I see the Library ideally as a parallel department supporting Marketing as well as other departments. But it likely depends on the organization and culture of the firm as well as its overall strategy. What I can think of to support this move:

• if the Library is doing competitive intelligence as a major initiative
• if the Library is doing a lot of proactive business intelligence research to support business development
• if the Library is involved in website development and maintenance
• if the Library contributes substantially to the extensive Client Alerts and Newsletters put out by the firm
• Marketing often has better financial support in a firm than the Library or even IT so it can help secure better resources for the Library

Embedding a librarian or two in the Marketing department would be ideal, but I’m not sure about moving the whole department there. What happens to the whole research function and the administration of resources to support areas other than Marketing?

Greg Lambert is going to try to find out more about the change to help flesh out the reasoning. My question for Slaw readers: does this change make sense to you? What other reasons can you think of for/against this move? I still need some convincing.

Photo: Explore by Kevin Dooley – made available on Flickr under Creative Commons.

The United States remains a nation at war. We face a growing threat from rogue regimes that seek or have already obtained nuclear weapons. America’s interests are challenged by an authoritarian China, a resurgent Russia, and dictators in our own hemisphere who ally themselves with our adversaries. Amidst the great challenges to America’s security and prosperity, the current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests.

The Board members are Elizabeth L. Cheney, Debra Burlingame, and William Kristol.

This group released a video via YouTube that strongly criticized U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder for hiring to the Justice Department seven lawyers who at one time had represented terrrorist suspects, and who, the video implied, therefore had suspect “values.” These lawyers were labelled the “Al Queda Seven” in the video.

The question asked by the Times editors was “Is it fair to criticize lawyers for the actions of their clients?” Answers have been supplied by a number of prominent law professors and legal commentators, all but one or two supplying the obvious answer of no. All are worth reading, because the issue is nuanced around the edges, it seems to me. 

For example, Stephen Gillers, legal ethics prof at NYU, moves the question to whether any of the criticism is right, pointing out that “When a lawyer is free to choose, the choice can be criticized because the freedom gives the lawyer moral agency.” But he treates litigation differently from, say, corporate work “[b]ecause litigation happens in public, it educates us and enables the law to grow.”

I think there’s some merit in that distinction, particularly if litigation is understood to mean actions involving the government. One gross oversimplification I use from time to time gives lawyers two main social functions: that of creating new wealth and that of supporting the weaker against the stronger. The latter, in my view, is the obligation the profession assumes in return for the right to the monopoly on practice. However thought of, though, the professional duty to represent those accused by the state of wrongdoing means necessarily that lawyers will associate with folks whose values they likely don’t share. 

But that doesn’t stop some people from conflating lawyer and client, from recoiling in distaste: how can you get a rapist off on a technicality? how can you defend murderers? and so forth. Most difficult of all for some people are the politico-criminal cases such as those involved in this current American right wing brouhaha. Larger forces than run of the mill human venality are at play and even lawyers can be swayed by the wieldings of power that may occur.

I remember a case that occurred in Canada just as I was beginning my career — nothing so extreme as terrorism — just a small matter of social activism and strong language. The account is written up in what I think is an essay by a student at St. Thomas University — I found it as a .doc file via a Google search. It tells the story of Tom Murphy, who, in 1969, wrote an article for The Brunswickan, the student newspaper at the University of New Brunswick. (See also Canada’s Rights Movement: A History.)  Murphy’s article was harshly critical of the judge who sentenced Murphy’s mentor and physics professor to 30 days in jail for violating the terms of his suspension from UNB, which, in turn, was imposed on him for having taken part in a protest. Murphy said, among other things, that the courts of New Brunswick were “simply the instruments of the corporate elite,” and that the judge was biased and unfair, because “[c]ourt appointments are political appointments. Only the naive would reject the notion that an individual becomes a justice or judge after he proves his worth to the establishment..”

Murphy was cited by the judge for contempt of court as a result. The difficulty, as I remember it, and as this piece recounts, was that no New Brunswick lawyer would represent Murphy. In the end, Murphy wrote to John Diefenbaker, who in turn arranged for Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer, Alan Borovoy, to be Murphy’s lawyer. Murphy was sentenced to ten days in jail.  ( R. v. Murphy (1969)  N.B.J 53)

Wouldn’t happen now.

Here’s a short video by Maffin showing how CaseStudiesOnline.com works:

I took the opportunity to interview Tod Maffin over the phone last week to find out more for the Slaw audience:

Connie Crosby: What inspired you to put this website together?

Tod Maffin: I do a lot of consulting work and presentations for a number of clients, primarily independent professionals such as lawyers, accountants, realtors and so on. I have always been racking my brain to find a really good source of case studies. There are lots of articles on the web where people have said, we did this phenomenal YouTube campaign and wasn’t it great, we had 4,000 views. But 4,000 views don’t necessarily translate into dollars in pocket. So it was really difficult to find true case studies where you could see the bottom line value.

What I had started to do was just collect a bunch on my own. I had originally just bookmarked them, then I built a little bit of a database so that I could just type in a couple of keywords like legal, Twitter and it would pop up with some case studies. And then I thought I built this database now, I might as well let other people use it. That’s where it was inspired.

CC: Are you thinking of creating a business model around it, or are you going to keep it free for everybody?

TM: – I’m going to keep it free for everyone. The business model is that I’m going to be doing some in-depth interviews with folks who have planned these campaigns and I’ll be doing hour-long interviews, sometimes video and I’ll have the complete transcript available. You’ll be able to download it and listen to it as an mp3 and for those ones I’ll charge a small fee for people to download and access. But by far the vast majority of case studies are going to be 100% free for people to access.

CC: I noticed on the site it says “welcome, guest” on the top. Are you thinking of having people sign in to something like a “my case studies online”?

TM: What you see right now is the first phase. There are a couple of things that are coming in the next few weeks. One is a ratings system so that people can flush out the exceptionally good case studies. Another is exactly what you are suggesting which is a “my case studies online” version of the site, where you’ll be able to identify the categories or tactics or demographics that are specifically of interest to you.

In the meantime there will be sort of a sub-version of that where you’ll be able to specify, just by typing in the special URL, you can narrow down specifically to the type of category you are interested in. So, for instance, you’ll be able to type in legal.casestudiesonline.com and it will take you to all the case studies that are around law. That’s not in place yet, but it’s coming. If I could only have the legal case studies there right now! But the same thing will apply for anything, such as moms.casestudiesonline.com or youtube.casestudiesonline.com and it will take you directly to those searches.

CC: What types of case study contributions are you looking for?

TM: I am really looking for examples where an organization did something in the realm of social media and received some knowledge back from it. So there are plenty of websites that you can go to where they will tell you how many hits they got to their website or how many Twitter followers they got. I’m not really interested in that so much as finding out specifically what we learned from that. How will we apply our brand in the future as a result of this marketing campaign that we did using social media?

So I want it to be a little bit more of a rich value. That said, those are harder to come by on the Internet. It’s going to require me and my contributors to do a lot of legwork, interviewing a lot of these folks. In fact, as we’re speaking right now I’m on my way to Toronto to do a bunch of interviews. One of them is with the ad agency behind the Doritos campaign, the one where they did a brand handover and they essentially gave the brand to bloggers and to the public to re-shape as it went. So, to be able to drill down into those specific case studies is where a lot of the value is going to be.

CC: If a law firm or other legal organization wants to contribute something they need to think about what they are willing to share in that regard?

TM: That’s right. There are some industries, the legal industry being one of them, that have in the past been rather sensitive about what they let go in terms of both their successes and failures in marketing campaigns and branding endeavours. I really hope by having some of these things out there it will provide more interest, certainly more value, for a lot of organizations to build that kind of knowledge internally and share it. You know, it’s sort of in the spirit of “co-opetion”. You hear that phrase quite a bit and the idea that you raise the tide and it floats all boats. I’m a really big believer in that.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get more independent professionals on board; my role and the role of my contributors is to provide that knowledge. Now, that said, that’s one approach for getting information and that’s really if I or some of the contributors just stumble upon it online.

There is a secondary way if your law firm or associated kind of company has a good example of something that you want on this website: that’s what some of the revenue model for this site is as well. If you want to appear on the site guaranteed and get interviewed by me and put together one of those packages, then that can be done for a fairly low investment.

Thanks to Tod Maffin for the interview. For more information, please visit the website CaseStudiesOnline.com.

The program has largely been set, and the 50-plus speaker roster is being finalized.  The subject areas being covered:

Day 1:

• Cyber crime
• IT in courtrooms
• Tech Showcase – written communications
• e-Discovery
• Early adopters
• Tech Showcase – research and processing results

Day 2:

• Intellectual Property
• Tips and Tricks at the office and elsewhere
• Tech Showcase: cloud computing
• Commercial law
• In-house lawyers
• Tech Showcase: law firm management

The Plenary on Day 1 will be Countering spam by legislative means  in Canada(Bill C-27) by the Honourable Yoine Goldstein Ad. E.  Plenary for Day 2 is scheduled as Controversy surrounding Google Books and the Book Rights Registry by Charles S. Morgan.

Early bird registration is available until March 12th.

At the moment the only area in which PolicyTool offers its service is in relation to the use of social media by employees. Other policy areas are under development.

The use of PolicyTool is currently free.

It’s been getting a lot of coverage on Twitter and has been bookmarked a couple of hundred times on Declicious. Congratulations, David.