Blogs

I’d like to share a new website launched yesterday in the BC market by Dye & Durham:  The BC Law Watch Blog.

The approach with this website is very focused on news within the BC legal community – from local associations, to government agencies, the LSBC, Law Foundation and the BC Courts, to name a few.  And for those interested, I posted some additional comments on the monitoring tactics we’re using in a VLLB post yesterday.

Please drop by and have a look.

Over on 3 Geeks and a Law Library, Greg Lambert makes note that yesterday at the Law Marketing Association conference, Joe Calve, the new CMO of Morrison Foerster mentioned he had moved their Library department  into the Marketing department. Lambert questions the change, but does say, “From what I’m hearing from the Librarians at MoFo, they are excited about the change and are looking forward to the transition.” MoFo is known for doing things a bit differently than everyone else, after all.

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.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times feature “Room for Debate” began commentary (“Attacking Lawyers From the Right and Left“) on a story involving a group called Keep America Safe. (I hate the power we give to “proper nouns,” letting them force us to say words that we’d never otherwise utter. But that’s another story.) This excerpt from their “about” page will give you the flavour:

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.

A recent case has tested Bill C-45, the amendment to the Criminal Code that attached criminal responsibility to an organization or corporation for negligence related to health and safety in the workplace, and broadened the range of individuals who are subject to charges under the Code. Since the inception of Bill C-45 on March 31, 2004, charges have been laid in just four cases, and only one resulted in a conviction. As a result, many are wondering if the enforcement of such provisions is even possible.

Moreover, Bill C-45 added Section 217.1 to the Criminal Code to impose a duty on organizations and their representatives (whether a director, partner, manager, supervisor, employee, member, agent or contractor of the organization) who have authority to direct how others do work or perform a task to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to persons performing the work or task, and to the public, arising from the work or task.

Well, another attempt at enforcing organizations’ criminal liability as a result of the acts or omissions of managers/supervisors is underway.

Police in Sault Ste. Marie have charged two individuals and one organization with criminal negligence causing death in the death of public works employee James Vecchio at the city landfill: crane operator Anthony Vanderloo, crane owner David Brian Selvers, and 1531147 Ontario Ltd., operating as Millennium Crane Rental of Sault Ste. Marie. The criminal charges came after the police service issued a statement that its 10-month investigation into the fatality was complete. Preliminary results suggest that the operator of the crane, which was loading concrete into the excavation hole where Vecchio was working, backed up too far while repositioning, and subsequently fell into the hole, crushing Vecchio.

These criminal charges came shortly after Ontario’s Ministry of Labour confirmed it also laid six civil charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. OHS charges against Millennium Crane revolve around the proper maintenance, operation and use of a crane, and providing instructions to employees about operating equipment in a manner that might endanger the operator or another individual, including failing to ensure the crane operator was properly licensed.

The first court appearance in the Ontario Court of Justice provincial offences division is scheduled for March 22, 2010.

Criminal negligence causing death is an indictable offence for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, or very steep fines with no limits. If the case goes to court, in offences based on negligence, the court must determine whether an individual acted so carelessly or with such reckless disregard for the safety of others as to deserve criminal punishment. The Crown will have to prove that employees of the organization committed the careless and reckless act, and that a senior officer, director or manager did not take the necessary reasonable steps to prevent them from doing so.

We will have to wait and see how this case evolves.

The provisions of Bill C-45 may not yet have received the judicial interpretation that it warrants, but the tide maybe changing. In any case, full compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act duties and requirements should provide organizations and corporations with a strong defence against a charge of criminal negligence.

Here’s a selection from the last few weeks of tweets that I and others think might interest those who don’t use Twitter or who don’t follow the authors of these tweets.The source is shown by the @xxxx at the end of the retweet. If none appears, it’s because I’m the source.

If you are on Twitter and read or publish something that you think we should re-broadcast here, simply include the hash tag #slawca in the tweet or retweet. If you’ve published something on Slaw, there’s no need to use that hashtag on Twitter: all it does is bring to our attention things we might not otherwise have seen. 

• Don’t say I didn’t warn you about these random breath tests. I predicted this this way back in Oct. http://bit.ly/yD5hM by Prutschi
• Legal Eve blog: And the Oscar Goes to… Logorama. Keeping lawyers up at night. http://legaleve.wordpress.com/ by wiredcamellia
• RT @rhh Amazon opening a Canadian facility: http://j.mp/c2qwwQ by stevematthews
• RT @jasnwilsn: “Is there a future for law books?” http://bit.ly/dqm9fs <thoughtful and accurate
• RT @karensawatzky From VoxPopuLII: Environmentally-Friendly Citations http://bit.ly/dDwaOq by richards1000
• “A conversation with Dr. Ann Cavoukian” http://bit.ly/bE86NB from “On the cutting edge” by karensawatzky
• RT @LawProf The IT Law Wiki has just passed 7500 entries. Check it out http://www.itlaw.wikia.com by conniecrosby
• The only legal entity among the UK&apos;s top 200 brands? The answer might surprise you: http://bit.ly/acbElf by jordan_law21
• RT @thetrialwarrior Access to Injustice: Pro Se Litigants, Civil Justice Reform and the Economics of Law http://bit.ly/diNGcV
• @UTLaw was not like this. The kids from Western Law are keepin&apos; it real, yo: http://bit.ly/a9gg6H by jacobglick
• RT @WSJLawBlog: On Working Mothers at Big Firms: A Blistering Critique http://on.wsj.com/cqB2Uw
• “The 21st Century Law Library Conundrum: Free Law and Paying to Understand It” http://bit.ly/9zfRbv by rleiter

The January/February 2010 Law Librarians newsletter put out by legal publisher Westlaw has published an article entitled Law Firm Economics and the Librarian—Bring Value Through Training. The lessons can apply beyond the context of private law firm libraries:

“Bring value through training. That was one message that came through loud and clear recently in ‘Succeed in the New Law Firm Library Reality—Learn the Business Side of the Firm’, a webinar hosted by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the informal group of law library managers of the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) (…)

“So how can training attorneys help? Here are a few ways:

• Training makes users more efficient and more cost-effective. They can do more work for more clients with more relevant results in the same amount of time, increasing productivity.
• Training limits total use of online services and keeps costs down, which has an impact on future contract negotiations.
• Training brings costs down for clients to whom they are passed along (much less common these days—clients often won’t and sometimes can’t pay).”

“Strauss [administrator at Wiley Rein, a Washington area law firm] stressed that this is an opportunity for librarians to ‘take ownership’ and that our ownership needs to be more visible and measurable. In particular, librarians can do the following:

• Show how the time spent training is reflected in cost savings and reduced usage.
• Talk to your more senior attorneys about the work product they are getting from your trainees. Is it better? If not, find out why not and work on improving your program.
• Survey your users to see what’s working and what isn’t. Elicit feedback and, where appropriate, highlight success to your higher-ups.
• If you aren’t already doing a self-review of some kind or annual report on activities to promote library services, you should be.”

We’re pleased indeed to announce that Yosie Saint-Cyr has joined Slaw as a regular contributor. Yosie was called to the Quebec bar in 1988, where she practised employment and labour law until 1999. For over 10 years Yosie has been the Managing Editor of the Human Resources and Compliance Collection from First Reference and she is the managing editor of the Human Resources Professional Association (HRPA) of Ontario’s monthly member e-newsletter ELAW. She is one of Canada’s best-known and most-respected HR authors, with an extensive background in employment and labour law across the country.

Yosie can also be found on Twitter @yosie23.

Please welcome Yosie Saint-Cyr to the Slaw community.

I don’t make a habit of posting my newspaper articles here – but this one has received more than normal attention on my own blog, so  thought it might be worthwhile posting it here as well.  Its on my blog, and on Canoe

I can’t post it here in full for contractual reasons – but the gist is that a 19 year old student has been sued by the North Face clothing company over his South Butt clothes that mock North Face fleece jackets worn by the popular crowd at his school.

In response to North Face’s tagline, “Never stop exploring”, South Butt adopted “Never stop relaxing.”

The defense itself is quite amusing – athough I understand that the court was not thrilled with that approach.  The claim is here.

Unless it is settled, the case will ultimately be decided on the technicalities of U.S. trademark law.

Since one legal test of trademark infringement is customer confusion, you be the judge: Are the marks confusing enough that customers might think products bearing them are from the same source?

The Canadian Bar Association’s National International Law Section and the National Continuing Education Committee are presenting the 2010 International Law conference on “The Future of Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Relations” on May 6-7 in Vancouver.

The conference program (available in PDF) lists the following plenary events and breakout sessions:

• Legal Lessons in Inter-Jurisdictional Relations from the 2010 Olympics Games
• Cross Border Regulation and Trade
• Labour Movement and Human Trafficking into the Pacific North West
• Corporate Complicity in International Human Rights Abuse – The Search for Effective Remedies (dinner keynote – speaker: Justice Ian Binnie)
• TILMA, AIT, NAFTA, and WTO: Integration or fragmentation of inter-jurisdictional law?
  Trade Issues: “buy American”, border congestion, and “cap & trade”
• A Practical Guide to Cross-border Mediation-Arbitration
• An American Perspective on Canadian and American Legal Cross-border Concerns and Opportunities
• Canadian and American Cross-border Concerns and Opportunities: A dialogue between the legal profession, stakeholders, and government
• Freedom of Expression during International Events
• Year in Review: New Developments in Cross-border business dispute resolution

The registration form is available online in PDF.

The Law Societies of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Upper Canada (a.k.a. Ontario) are offering accreditation in connection with this conference. Details are available on the CBA site.

CaseStudiesOnline.com is a new web site with hundreds of social media marketing case studies, all fully indexed and searchable. The site was created by Tod Maffin, a well-known strategist, consultant, speaker and thought leader based in Vancouver. The site is currently in beta with more case studies being added each day. Maffin also plans on interviewing both thought-leaders in social media marketing and the people in the trenches who are putting these tools into action.

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.

Maybe its because we’re just on the good side of the dead of winter, but my weekly Slaw assignment led me back to an article I wrote in 2001 in praise of a communication model I learned to appreciate in years spent hanging out at the beach.

I called the article “Windsurfing 101″ and described the four-part model I learned way way back in 1984 when I took my first Canadian Yachting Association windsurfing instructor course. Back then I was taught that a good teacher:

1. Sets specific, clear and measurable learning objectives
2. Divides information into logical chunks
3. Maximizes audience participation
4. Includes an evaluative conclusion

Reflecting on the model over 25 years later, I am reminded how old I am. Yet the good-old CYA model still seems sound and valuable. And while not tailored for oral advocacy, it has concepts that should help the oral advocate. “Chunking” of complex ideas into understandable parts is an obviously useful concept. Proper goal setting also has potential. Consider the benefit of an approach that treats a legal argument as a series of achievable learning objectives. I like it because it should promote focus (as planning generally does). It also creates a path to success that is more actionable than that created by broader, outcome-based goals like “winning the motion” or appeal.

Is there any truth or wisdom that cannot be rooted back to the beach? Read the article here, and please also share links about similar techniques and models below.

I see a change coming on how Alberta Courts deal with costs for computerized legal research. Mr. Justice MacLeod in Aram Systems Ltd. v. NovAtel Inc., 2010 ABQB 152, wrote:

[23] With great respect to those decisions made at an earlier time, I think that the view of computerized legal research as a mere alternative is no longer consonant with the reality of current legal practice. Such research is now expected of counsel, both by their clients, who look to counsel to put forth the best possible case, and by the courts, who rely upon counsel to present the most relevant authorities. Indeed, it might be argued that a lawyer who chooses to forgo computerized legal research is negligent in doing so. This is particularly so given that many law firms and indeed governments are now cancelling hard copy subscriptions to legal resources in favour of the electronic versions. The practice of law has evolved to the point where computerized legal research is no longer a matter of choice.

[24] In response to Justice Watson’s reference to Bob Cratchit’s coal, I would point out that the disbursement claimed in these cases is for access to the legal databases and is based upon the time spent doing research for the particular client on the particular matter. There is no suggestion that the disbursement is meant to reimburse the law firm for the cost of computers as capital assets. In my view, disbursements for electronic legal research are similar to disbursements for photocopying; it is the copies, not the copiers, that are being paid for.

[25] Nevertheless, I am bound by the weight of authority and must therefore refuse to allow the disbursement. Perhaps the time has come for our Court of Appeal to revisit this issue, but in light of the existing authority, I am not in a position to do so.

Emphasis mine.

This is more of a handkerchief floating to earth than a gauntlet being dropped, but still, I see this as a call to action for modernizing how disbursement costs for computer assisted legal research are dealt with. I am certain that if legal research is performed for a matter today, a computerized gathering method is used for some part of that task. I feel confident suggesting that there is a fee paid to someone for a significant portion of the information required.

This issue of cost recovery for has come up on Slaw in the past. See Recovery of charges for searches on online databases redux and Judges and electronic searches and the many comments posted. While these posts deal with disbursements allowed by a taxing officer, similarities exist with reasons for costs in the cause.

Any suggestions from readers on where this issue is headed in 2010?

This is definitely a bargain for firms and individuals using Twitter.

Chris Pirillo’s new e-book 140 Twitter Tips, a 14-page PDF, offers useful and practical hints for all types of Twitter users. Tips include:

• The best time of day to get retweets
• How to effectively respond to debates and criticisms
• Don’t use too much jargon
• Oversharing vs. undersharing

The best part: the e-book costs only $1.40.

See ReadWriteWeb for more information about this e-book and Chris Pirillo.

Date: Friday, May 14, 2010
Time: 8:30 am to 1:30 pm

I am excited to be able to participate in this year’s CBA BC Branch Women Lawyers Forum Education Day event. Along with Elizabeth Watson and Stacey Handley, I will participate on a leadership panel which will be led by Marion McAdam of Fourth Wall Project Management & Consulting. Marion has worked extensively with women who are leaders already or who are aspiring to become one within their own context. In conjunction with this, she has also done a considerable amount of research on emerging and changing trends in women’s leadership.

I have been tentatively asked to speak to “defining success for yourself and making it happen.” My personal conception of what success is and my level of achievement in that regard are both rather fluid concepts, so this should be an interesting exercise.

I am particularly interested in the quotes contained in the draft discussion materials prepared by Marion McAdam, some of which I include here:

“Success has been defined by men all these years as movement high up the ladder. Women have to define success differently. It isn’t necessary to be the top person to be successful…Success is having work in your field that permits you to have a life as well. … A woman’s life is a horizontal journey rather than a vertical climb.”

“Women At Law: Lesson Learned Along the Pathways to Success” Phyllis Horn Epstein

Trying to act like men in the workplace creates a kind of dissonance. We can sense when people are not acting authentically and we don’t trust them. “Women bring a unique set of behaviours to the workplace that are needed, especially in today’s climate. Our tendencies to collaborate rather than compete, listen more than talk, and use relationships rather than muscle to influence are the very same behaviours I coach men to acquire. But it’s all about balance. Just as men can overuse their stereotypical characteristics, so can women.” (p. 62 Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office)

“In order to be effective leaders, women need to be comfortable practicing law as women – in their own way. Women don’t need to practice law the same way that men do in order to be successful.”

It should be an interesting discussion!

This week saw the release of  Canada’s 2010 federal budget.  Maybe next year, I’ll see if blogging qualifies me to join the lock-up; but for 2010 I stuck to web-based review and analysis:

• The budget was fairly popular among the science and innovation crowd — though reaction to the budget followed faithfully the degree to which each constituency’s requests were funded.
• The full list of relevant line items is here; but this post is a good starting point to focus on the top budget items for biotech and other knowledge-based industries, including an increase in basic research funding, a new innovation commercialization program and…
• The demise of Section 116! Section 116 had created an onerous tax filing obligation that generated zero tax revenue, and has been accused of being a major barrier to an influx of U.S. venture capital investments in Canadian companies. If Section 116 was the barrier it has been made out to be, we’ll see a new influx of capital. It would be great to be able to look back and definitively assess the impact of this change, so if anyone can think of a comparator group for a good empirical assessment, please let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile, the rest of the biotech world did not stand still.  Canadian biotech deals and new scientific developments continued apace, and India continued its hot-and-cold approach to innovation.  Catch up on these developments at The Cross-Border Biotech Blog or follow us on Twitter @crossborderbio.

This year’s Legal IT conference, Legal IT 4.0, is scheduled for April 26 and 27th.  Each year the conference looks at information technology and its impact on the law. I was fortunate to attend last year’s conference, and found the audience and presenters to be a stimulating mix of thought leaders and those new to many of the concepts.

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.

Watching Canada win gold in men’s hockey and landing our nation the Olympic record for most gold medals won by any country in winter sports was an unforgettable experience. The national celebration and the pride and the joy we are all experiencing at being Canadian is something to savor.

“Own the Podium” – never liked it. Seemed so un-Canadian, so boastful, so competitive, and yet… how effective. As a brand “Own the Podium” named the dream and captured the aspirations of our athletes and fans.

As we return to life as usual what else can we take from these games? I would suggest the power of dreaming big and naming our dreams.

In coaching we create a space for clients to take time out from the daily routine to rise above and think about what might be possible, what they might want to create, and give name to their dreams.

I am privileged to work with people who have the courage to pursue their dreams. Some of the dreams are simple – like finding the right home for a legal practice, others more ambitious – like the journey from lawyer to corporate CEO.

The most important thing is not the size or scope of the dream but in having the courage to name it and take action and support others in doing the same.

A young woman called me last month to speak about her professional aspirations. She was getting mixed advice from all those close to her, when the bottom line is she knew what she wanted to do and create and simply needed to listen to her own wisdom and ignore the fear of the people around her.

Pessimism isn’t an attribute; it is another word for fear and sometimes comes disguised as common sense. Often when you set a bold goal or determine to make a change it is the people closest to you who will be the least encouraging. Because they love and care for you, they fear for you as well. When I started my own company a large number of well-meaning individuals told me in the challenging first year that I could return to a salaried position. Advice to go backwards was the last thing I needed to hear. It was the people who had confidence in me and assured me I was on the right track that really helped.

Sometimes reaching for an ambitious goal can be uncomfortable. In the space between setting the goal and achieving it there will be challenges, struggles and uncertainty. The more important or significant the goal the more you can expect you will be challenged.

When the stress and tension hit, there can be temptation to return to the status quo – to determine that the pressure isn’t worth it and to abandon the dream. As I once heard Tracy Theemes of Sophia Group advise a young group of lawyers: “stay with the tension.” When job hunting, the temptation can be to take the first job offered. It is so important though not to let your experience of discomfort sway your decision making. Stay with the tension, it tells you that you are undertaking something of great importance.

There is a saying in the arts that success is due to 5% talent and 95% persistence. While I can’t be sure of the breakdown I do know that achieving success in any profession is very much determined by our ability to withstand the discomfort of making changes and reaching for our dreams by climbing over obstacles, weathering the storms, withstanding the pressure and at times just hanging on.

Why is it so important to name our goals? Naming our dreams and goals helps us to strengthen them. When the pressure is on it is easier to succumb when we haven’t fully committed. When we name our goals we also are able to better the harness the power of our mind. Our greatest brain power of our mind lies in the subconscious. By setting a target and focus we are sending a message to our own brain to be on the alert for opportunities and connections. It can often seem like magic when we set a goal and opportunities start to emerge. With a clear focus we can perceive the opportunities that we were missing before.

Another reason for naming and sharing our goals is that it enables others to help us. When we are clear about what we wish to achieve it enables the people around us to throw in their support and to help connect us with opportunities. “Own the Podium” was successful in part because of the enormous amount of support that the program generated for our Canadian athletes.

The lingering gift of these Olympic Games is that by dreaming the big dream and setting a bold objective we can smash the odds and make it there.

Take inspiration from our athletes – uncover and name your dreams.

I thought I’d draw Slawyers’ attention to a new student-run blog on international law, Legal Frontiers, run by law students at McGill University (my own alma mater). The site officially launched in January, and the content so far looks very interesting. Check it out and post a comment.

There may be stars in your eyes, soon. Google has introduced a search facility that lets you star certain search results, in effect marking them as “faves” the way that Google Reader does. Then those items will show up in a special box at the top of your searches — whenever they’re relevant, of course.

The Official Google Blog uses the example of having “starred” your favourite football teams’ websites. A subsequent search for “nfl,” for example, will bring these up in the star box.

In my view, the idea has merit as a substitute for bookmarks in certain contexts. This, in effect, lets the Google relevance machine manage your “starmarks” for you. They’ll even manage the business of attaching a star to a site when you’re not in a search, provided you have the Google Toolbar installed:

Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.

(A Google Chrome and Firefox extension would make a lot of sense here.)

Google is rolling the facility out over the next few days. I don’t yet have it on my Google.com searches. And I don’t know whether the rollout includes Google.ca as well.

[via ResearchBuzz]

As many of our readers surely know, Google has been reassessing whether to continue its operations in China following a series of hacking incidents that allegedly originated from that country.

Prof. Ronald Deibert of UofT revealed today that the hackers also attempted to access Google directories, which was not widely reported when the story first broke.  Deibert is one of the experts Google is consulting with on how to respond to the incidents.

Despite the The Investigative Powers of the 21st Century Act (IP21C) that was tabled before the prorogue, Deibert claims that cyberspace generally operates in a policy vacuum in Canada.

His recent paper with the Canadian International Council, China’s Cyberspace Control Strategy: An Overview and Consideration of Issues for Canadian Policy, states,

Like many other countries, Canada depends on economic exchange with China, and is home to a large and growing Chinese diaspora community that can be vocal critics of China’s human rights policies. It is also the home of some of the leading research and development projects on Internet censorship, surveillance and information warfare that, at times, are antagonistically linked to China.

He proposes that Canada:

(1) Take a leadership position in promoting a global, multilateral agenda around arms control in cyberspace. The present state-based cyber security agenda is almost entirely absent of voices or forums dedicated to creating norms of mutual restraint, confidence building and information sharing.
(2) Take a more active interest in the role played by Canadian companies which support China’s vast censorship and surveillance regime.
(3) Lead by example in domestic policy areas, including addressing loose laws on wiretaps, ambiguous oversight of intelligence agencies, shoddy content filtering mechanisms around access to pornography and hate speech, questionable deep packet inspection and data retention practices by internet service providers, and other areas in which Canadian practices provide justification for China’s own domestic censorship and surveillance regime.

As much as I’m for more legislation and discussion over cybersecurity issues, especially for Criminal Code warrants, production and preservation orders, there is some room for privacy concerns here as well. Currently, the technological crime units of CSIS and the RCMP report threats to Public Safety Canada.

The recent Speech from the Throne lists a “cyber-security strategy to protect our digital infrastructure” as a goal to address  “terrorists [who] threaten our country’s security.”  Given the recent history of these agencies in dealing with threats, the IP21C may not have adequate oversight and scrutiny to protect the privacy interests of citizens.

Yes, cyber-security is important.  But enough with the boogie-monsters already.