Due to a recent move to Slaw, responsibilities at Law is Cool have been shifted to others on the team.

Devin Johnston has taken on the role as the new director of podcasts on the site.  Legal podcasts are still cutting edge and innovative, and the site was one of the first to develop them in the Canadian legal community. 

The visibility this created for the site and participants were tremendous, and led to the 2007 CLawBie Award and Canadian Lawyer‘s Top 10 Canadian Blogs.

A few law firms in Canada are using podcasts to communicate with the public and develop clients, most notably Hull & Hull, Osler and Gowlings.

Devin launched his first podcast today, with amazing success.  He will definitely do a great job on the site.

Links to several social media sites I use have been added to the About page.

They’ll probably eventually end up in the sidebar, but for now it’s a tidy place to store them.

Following a number of class-action lawsuits against them, Maple Leaf Foods issued an official apology on YouTube:

Although liability does not appear contested with this incident, the liability of saying sorry in this manner is inconsistent across Canada and requires attention by provincial legislatures.

A previous post looked at communication strategies for engaging the public and expressing sympathies.

See David Fleet’s analysis of Maple Leaf’s response, which includes the public apology principle:

1. Use a prominent spokesperson
2. Publicly apologize
3. Be Proactive
4. Fix the problem
5. Use appropriate messaging
6. Be consistent
7. Be open

There’s a new One-Stop Shop Legal Services in Ontario.

What’s really great about the site is that it provides information in both official languages, and an additional 15 other minority languages.  They even launched a hotline today that has up to 170 languages.

Recent immigrants and marginalized minorities are frequently shut-out and disenfranchised from the legal system due to language barriers.  This move will greatly improve access, and hopefully educate and empower minorities that would otherwise avoid seek legal services.

The Law Society of Saskatchewan covered a post on Slaw,

August 18, 2008

The office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is now hosting Legal Corner, a resource page for the legal profession and public on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the Privacy Act. Comments on the site by Omar Ha-Redeye are posted at slaw.ca.

The Government of Saskatchewan has posted an update on Security Enhancements in Saskatchewan Courts concerning new perimeter security screening to be implemented in Prince Albert today and in Regina and Saskatoon in the following weeks.

Postman Patel covered a post on Slaw yesterday.

He added two posts that he did on the issue previously:

•  “Cully” Stimson not only a [expletive] – now he’s quit. 
•  Cully Stimson – why is this [expletive] still in a job ?

Today is a special day.

And no, I’m not talking about that for those aware of its other significance.

I’m going live on this site today. 

As an avid blogger who contributes to several sites, including Law is Cool, Slaw, and Social Media Mafia, one might wonder why I need yet another blog.

This one will focus on personal activities and happenings.  As stated on the About page, the reason for this is that no matter how much I try to convince some family and friends to adopt social media tools, they refuse.  Still, they pester me (I mean that in the kindest of ways) about what I’m up to.  Typing my name into the url browser is something I know they can handle.

Those already connected to me via social media tools will notice simultaneous (I hope) duplication of content.  It saves me a lot of work, and helps get the word out across different formats.  If you’re curious, I use a nifty WordPress Plugin in conjunction with Ping.fm to accomplish this.

I’ll probably back-track some content that has been posted elsewhere when I get the time, so this won’t be the first post any more.  It’s probably better to collect all my info in one place for my sanity.

Stay tuned, this site will be launched shortly.