David Cruickshank of Kerma Partners spoke on “The Business of Law: Hot Topics and Emerging Trends in the Legal Profession.”

See notes from the talk on Slaw.

Shyama Menon of the Reputation Mangement for… blog picks on on a post on reputation management being the next big thing.

And for good reason – the site specializes in offering services for online reputation management.  There is obviously demand here in this growing field.

My nominations for the 2009 CLawBies Awards.

Despite being conflicted I have to start with Jordan Furlong, especially for posts like this:

Firms focus relentlessly on the students with the highest grades… even though these students can be one-dimensional performers with an affinity for the academic environment and no competing pressures outside the classroom. Contrast that with an older student, perhaps with a couple of kids and a part-time job, with or without a partner at home, who took an unorthodox route to law school and perhaps struggles to compete with the younger students — but who is still bright, hard-working, experienced and capable of being a standout lawyer. The firms never even look at graduates like that, and an opportunity is missed on both sides.

Then there’s always stories like this one which make the choices in a legal career really easy to make,

Nearly half of aboriginal and visible minority lawyers are associates, compared with one-third of white lawyers. And the minority groups are more likely to work as in-house lawyers, in government, in business or as sole practitioners.

As for pay, minority lawyers earned $40,000 less on average than did white lawyers… “This suggests the systemic exclusion of aboriginal and members of visible minorities from the most lucrative jobs.”

Instead, we make our own opportunities like getting involved in social media, becoming what Lawrence Gridin jokes as, “the most famous law student in Canada.”  The upside of my approach is that I get people like Dan Michaluk calling me “a fascinating guy.”

That’s not the reason why I’m nominating his site, All About Information, as one of my three, but it sure doesn’t hurt.  Instead, it stems out of my increasing interest in Internet and privacy law, despite never taking a single related course at law school, and my focus during articles in litigation.

Which leads me to my second nomination, also mentioned by Dan: Antonin Pribetic of The Trial Warrior.  Blogging really is my legal education outside of the classroom, and veterans like Pribetic are a gold mine of information.  You can get a better idea of his legal philosophy from a paper that explains the origin of the name of his blog.

Given the issues raised above, I would have to pick Donna Seale’s Human Rights in the Workplace as my final pick.  In fact, Donna caught the above story about discrimination in her last episode of Twitter Talk.  Maybe we’ll get change in the Canadian workplace down the road.  Maybe we’ll even get change in the Canadian legal workplace too, eventually.  I’ll keep ClawBie’ing away along until it does.

I’m obviously conflicted out from Slaw, Law is Cool, and even Wise Law Blog, given the collaborative projects I’ve worked on with Garry.

This talk was given to marketing professionals at the Schulich School of Business.

Presentation included questions and answers, as well as interactive exercises using the brands and companies of participants, but this content has been removed to respect the privacy of the companies involved and their representatives.

Legal cases discussed include:

• Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1130
• R. v. Cuttell, 2009 ONCJ 471
• York University v. Bell Canada Enterprises, 2009 CanLII 46447 (ON S.C.)
• Cohen v. Google, Inc., Index No. 100012/09 (N.Y. Cty. Aug. 17, 2009).
• Foda et al v. RateMDs, Inc., California Northern District Court

It’s hard to keep up with all the technological innovations in the workplace, especially if the computer didn’t exist when you first graduated from law school and you still prefer to the stacks to online legal databases.

But the Canadian Bar Association is suggesting that technical competence is an essential part of ethical practice.

See their new guidelines document and some of the highlights relevant to blogging lawyers.

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.