We’re going to try something different next month – the First Annual Wise Law Office Backyard  Retreat.

It will be a day-long, out-of-office session to explore planning and teamwork and to ask to ourselves some fundamental questions about what it is that we do as a law office.

There will, of course be food and festivity too, but ultimately, it will be an opportunity for our lawyers and staff to put our collective heads together to do some creative, directed brainstorming.

In the planning stages for this event, I’m having lots of thoughts as to the issues we should be …

♫  I want security, yeah
Without it I had a great loss, oh now
Security, yeah
And I want it at any cost, oh now…♫

Lyrics and music by: Margaret Wessen, Otis Redding; recorded by Otis Redding.

I have been giving a number of presentations lately that in part, deal with the (in)security of law firm systems.  This is based on the findings of the Legal Technology Resource Center of the ABA (“LTRC”) in their 2013 Legal Technology Survey.  They reported that 15% of reporting law firms acknowledged that they had a security leak.  43% reported being infected by a …

♫ I close my eyes, then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Roy Orbison.

Well we are heading into the Canadian annual right of spring – the Victoria Day long-weekend.

With images of heading to the cottage, heading to the condo at Whistler or just kicking back and taking a few days to relax, I thought I would share my tip for the best music website that I have found to relax…or work ..to.…

So, WalMart shoppers can now obtain $99 wills at four in-store kiosk locations in the Greater Toronto Area, with more to come:

Behind the plastic jugs of liquid Tide stacked near the entrance of a new Walmart in Markham is an innovation in discount retailing: Axess Law.

Founded by Toronto lawyers Lena Koke and Mark Morris, Axess Law provides fast and affordable legal services to time-pressed shoppers.

Simple wills are $99. Notarized documents are $25, plus $19 for each additional document.

This should come as no surprise to those of us who have been eyeing the tea leaves for some …

♫ You may think I’m strong
and I can do no wrong
but I’m vulnerable
so vulnerable…♫

Music and lyrics by Pet Shop Boys.

Microsoft has reported a vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer.  While Microsoft has posted security workarounds and US-CERT has recommended that users implement them, they only work for the two most recent versions of IE (10 and 11).  Moreover, they are reported to be technically complex.

:

The IE vulnerability is a big deal, said Will Dormann, vulnerability analyst in the CERT Division of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, Pa.…

It may not be a giant step for mankind, but it’s at least a baby step toward the technological modernization of Ontario’s archaic court system.

On April 16, 2014, Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General  announced the launch of OntarioCourtDates.ca, an online service that lists daily dockets for all Ontario Court of Justice and Superior Court of Justice courtrooms throughout the province.

Searching the website by municipality and case name, you can access listings of the next day’s pending cases, court room numbers and scheduled hearing times.

The AG’s press release notes:

• The online daily court lists will

♫ if you could hear my heartbleed
you’d hear me scream set me free
if you could feel my heart bleed..♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by the Peppermint Creeps.

The Heartbleed vulnerability has garnered a lot of press lately.  It has (understandably) set many on edge and left wondering if they are vulnerable and if so, what should they be doing about it?  Our colleague, friend  (and past columnist) Laura Calloway, attorney, past ABA TECHSHOW Chair and Director of Service Programs and Practice Management  Assistance Program at the Alabama State Bar wrote this piece on Heartbleed and we …

Amidst all the hype about this week’s t, I made the jump on the weekend to Windows 8.1 from the first of our remaining, four XP computers.

Overall, it was a pretty seamless and surprisingly anti-climatic event, particularly given my long avoidance of this change, buttressed as it has been by the many mixed reviews of the Windows 8 interface I’ve encountered online.

We have a number of Windows 7 computers in our office, all of which have performed admirably. It certainly would have been my initial preference to replace my remaining home and office XP computers with Windows 7, …

♫   There’s a bridge
I don’t know how to cross yet
I need your hand
To hold along the way..♫

Music and lyrics by: Tozer, Faye/lauper, Cyndi/pilsford, Jan/irn, Jasper, recorded by Steps.

Since I am just recently back from ABA Techshow in Chicago which was held last week, I thought this blog post could be an amalgam of the sessions that touched on going paperless that I saw as well as the management issues that were raised in these sessions.

To start, there are “Three Key Steps to Paperless Success.” These are:

1. Everything gets scanned
2. You need protocols

Thanks largely the excellent work being done at Avoid a Claim blog by LawPro, Ontario lawyers’ professional liability insurer, we now receive ongoing updates about cybercrime, and in particular, criminal efforts to target law firms and steal from lawyers’ bank accounts.

A post last week by Tim Lemieux provided a splendid, nuts and bolts roadmap on the steps fraudsters took to steal several hundred thousands of dollars from a law firm trust account. It all began with a phishing email that duped a firm’s unwitting bookkeeper into providing its bank account numbers by telephone directly to the bad guys.…