As coincidences go, it’s probably not such a big deal.

It turns out that both my PracticeTips partner, David Bilinsky, and I happen to be immersed in home reno projects of some note this August.

Convergence or not, I enjoy the coast to (almost) coast symmetry.

Now when it comes to home renovations, well, that’s often one of the things summer is for.  Relaxing, catching a few rays, and spending every other waking moment addressing a cacophony of questions about materials, labour, colours, patterns, high-ends and low-ends, creative decisions, intra-home negotiations, extras, costings, and the occasional legal document or two, …

Take a moment to consider the many ways we use the internet and other telecommunications tools in our daily work as legal professionals. Phone calls, scheduling and calendaring, legal research, online filings, our omnipresent emails, and more generically, “Googling” for everything from court addresses to legislation to the phone number of that pizza place that feeds us on a late night deadline-driven drafting marathon.

We’ve all read articles (and perhaps even attended at conferences) focusing on security in the cloud.  We’ve all been warned about the perils of the guy who might be peering over your shoulder or …

Jack Welch has been often quoted in terms of leadership and management for good reason.

“Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.” Jack Welch 

How many of us work in environments where instilling self-confidence in others is seen by some managers as threatening?

Management at times and in certain people’s eyes,  is seen to be equivalent to control.  Perhaps in some organizations and in some situations this is necessary.  But I think that in the vast majority of institutions, and I count law firms and other professional service …

Do law firms need leadership and teams?  The author would state that at no other time in the past has the legal profession needed leadership as they need it at the present.  The legal profession is facing unprecedented pressures from all corners.  In the author’s view, if we fail to respond to these pressures in a timely and appropriate manner, then the failure is due to the lack of leadership within the profession.

We need to learn how to build teams in law firms. We need to learn how to respond to competitive pressures by building teams that can respond …

We tend to focus on topics of how to increase effectiveness and efficiency in this column as well as how to strive for heightened performance.

This one will be completely different.

Today we are going to highlight the benefits of getting away from it all and taking a vacation.

Why focus on taking a vacation?

According to advantagebehavioral.org there are at least 5 benefits to taking a vacation. These are:

Vitamin D is free
Vitamin D is essential for maintaining healthy bones and keeping the immune systems and nervous system functioning normally. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin made by

What is the most meaningful point of value that lawyers and other legal professionals are able to bring to our clients?

In What do Lawyers Sell?, Law 21’s Jordan Furlong addresses this crucial question from a  client’s point of view, and really hits it out of the park.

I’ll let Jordan do the talking from here:

Almost every client, when he first contacts a lawyer, is legitimately anxious about something important. He’s worried, he’s not sleeping well, his emotional well-being is compromised. ”Peace of mind” is what that client gets in that blessed moment when he can say

When it comes to Google Reader, the world is pretty much divided into two camps.

There are the power-users, for whom this soon-to-be-expired RSS service has long been an indispensable lifeline to the news of the day. And then there is the rest of the world, known primarily (in this regard) for uttering bewildered phrases like “what’s Google Reader?”

I suspect that a disproportionately high percentage of SlawTips readers, being so unusually sophisticated, informed, curious (and unabashedly good looking), will fall into the first camp – legal-information junkies who can’t imagine the world after the Black Monday ahead when …

Prism, the National Security Electronic Surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) has caught a great deal of press lately.  This surveillance program has raised questions as to how individuals can protect their data from being snooped upon.  These revelations have led to discussions on ways that allow people to use encryption for protection.

I have been advising lawyers to use encryption technology for some time. When contacted by a lawyer who has had a laptop stolen from a car or elsewhere my first question to them is:  “Did you have the laptop …

As summer arrives, so does a new articling season throughout the nation.

The future of articling has been subject of much debate over the last year.  With the dust now settled on those deliberations,  Canada`s law offices will, over the next few months,  begin to welcome their new crops of eager and talented students-at-law.

For many students, it will be the best of worlds and the worst of worlds. And since articling rarely comes with a user manual, here are a few SlawTips for Students-at-Law on succeeding and navigating through the many challenges ahead in your new articling gigs:

1. There

There are at least two types of realization that comes to play in the financial management of a law firm. In this context we are speaking of Billing Realization and Collection Realization.  Both of these represent potential ‘leaks’ in the financial boat of the firm if the firm is not properly attentive to these numbers.

Billing realization is the percentage of recorded lawyer or paralegal time that actually ends up on the bill sent to the client. For example, if $1,000 worth of time is recorded on the time sheet, but is whittled down and billed out for $900, the …