Simon Fodden posted about the Supreme Court of Canada Justices and how they almost always agree last week. Great post for its intended commentary, AND, Simon gave a research tip that is worthy of its own post
Remember: when you need to get to the Supreme Court website and can’t recall the official URL, just use Slaw’s shortcut: http://thesupremes.ca or http://lessupremes.ca. Easy peasy.
Thanks for the reminder Simon.…
Often law practices look great from the outside. There are lots of clients, the lawyers are always on the run, and from all outward appearances the firm is successful. Sometimes, though, these firms – rather than being a picture of health – are more like a patient with a fatal disease, a silent killer the symptoms of which have not yet begun to show.
That silent killer is unbilled fees and disbursements. As a consequence, all firms should be monitoring the state of their unbilled work and disbursements just as someone with diabetes constantly monitors his or her blood sugar …
Legal Research is fun. Stop laughing, I am not kidding! To prove it, I am sharing a Legal Research Jeopardy game that we use to reinforce some of our student training at Field Law.
This template came my way via web download some years ago from the public library world. Hat Tip to innovative public library staff everywhere. Choose File – Download to modify legal research jeopardy for your own use. Shared with Google Drive.…
Want to easily see all the apps running on your iPad?
Double-clicking the Home button will show you all the apps that are running on your iPad as icons on a bar along the bottom of the screen. To switch to a running app, just tap on the icon for it.
To remove the bar, just swipe the screen downwards.
Not quite like Alt+Tab for switching apps, but darn close!…
An Aesop fable suggests that we should make friends in prosperity if we would have their help in adversity. Thanks to Mike Doerksen, incoming Chair of the CBA Alberta, Research Lawywers Subsection (South) for today’s tip which came from the minutes of their round table wrap up session.
Joan described using the Search Headnotes function on Westlaw, rather than Full Text searching for cheaper and more efficient method of finding relevant U.S. cases.
Thanks to Mike for sharing the minutes. Thanks to Joan Bilsland, Bennett Jones for sharing wi her colleagues. Thanks to the CBA for facilitating research lawyer sharing …
Would you like to more quickly navigate and jump between different Facebook pages?
Or, if you want to look at it from another angle, would you like to spend less time wasting time on Facebook?
Like many other applications and websites, there are some handy keyboard shortcuts that will let you more quickly jump around the various Facebook screens. Read on to learn them.
But, before we get into these actual shortcuts, some comments on the slightly different keys that are required in the various browsers. Most of Facebook’s keyboard shortcuts correspond with the numbers, starting with 1-5, which more …
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Money often costs too much.”
It is, unfortunately, true that you have to work over $1.00 worth of time to collect $1.00. The question is: how much more? How do you measure this?
One of the ways of measuring the cost of making money is to look at your realization rate. Accordingly our next cash flow report is:
#7 – Realization Rate
A lawyer’s realization rate is the percentage of actual income paid to the firm for the billable hours of each timekeeper. For example:
Let’s look at Partner X:
Today I came across (hat tip to my assistant Tim) an amazing post titled How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques on John Tedesco’s blog.
In that post, Tedesco relates the content from a presentation by Google research scientist Daniel Russell. This post has the most amazing collection of Google tips I have ever seen in one place.
Everyone that uses Google to search the web should take time to read and learn the tips and search techniques covered in this post. It covers all the basic syntax tricks, but also some more advanced searching techniques. …
Ahh the age-old problem of lawyers: collecting accounts receivable. The bane of the lawyering class. The inconvenient truth is that if you are working on the basis of an account receivable, you are most probably working for less – and in some cases far less – than your standard hourly rate.
Woody Allen once said: “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.“
So, if money is better than poverty, our next cash flow report to produce (and examine) on a monthly, if not more frequent, basis: Aged Accounts Receivables.
Your accounts receivable should be grouped …
Today’s tip is about watching what the government is doing. News releases by government bodies often contain information that is not yet posted to other sites. This was recently brought home to me by an Alberta Government news release about a future regulatory change as well as a Government of Canada news release about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Especially with regard to regulatory changes in the provinces, news releases about issues may pre-date actual legislative authority for an action.
Check out the Canada News Centre or your provincial or territorial government website’s news page. Most jurisdictions offer RSS feeds for …