Most search engines have the capacity for searching a phrase: internet engines, ebook search tools, services like Westlaw Canada, LexisNexis Quicklaw, Maritime Law Books National Reporter System, CCH Online, and legal information institutes etc.

Today’s Tip: use the phrase search.

It is much more efficient for a first database (and I use this term very broadly) look to use a narrow search and then expand to if you need to “catch everything”.

Test this out by looking at results for:

constructive trust

and then do it again for

“constructive trust”

Happy New Year.…

You can do lots of interesting things when you give social media tools permission to connect with each other and with other third-party apps. But beware, in doing this you also giving up your privacy.

I think it is safe to say that many of you don’t put much thought into clicking “Yes” when those little permission pop-up messages appear on your screens during an app installation (usually at the end when the app is already installed or starting up for the fist time). And further, I’m sure most of you don’t fully realize how many permissions you have granted …

Although moving to a different accounting package may be a troublesome undertaking, remaining with one that doesn’t help you run your business will be more expensive and troublesome in the longer run.

Some of you were lucky enough to have Santa leave a new computer or laptop under your Christmas tree. That’s great news. Now for the bad news: Unfortunately, most new computers come preloaded with a tons of junk software you don’t really want or need. These can be trial versions of various programs, including mainstream ones like Microsoft Office Online, one of the popular security suites, toolbars, utilities, games and other programs you have never heard of (and will probably never use).

Nice to have a chance to try some of these programs out, but in the long run you …

Instead, we advocate using historical realization rates against billable time to get a better picture of how each lawyer - and the firm in general - is doing from a financial perspective.

Thanks to Simon Chester among others, we know that the Supreme Court of Canada intends to release it’s judgment in the National Securities Regulator Reference on December 22 at 9:45 EST. You will most likely find it first here or maybe here.

Today’s Tip is to use your calendar to diarize important watches.

Why your electronic calendar rather than an RSS feed or other automated technology to send you what you are waiting for? I have a few reasons for using this method:

• Your calendar can be set to send you a beeping reminder
• You most likely open your

…

Do you want to quickly see two windows side-by-side on your desktop? Yes, you can manually resize them by dragging and dropping the edges of each window, but there is a much faster way.

In Windows 7, you can easily arrange two windows next to each other by dragging them to the left or right side of your screen. Left-click on the taskbar (the bar across the top of each window) and drag and drop the window to the left or right side. Release when the entire window is highlighted.

In Windows XP or Vista, hold the Ctrl key down …

Failing to develop a cash flow projection (your budget) as against anticipated expenses is one of the surest ways to get into financial trouble and as such, it tops our list as our #1 financial error.

Sometimes new law requires very broad compliance.  It might be easy to dismiss an act like the one proclaimed in force on December 8, 2011 titled “An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service” as applying to Internet Service Providers only, but it might apply to you as well. 

Today’s Tip is about identifying who in your organization to inform about a newly proclaimed law.

The  says:

Order fixing December 8, 2011 as the day on which an ACT RESPECTING THE MANDATORY REPORTING OF INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY BY PERSONS WHO PROVIDE …

Once or twice a month I hear from people who are struggling to open docx files. Read on for the reasons why this happens, and what to do about it.

Office 2007 introduced new file formats – docx for Word, xlsx for Excel and pptx for PowerPoint (formally known as the Office Open XML format). Unfortunately, people using Office 2003 or earlier versions of Office (and there are still a bunch of them) will find they can’t open files in these new formats.

The solution is simple. If you are using Office 2003, or one of the earlier versions of …