How long have you been on LinkedIn? A few years? More? Have you added or changed anything since that time? Your headshot? Your profile? The type of content you post?

If it’s been more than a few years and not much has changed, now is the time to do just that! Even if you start with a single, small step.

Choose something easy…                                      

• How about updating your headshot, so that it is current and engaging?
• Simpler? You can change your title, so it’s not just accurate… it’s interesting.
• Too much? Simply install the LinkedIn app on your smart phone

This was the headline of a recent LinkedIn post: Cryptocurrency do’s, don’ts and dangers. Think before you use the apostrophe and you’ll do it correctly: Dos, don’ts and dangers. At least it wasn’t danger’s in the original.

And, without catastrophic apostrophes, it is No ifs, ands or buts.

The possessive forms of women, children and men also seems to cause problems, because they take ‘s (which is more usually attached to a singular noun, not a plural one). As a result, women’s hockey, children’s toys and men’s room.

The compounds menswear, womenswear and …

CPLED is now hosting a Student Resume Directory on its website to assist students who are seeking articles. Students can create profiles here, indicating the type of position they are looking for, the location where they would like to work (Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan), and upload a copy of their resume. Employers can browse the student profiles and reach out to suitable candidates for opportunities in their organization using the Contact Form with each student’s profile. The Directory is free and available to law students seeking summer or articling positions.

[This tip originally appeared on the Law Society …

Not of books, but of dignitaries.

Judges

Stephen Waddams observes in Introduction to the Study of Law (my edition is 1992) that it is not proper to refer to a judge as Your Honour (or My Lord/Lady, where that is still used) outside the courtroom. He advocates just plain Mr Wagner or Ms Karakatsanis, or failing that the old-fashioned Judge (without the person’s surname) when you encounter one in a social setting. Most Canadian lawyers will probably say Justice So-and-so at a cocktail party, if they are not on first-name terms, and this also has the sanction of …

My apologies to readers: this search tip is very BC-specific!

Quickscribe has recently added a useful new feature that allows you to set up an alert to notify you when a specific word or phrase is used in a bill, an order, or Hansard in British Columbia. For example, you could set up an alert to see any Orders that refer to the University Act or an alert to see any references in Hansard to the B.C. Utilities Commission.

To set up an alert, you will need to have access to Quickscribe and have set up a Personal Login. Once you’re …

Passwords. The bane of most people’s existence. So many to remember!

I know a few people who swear they have figured it all out – using some kind of mnemonic to remember all of their passwords. Apparently, I am not that clever. So I recently turned to LastPass. You remember one password and LastPass stores the rest. 

What I like about LastPass:

• Once you’ve entered your master password, it will auto complete all the rest of your passwords for you. No need to go and look them up in a separate password keeper.
• It syncs across my Mac, iphone and iPad. 
• LastPass

Canadiana Online’s unparalleled online collection of historical materials is now free to access. The collection, available at no charge at Canadiana.ca, contains more than 60 million digitized pages of books, periodicals, and government publications from early Canadian history. 

Why should lawyers and legal researchers take note of this thrilling development? Canadiana Online features an outstanding collection of historical statutes, bills, legal journals, and law reports. Some examples include:   

• Bills
• Court Rules
• Criminal Law Texts
• Law Reports
• Lawyer Directories
• Sessional Papers
• Statutes

Legal researchers should take advantage of the wealth of legal resources available freely online here.  Canadian …

Grumpy Baby-boomers will oft have cause to make exclamations like this (but they may phrase it in less polite language). Or they may have no cause at all, but exclaim anyway.

One thing that is sure to raise the ire of older professionals is casual language in e-mails.

On this point, the Boomers are not wrong: and certainly the very casual style of the text message has no place in professional correspondence, even when it’s digital. Srsly.

That said, at least two of the abbreviations beloved of texting millennials have an older provenance than you might imagine.

IDK, short …

Tweets, like text messages, are often composed on the fly (as we know from painful experience emanating from the country to the south).

This, plus their brevity and informality, may sometimes excuse lapses in grammar, spelling and punctuation.

One apostrophe error in an isolated tweet could just be a typo, but when a managing partner of a Toronto firm (which shall remain nameless) tweets these within the space of 24 hours, there is clearly a larger issue:

·         Lets roll even higher in 2020

·         Hat’s off to the workers

·         Hows this one …

Remedial training is available, managing …

A holiday treat for those of us who carry out British Columbia legal research: BC Laws has just added historical BC annual statutes dating back to 1858. You can find them at http://bclaws.ca/civix/content/hstats/hstats/?xsl=/templates/browse.xsl. Up until now, BC’s annual statutes were not available freely online in any format.

— Susannah Tredwell…