Are you reading this post on a computer that has slowed down significantly? To the point that you want to replace it?

Before you whip out your credit card, try a few simple things on your computer. You might make it more useable without spending a dime.

I’ve already posted two ways you can improve your computer’s performance.

• Computer-savvy types get rid of bloatware before they even use a new machine, but it’s never too late to do so.
• You can also simplify your desktop.

Here’s a third tip – finding energy hogs on your computer.

The problem

Your …

These days, a lot of lawyers are wondering how to make the most of LinkedIn. Some are wondering if they even can. So, for this week’s tip, we’re sharing news about a new group which may prove to be an easy entry point to greater participation on the site.

‘Keeping it Social: Practice Development for Lawyers TORONTO’, a collaboration between Bekhor Management and Toronto Lawyers Association is the antithesis to all social media groups! Of the various LinkedIn groups targeting Canadian lawyers, it is the only one that’s actually social.

The group will meet in-person to learn practice development tips …

John Laskin, late of the Ontario Court of Appeal, suggests in his ‘Forget the Wind-up and Make the Pitch’, that although ‘this advice may cause mutiny among lawyers and judges’, you should avoid writing sentences containing ‘The fact that …’

It’s much more effective just to state the fact, rather than to state the fact that the fact is a fact. So, not ‘The fact that my client has accepted your offer ..’ but ‘My client’s acceptance of your offer …’ The latter is direct, clear, less wordy.

Similarly, eschew notwithstanding the fact that in favour of the …

WestlawNext Canada includes an excellent Citing References tool. Today’s tip will help you in situations where you are dealing with a long list of citing references for a major case. My example relates to evidence law, but the technique will work with any legal topic.

I’ve recently learned that the law of evidence mostly originates in criminal law, and is transplanted, as needed, to civil law. Thus, most of the citations in Cudmore’s Civil Evidence Handbook are criminal cases. So, if you are a civil litigator, you may wonder from time to time how a criminal law authority on evidence …

It’s common for people to replace their computers every three or four years. They seem to believe performance degrades so much that they need new machines to gain speed increases.

Sometimes that’s true. Hard disk drives,for instance, can wear over time. Inexpensive machines aren’t usually built to be upgraded.

But if you want to keep working with your current computer, there are a number of things you can do to keep it moving quickly.

I covered one tip in a 2016 blog post. (Here’s something I forgot to mention in that post: Even though I claimed useless utilities are a Mac issue, Windows …

For anyone looking a good guide to legal research, Catherine Best’s “Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research” has been updated by a team of legal research experts (Melanie Bueckert, André Clair, Maryvon Côté, Yasmin Khan and Mandy Ostick) and added to CanLII’s commentary section.

The revised Canadian Legal Research and Writing Guide is divided up into 13 sections (including “Step-By-Step Legal Research Process”, “Use Commentary to Define and Understand the Issues”, “Guidelines for Online Research”, “Researching Canadian Federal and Provincial Legislation”, “Searching Canadian Case Law”, “Stare Decisis and Techniques of Legal Reasoning and Legal Argument”, “Preparing a Legal Memorandum”, and …

Is your computer slow right now? Maybe there’s something you can do about that – right now.

The problem

Generally, the more apps you run at the same time, the more your computer slows down.

The solution

Find out how many programs you have open at any given time. You can quit programs you don’t need at the moment.

You can browse the dock (Mac) or toolbar (Windows) to do this, but I prefer a keyboard shortcut that both computer platforms offer.

On a Mac, hold down the Cmd key (Windows – Crtl), then press Tab. Icons pop up in …

As I’ve suggested previously, odds are if you insert the word clearly in your sentence you are trying to impose clarity on something that isn’t clear at all. If something really is clear, you don’t need to say so.

In the same vein is the phrase highly anticipated (‘This highly anticipated decision from …’; ‘The release of the OSC’s highly anticipated rule on …’). The phrase gets used a lot: according to Slaw’s Canadian Law Blogs Search Engine, it occurs approximately 5,080,000 times in Canadian blog posts.

That sure sounds like over-use – or, in other words, a reason …

I like exploring ways to improve my Inbox Zero habit. This habit enables me to effectively handle everything that comes at me via email. I do this by:

• putting the information in the right places
• deleting or filing the original email

The email inbox is never the right place for contacts, calendar appointments, tasks or other things I need to act on. That’s why my inbox contains NO emails at the end of a day.

Making Inbox Zero easier

It’s easier to keep the inbox empty if I prevent unwanted emails from arriving in the first place. …

Not a question that arises in connection with drafting a contract or pleadings (one hopes), but certainly in composing e-mail.

Both are recognised forms.

On the traditional assumption that the expression was originally shorthand for all correct (rendered in humorous, dialectical or unschooled US English as oll (or orl) korrect), OK has the merit of being closer to the source.

There is something fishy-sounding about that etymology, I’ve always thought, but the OED and Fowler repeat it. The latter gives some other possible origins and a case reference to Nippon Menkwa Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan Cotton Trading Co Ltd) …