Maybe it was you that installed your small firm’s Wi-Fi. Perhaps it was a contractor. Do you remember what year that was? Perhaps your cable company put in a router when you moved into your home.  Or a friend helped you put it in place for your home office.

For whatever reason, your Wi-Fi router is there and has worked reliably for years. It’s dependable and no one is complaining about it.

There seem to be an infinite number of reasons as to why someone’s Wi-Fi router can become old and ignored, but it happens. So if your router hasn’t …

(This tip is courtesy of Bronwyn Guiton.)

Librarians are frequently asked to provide lists of legislation from across Canada. To save time answering these kinds of questions, keep a handy list of the provinces and territories in the Notes tool in Outlook. Then when you are asked these kinds of questions you can just paste this list into your email or Word document, saving time and effort.

— Bronwyn Guiton…

Can all grinders become finders?

The need for heads-up entrepreneurial lawyers grows as heads-down commodity “grinder” work diminishes. How can we develop more “finders” who see fresh opportunities to attract clients on a daily basis? How can we accelerate this shift in mindset? How can we use every interaction to enhance the firm’s reputation for making clients feel they are in good hands? And how can traditional rainmakers become better finders in an evolving marketplace?

While formal strategy sessions are vital to set the firm’s overall marketing and services direction, the day-to-day work of cultivating differentiated, high value consultation and …

Bewildered on Bay Street asks, ‘Is it “travelled” or ‘traveled”? “focussed” or “focused”?’

In the USA, it would be traveled and traveler; travelled and traveller are more usual in Canada. On the other hand, focused is the better way.

Confounded in Calgary writes, ‘Is it ‘Quebecer’ or ‘Quebecker’?

Traditionally, Quebecker is the correct form, although this is less commonly seen nowadays. Logically, the C in Quebecer should be soft (C followed by E or I generally is, in English), and the E long as a result. You need that K to make it a hard C sound and to …

What is a “learning experience”?

Merely “having an experience” does not guarantee how much we will learn from that experience.

Lawyers are rarely trained to excel in the most basic skill required to thrive in today’s work environment: How to learn faster in action. A widely accepted rule of thumb is that 80% of the knowledge needed to do your job is gained informally, during routine work activities and interactions. Yet developing this valuable resource is typically left to chance rather than leveraged intentionally.

A recent issue of The Economist notes, “…employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a …

Rangefindr is a fabulous source for searching sentencing ranges in Canada.  If you are a criminal lawyer I highly recommend you speak to your firm librarian or whoever is in charge of licensing online resources.

I have had several people tell me that Rangefindr is difficult to use, and in particular that any search returns only a paucity of hits. So I came here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with Rangefindr – you’re just doing it wrong! There, don’t you feel better now? The problem isn’t with Rangefindr, it’s just your shoddy searching technique.

Basically, you’re checking …

In this fourth post of a series inspired by Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client, we discuss the dependant client. The dependent client can appear like the perfect client. The client looks to you for answers and easily accepts your recommendations. If a file goes smoothly, no problem. But if something goes awry the client will blame you for a critical decision.

As the lawyer you are not the decision-maker. Your role is to be an advisor and to help the client make decisions. Make it clear to the dependant client that important decisions are wholly in …

For a humorous take on how not to use e-mail at work: http://qz.com/400461/twelve-ways-to-seem-smarter-by-email/

My own suggestions follow.

Caution
Don’t reply in haste, much less in anger. Think twice before sending something you think is funny.

Proof-read; don’t rely on spell-check.

Beware of ‘bcc’, ‘reply all’, distribution lists and auto-fill for recipient names – especially when you are dealing with privileged and confidential information. Make sure metadata are scrubbed from attachments (they may not be when you use a mobile device).

Think about who needs to be copied (and who does not).

You represent your firm and yourself in every e-mail …

This is the third post inspired from Justice Carole Curtis’s Dealing with the Difficult Client (written when she was a lawyer). The obsessed client is the one that emails you at 2 a.m. about an aspect of the case. The client can take up not just a lot of your time but also use up your firm’s resources – from emails to daily calls to the receptionist and law clerk, and whoever else is on the team. The client may do their own research, insist on keeping copies of everything, and forward you with news clippings and cases that the …

Every so often someone comes to the library with what looks like a particularly odd citation for a case. Odd citations are often a tip-off that the case comes from the English Reports.

The English Reports, also known as the ERs, are a collection of judgments from a number of different English reporters. Because they have been republished, they have a minimum of two citations, e.g. Chudleigh’s Case can be cited both as Jenk. 276 (the original report) and 145 ER 199. The original judgements are known as “nominate reports” because their names generally come from the surname of the …