In what is becoming a biennial tradition here on SLAW Tips, I want to remind everyone about SITE: search, one of the advanced search tools offered by Google.

Google’s SITE: search allows you to search just one website for specific terms. This can be useful when a site’s own search form is disappointing or missing altogether.

There are two ways to access this tool: via Google’s advanced search form or directly from Chrome’s address/search bar. Back in 2011 Shaunna Mireau gave us a detailed explanation on how to use the advanced search form. More recently, in 2013, Dan Pinnington showed …

A lot of writing by lawyers is clearly intended only for other lawyers. Cases in point from a recent edition of Lexology:

Opinions: the Sixth Circuit’s most active authors
Squire Patton Boggs
This post examines which Sixth Circuit judges write the most opinions. My analysis examined opinions available on Lexis over a five-year span. On…

Delaware – Federal district court limits fee request
Morris James LLP
This is an interesting decision for the way it treats a fee request in connection with the settlement of Delaware litigation. Counsel in a case filed…

This sort of thing is fine if your …

What does it mean to be a leader?

And what does true leadership in a law firm context really entail?

Clearly, there is no “one size fits all” answer to these questions. Every leader’s approach and plan will necessarily vary, depending on circumstances, temperament, objectives, opportunities – and practicalities.

But behind any effective plan lies a vision of where you want to get, a framework for getting there, and a well-thought-out gameplan for implementing whatever changes that vision may drive.

I will mark the 30th anniversary of my call to the Ontario Bar in April. I will be 57 …

As a great fan of checklists I highly recommend Atul Gawande’s book on the subject, The Checklist Manifesto.

In his book Gawande makes the case that a checklist is valuable even if you have done a specific task many times before and know exactly what you are doing. He illustrates this point by giving examples of how checklists are used in hospitals and airplanes.

Checklists are a very handy tool for libraries. They can be used:

• to train people to do new tasks;
• when staff are away and tasks need to be performed by someone else;
• for processes that

Lawyers, you know that if you want your firms to be more efficient and profitable, you need to delegate.

You know that if you want more time with your families and the occasional good night’s sleep, you need to delegate.

You even know that if you want to grow in your role (and to allow others to do the same), you need to delegate.

So, what’s the problem?

Why are lawyers holding back when it comes to delegating?

Lots of possibilities…  You’ve had some bad experiences where you ended up doing the work you had delegated yourself, at the 11th …

Go easy with these.

Capitals

Where there are too many words with capital letters, the visual effect is jarring and over-emphatic. Don’t succumb to what Bryan Garner calls ‘the unfortunate tendency toward contagious capitalization’ in legal writing.

Above all, Resist the Temptation to Capitalise Important Words, which can look a bit Winnie the Pooh (‘I have been Foolish and Deluded … and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.’).

By all means say ‘the Government of Canada issued bonds’, but when the reference is more general, you can lose the upper case: ‘the government wants to extend tax …

♫ Go, go, go New Justice Team
Go team, go team, team team team
Who’s that newest Justice Team…♫

Music by Christopher Tyng, Lyrics by Ron Weiner, recorded by The New Justice Team.

Changes are coming to SlawTips!  I would like to introduce our new enhanced team of practice tipsters.

Our team will now include:

• Michael McCubbin, Vancouver
• Andrea Cannavina, New York City
• Stacey Gerrard, Halifax
• Sandra Bekhor, Toronto
• Mark Morris, Toronto
• Elizabeth Mah, Vancouver
• Bjorn (Barney) Christianson, Portage la Prairie
• Ian Hu, Toronto

who will be joining Garry Wise and I in posting all the best tips that …

In 2011 Shaunna Mireau wrote about the usefulness of CanLII as a monitoring tool for the latest decisions in an area of law. I’m updating that tip by highlighting the value added by LexBox for this sort of CanLII monitoring.

As Shaunna wrote, the basic approach to using CanLII for decision monitoring is a quick three step process.

1. Compose a search that will retrieve the type of decisions you’re looking to monitor for.
2. Sort your results by “most recent” rather than “by relevance”.
3. Click the RSS button and copy and paste the provided URL into your feed reader of choice.

Most lawyers have a profile on LinkedIn and possible one or two other social media sites. Some have made a great success of it. But many aren’t really sure what they’re doing there. So, they pop in once in a while, join some groups, post some news and share some articles, all to try and garner a bit of attention for their firms. They may even have encouraged their staff to do the same.

All the while, that little voice inside their head is asking them why they bother at all. It just seems to be such a waste of …