For the last 3 legal research tips of 2014 I have decided to give my opinion of the 3 most critical personal characteristics for being a successful legal researcher. I think the third most important personal characteristic is engagement.

Being engaged means that you are involved in an activity, committed, interested, embedded, in gear, active, diligent. You are fully focused on the task at hand.

If you are not engaged in a legal research problem, it will be difficult to harness the creativity that is necessary to see potential paths to an answer.  It will also be difficult to maintain …

♫  Inch by inch, row by row, I’m gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground…♫

Lyrics and music by: David Mallett, recorded by: Peter, Paul & Mary.

Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying: “The best way to predict your future is to create it”

Brian Tracy in his blog talks about the Golden Hour – a time that you set aside at the start of your day to work on the most important task you will have for your lifetime – namely your personal development.

Brian …

December 10 has been celebrated as International Human Rights Day since a United Nations declaration in 1950.  Today’s Tip is to remember that International Conventions may apply to domestic affairs.

United Nations material can be accessed through http://www.un.org/ and email or RSS alerts for UN documents are available.

My favourite starting point when international law intersects my legal research is a University Law Library research guide like this one from the University of Calgary.…

When it comes to purchasing things, I will admit that I tend to be a tad on the anal side. I always spend a ton of time researching the available options. This has been a lifelong issue for me.
In the old days (read pre-Internet), one of my favourite sources of information and reviews was Consumer Reports Magazine. It is still a go to resource for me and now also has extensive online information (mostly behind a subscriber wall), and there are now many more online sources of similar information. The trick now is finding information you can rely …

This week’s practice tip features a guest post from Rachel Spence, a law clerk  with Wise Law Office, on the importance of delegation in our work.  This article was previously featured at Wise Law Blog.

– Garry J. Wise

……………..

Delegate, Don’t Abdicate

The  simple truth is that as legal professionals, we require effective delegation like we require oxygen to breathe. There’s no need to be shy about why.

Delegation helps us to:

Over at Slaw yesterday I posted about JADE – a web service for locating decision from Australia that is aimed at law firm users.  Today’s Tip is about when you would look to foreign decisions.

In The Comprehensive Guide to Legal Research, Writing & Analysis by Moira McCarney, Ruth Kuras and Annette Demers (Emond Montgomery, 2013), the writers remind us:

…not all legal disputes can be resolved by Canada’s domestic legal system. Foreign domestic law becomes relevant in many situations, including:

• acquiring, disposing, or bequeathing real or personal property located in a foreign jurisdiction
• incorporating in, trading with, or conducting

♫  Saying, you got to play your cards and roll those dice,
You may never get a second chance in this life;
Don’t waste your time, ’cause time will tell,
Good things yeah they hardly ever roll around twice.
No second chances… No second chances….♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Damian Follett.

This is the sixth post in the series on lawyers and marketing.  We have previously looked at  the product mix, the people who provide your services, how you promoted your services and the place where you render your services.  In this next instalment of the examination of the …

Relief is at hand, at last, for iPad2 users who have suffered through two months of sluggish, under-performing, and perpetually stalling tablets since installing September, 2014’s iOS 8 update.

Apple has this week released iOS 8.1.1, an operating system update that magically restores speed and luster to its older mobile devices, including the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4.

After installing the update Wednesday morning, I noted my iPad 2’s immediate resurrection to useful and pleasing life. Its performance has returned to its pre-iOS 8 level, which was always pretty good – good enough for me to resist the …

The legal research process has some basic rules. I have often articulated the analysis part of the legal research process as this:

• Your job is to answer a question
• Filter your analysis through the potential avenues of Tort, Contract, Equity, Unjust enrichment
• Make sure you look at the “bad for your client” materials and include them
• If you can’t find anything on point, make an analogy

Today’s Tip is about analogies.

How do you make an analogy? Brainstorm (alone or with a team), use a thesaurus to spark ideas, think about your past work (at the heart of it, …

♫ It doesn’t have to be like this
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking…♫

Lyrics and music by: David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Polly Samson, recorded by Pink Floyd.

Garry’s last post inspired me to write about using dictation on both PCs and Macs. I have been a long-standing fan of voice recognition and the latest versions are even much better than earlier versions. While there is voice recognition built into the Windows operating system, I haven’t seen it used in practice. Rather, I have found that people use …