All Our Tips
How Do You Get Other Lawyers – or Yourself – to Write for Publication?
Making it happen is not always easy.
Chris Riley of Lexology has some helpful suggestions for increasing lawyer engagement in what he calls ‘content marketing’:
- write about topics your clients tell you they’ve been worrying about
- describe the issue and propose a solution
- don’t simply parrot news items
- add your own perspective to the story or legal issue
- keep it short!
- Lexology’s readers overwhelmingly prefer to read something between 600 and 1,000 words in length
- use analytical data available through Lexology (and your own firm’s marketing department)
- identify articles and topics that have worked in the past
- consult Lexology’s ‘popular articles’ list to see what readers are interested in
- write something on these topics (or avoid them if you want to be original)
- ask a more senior lawyer for an idea or outline and flesh it out
- get your library or knowledge management peeps (if you are fortunate enough to have them) to look out for novel topics and breaking developments
- read the Lexology daily newsfeed to see what’s current
- this may inspire you (or make you realise you could do a better job than your competitors)
Finding Information About Private Acts
“Private acts” are acts that are passed to deal specifically with the private interests of a person, company, or organization; for example the Acme Assurance Company Incorporation Act, S.C. 1931, c. 71 is a private act. Private acts can be found both federally and provincially.
One challenge with researching private acts is that they may not be consolidated in their jurisdiction’s Revised Statutes. If this is the case, a researcher will have to pull the original act (which may be quite old) and any subsequent amendments, and produce a consolidation manually. On the plus side, private acts tend not to be frequently amended, so it is not unusual for a private act to currently read the same as it did when it came into force.
The majority of jurisdictions across Canada have produced tables of private acts which are very helpful when researching them. The following is a list of these tables:
Federal: Table of Private Acts
Alberta: the Table of Private Statutes of the Province of Alberta is available in print at the end of the annual Statutes of Alberta volumes and on QP Source (a subscription database)
British Columbia: Table of Private, Special and Local Acts and Unconsolidated Public Acts that lists all private and other unconsolidated acts along with their amendments.
Manitoba: Private Acts
New Brunswick: Index to the Private Acts of the Province of New Brunswick, 1929-2012 [produced by the Canadian Bar Association]
Newfoundland and Labrador: Table of Local, Personal, and Private Statutes
Nova Scotia: Index of Private and Local Acts (to 2016)
Ontario: Table of Private Statutes (private statutes that were enacted after 1999 can be viewed in Source Law)
Saskatchewan: Table of Private Acts (up to and including February 15, 2017)
Gendered Job Descriptions
Does it still strike you as odd to see Cate Blanchett or Meryl Streep described as an actor?
Actress is in fact a relatively new word in English, because no females performed on stage in England before the seventeenth century (although the OED does say that actor was applied to both sexes in the early days of the mixed stage).
Even now, not everybody is using actor for both women and men. There are more than 75,000 women who describe themselves on LinkedIn as an actress. Oscars are not yet awarded to the best female actor – much less to the best actor, regardless of sex (or gender).
Other –ess words faded away longer ago. It would be rare nowadays to ask to speak to the manageress of a shop. Even early in the twentieth century the terms poetess and sculptress fell from use because they sounded faintly derogatory (OED quotes a passage in which poetess is described as ‘somewhat outmoded’ in 1903). Waitress is disappearing – but so too is waiter, both largely displaced by server. One would still use priestess, but only in relation to a non-Christian, possibly historical religion (‘the priestess of Diana at Ephesus’), rather than for a female ordinand in the Anglican churches that have them.
If you are still using legal Latin, you may still also be referring to a testatrix, executrix or (possibly) administratrix (although Ontario’s Succession Law Reform Act uses the –tor forms for both men and women). Aviatrix is as dead as Amelia Earhart, but dominatrix is firmly entrenched (perhaps because no one would dare mess with one).
United States congressmen have been joined by congresswomen since the early twentieth century, but congresspersons or congresspeople never gained much terminological traction. (Do you remember Saturday Night Live’s send-up of The Village Persons?)
If the trend in English seems to be going towards the gender-neutral (or, actually, to the terms formerly applied only to men, like priest), continental languages have gone the other way.
In the days when there weren’t many, a female lawyer in France or Quebec used to be un avocat, just like her male counterpart; one now sees une avocate. In traditional European French, a female judge was madame le juge; madame la juge was the polite way to refer to the wife of a male judge. Quebeckers – either less polite or more egalitarian, depending on how you look at it – dropped madame la juge for the judge’s wife, and started using it for a Madam Justice.
A woman lawyer in Italy is an avvocatessa, and a female academic is a dottoressa or professoressa.
In Germany, the feminine equivalent of a Rechtsanwalt (lawyer) is a Rechtsanwältin, although the Federal Lawyers Code uses the masculine form as a ‘gender-neutral’ term. In academic circles, one is either Frau or Herr Doktor (or, if super-qualified, Herr or Frau Doktor Doktor or Professor Doktor).
O or Oh?
On a recent Canada Day, someone on LinkedIn referred to O’Canada, which is clearly wrong. (O’ is confined to Irish surnames, where it is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Ó or Ua, meaning ‘descendant of’; M(a)c [or M’], as for the Scots, means ‘son of’).
But is it O Canada, Oh! Canada or what?
O, not followed by punctuation and closely linked in sense to what follows, is what’s called a vocative – and is correct in things like national anthems or hymns.
Oh is usually followed by punctuation and is more like a stand-alone exclamation tacked on to the rest: Oh, hell! Oh! what a scoundrel! Oh, no you don’t!
Usage of O and Oh has not always been consistent, however (think back to the revue Oh! Calcutta! if you’re old enough).
But O’Canada has never been OK.
Take That Vacation, It Will Make You a Better Lawyer!
Administrator’s note: thanks to Erin Cowling for this week’s tip.
We all know that taking a real vacation makes us less stressed, more focused, and in return, better lawyers, better employees, and better bosses. Even though I love my job, I still need a break from it. I need to unplug and unwind. I need to think about something other than the law. When I do, I return to my practice with more energy and commitment.
When I worked for someone else, I always took all my allotted vacation. I felt I was working hard and I rightly deserved the time off. Now that I have my own practice and business and can, in theory, take as much vacation time that I want, I take even less. I need to change that.
So, here is what I have learned, and what may help to ensure that you and I take our important vacations:
- Book the vacation time into your calendar in advance. Block off your 2020 vacation days now. Not nailing down the time off makes it easier to push back that much needed break.
- Take at least two weeks off. For me, one week is not enough to get the “law” out of my system and to unwind.
- Plan financially, especially for those of us who are sole practitioners or have our own businesses. If we don’t work, we don’t get paid. Factor your vacation time into your financial plan for the year. (In other words, don’t let money be an excuse to not take time off).
- Have someone cover your practice so you aren’t working on your vacation.
- Fiercely protect your time. Practice saying “No”. Say “No” to that meeting they want to schedule on your day off. Say “No” to that “quick” conference call while you are on vacation. And then provide an alternative date for when you are back in the office, relaxed and ready to work!
The bottom line: We need to give ourselves permission to take a break and forget about law for a while. We will be better lawyers if we do. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
[This tip was adapted with permission from Erin Cowling’s post, “My Biggest Mistake this Year…“]
More Awful Lawyerisms
Absent
Odds are, the only way you used this word before you went to law school was to describe physical absence: I was absent from school that day because I had the flu.
Then, all of a sudden, in 1L you started saying things like absent evidence to the contrary because it made you sound all, like, lawyer-y.
Please revert to your pre-law ways. Without or even in the absence of will strike your non-lawyer readers as normal.
And that’s a good thing.
In a position …
You aren’t in a position to do X, Y, or Z?
Just say I can’t do X, Y or Z, which is more direct and avoids suggestions of awkward body poses.
Indicate
This is an example of three syllables where one or two would suffice: show, say, suggest are all shorter – and actually clearer.
Upon
The lawyer said (pompously): Upon my return to the office …
Please, just When I return or On my return. Or even When I get back.
Get More Mileage With CanLII Connects
Today’s practice tip is to get more mileage from your writing with CanLII Connects.
If you write commentary on caselaw for a personal or firm blog, client publications, or any other publication, you can upload it to CanLII Connects, where it can be discovered by anyone who searches for that particular case, both on CanLII Connects AND on CanLII.org.
CanLII cases that have corresponding CanLII Connects commentary will display this info just under the case name:
Not only is CanLII Connects commentary discoverable via individual cases, the full-text is integrated in search results within CanLII, too. Per the recent announcement on the CanLII Blog:
“When you conduct a search on CanLII, you are now able to get results of content from CanLII Connects. For example, doing a document search for “promise doctrine” will provide results that link to CanLII Connects entries. Clicking on the title of the entry will direct you to the full document on CanLII Connects.”
Setting up a profile and adding your legal commentary to CanLII Connects is a simple way to increase your online footprint and the reach of your work.
Legislation Tracking Services
Based on a discussion on the CALL listserv – many thanks to Martha Murphy for all the information.
One of the services typically offered by law libraries is legislative tracking. Examples of this service include tracking a bill from First Reading to Royal Assent (and beyond) and alerting users to proposed changes to an existing piece of legislation.
Depending on how much legislation they need to track, librarians can either check the source (e.g. LEGISinfo or legislative website) on a regular basis or they can set up an alert for any legislative changes. The federal government and some provinces (such as Nova Scotia and Quebec) offer RSS feeds that can be used to track legislation. CanLII also has an RSS feed.
Recently a question came up on the Canadian Association of Law Libraries listserv as to what tools people used. The following is a list of resources to track Canadian legislation that were suggested by CALL-ACBD members:
- Codify Legal Publishing allows users to set up alerts, with the first three feeds being free
- GovtMonitor allows users to track and monitor federal and provincial (Ontario and Alberta) legislation, regulations, Hansards etc.
- LexisNexis’s Canadian Legislative Pulse allows users to monitor the progress of bills as well as notifying them of any proposed changes to legislation
- LexBox includes an add-on for free CanLII alerts
- Optimize Employment and Optimize Pensions offer legislative tracking
- Quickscribe allows users to set alerts for any changes to BC Statutes and Regulations; users can also set up keyword alerts for BC Hansard ad Orders in Council
- Thomson Reuters’ Canada Statute Service
- WestlawNext’s Legislative Watch “allows you to track individual bills or bills relating to specific statutes for deeper, more efficient research.”
- WestlawNext Canada and Lexis Advance Quicklaw allows users to set up alerts
Set Small Goals
September always seems to be a time when Canadians get more serious about work. Well, we have a short summer and we need to make the most of it, right?
One simple tip that can take some of sting out of leaving vacations behind and getting back to the daily grind is to get into the habit of setting small practice development goals. Large or small, every goal adds value. Starting small allows you the opportunity to see results quickly, sparking the motivation to continue. Starting small also helps to manage procrastination, by reducing larger projects into bite size chunks.
Give some thought to some of the bigger practice development challenges you’ve been facing over recent years. Make a list of some possible actions you can take to establish progress and pick something from the list.
To get your imagination going, here is a running list of examples:
- Attend a live event with a professional association.
- Change your headshot.
- Add a section to your LinkedIn profile.
- Reach out to your network with some news.
- Update your biography.
- Make contact with colleagues you haven’t heard from in a while.
- Speak with a consultant to learn more about getting started with a special project.
- Test a new marketing idea.
- Plan an event…
So, what’s your first small goal going to be?
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For more reading related to practice development, see these past articles on SlawTips and Slaw:
Also, see the following related articles by Sandra Bekhor, Practice Development Consultant:
- LinkedIn Marketing Techniques for Law and Professional Practices (Video)
- Just start somewhere
- Climbing the Social Media Tree
A or An?
We’ve covered a(n) historical already: an before an H word is, essentially, a historical holdover we can do without; but do it if it makes you feel better.
We have, however, safely abandoned the an that used to go before words like eulogy, one, unique and unit.
A reader has asked a related question about abbreviations. Is it an LLB or a LLB? A LCBO outlet or an LCBO outlet?
I think the classical rule was to use whichever form of the indefinite article would be appropriate if the abbreviation were spelled out in full: a LLP for a limited liability partnership..
In speech, however, people naturally began to say things like an MP – and you can do this in writing too, especially where the abbreviated form is more commonly used than the full version.
