All Our Tips
Easy Automated Workflows
As a solo entrepreneur, I need to automate numerous tasks. Zapier – an online tool which enables you to build connections (or “zaps”) between two apps – makes the automation process super easy.
For example, if you wanted to automatically add your blog posts to your Twitter account, you would select WordPress and Twitter. Zapier then walks you through easy step-by-step instructions on how to connect the two apps. If you only want certain posts to appear in your Twitter feed, you can add a filter that only adds posts tagged with a certain category or written by a specified author.
Zapier provides access to thousands of apps, including apps for forms, email, to do lists, calendars, social media, note taking, accounting, etc. They have also recently added a new “paths” integration, which enables you to add conditional logic to your zaps.
I have found myself scanning their suggested zaps, looking to see what I can automate next.
Lesha Van Der Bij (@LVanDerBij) is CEO & Founder of Optimize Legal – keeping law firms and businesses up-to-date on changes to the law.
A “Business Coaching for Lawyers” Explainer
Have you ever had a conversation with someone – a spouse, a colleague, an advisor – that shifted things for you? You somehow felt just a little less burdened or constrained after the fact? More hopeful even?
They asked the right questions.
They listened, actively, as you tried to sort something out, aloud.
They shared from their own experience.
They gave you something profound to mull over.
Well, folks, that’s essentially the value of business coaching.
Whether your struggles are focused on practice development, accountability from your team, leadership in your community, communication with clients or learning to delegate more, coaching conversations with a skilled consultant can help you to overcome your biggest obstacles to growth.
Those obstacles were there a month ago. Six months ago. Even a year ago. You can safely predict that they will continue to fester. But you don’t have to just sit back and wait. Begin the process of effecting change with a meaningful conversation today.
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For more reading related to business coaching for lawyers, see these past articles on SlawTips:
- Can Lawyers Benefit From Business Coaching?
- Creating the Team: A Leadership Moment
- Does Your Law Firm Need More Leadership?
More on Verbs From Nouns
In a previous post, we covered the bad tendency to make a verb out of a noun (action, credential, reference, task and others of this misbegotten brood).
One verb-from-noun that may be OK is gift.
It doesn’t mean anything that give doesn’t, so arguably there is no real need for it – but some lawyers like to use it for things like donations. Does gift sound more formal and legal/technical than plain old give? Perhaps, but that’s not good reason to use it.
Gift as a verb does have a fairly long history, going back to the sixteenth century. And it is natural to talk about someone as being gifted with some sort of skill or talent.
In the gift-bestowing, present-making sense, the OED suggests the verb is ‘chiefly Scottish’, and most of the examples of usage are in fact from Scots legal sources.
Use gift as a verb if you must, but you might be better just to give.
Open Access Gladue Rights Research Database
In collaboration with several other organizations, the University of Saskatchewan launched a Gladue Rights Research Database last spring (hat tip to Legal Sourcery for noting this new resource).
At that time the database was accessible for a small subscription fee. Since then, the database has become open access (read: free) through the generosity of the several sponsors.
A bit more detail on the database:
“This database is an ever-expanding work in progress. It is designed to provide Indigenous people, their legal counsel, and others working within the justice system with information that will assist in the protection of Gladue rights after a person’s conviction and prior to sentencing. In particular, this database provides researchers with information pertaining to the history of settler colonialism in the province of Saskatchewan up to c. 1990.
This database is designed to provide much, but not all, the information required to write or review a Gladue report. It provides solid comprehensive information explaining the unique circumstances that have impacted and shaped Indigenous people’s lives in Saskatchewan – the essential historical backgrounds and contexts to the situations Aboriginal people face today. The additional recent and intimate personal information needed to complete particular Gladue reports must be acquired separately.
There are a few different ways to navigate the database: browse by topic, read about key concepts, or search. There is also a timeline of settler colonialism in Saskatchewan and various relevant historical and topical maps.
Using Advanced Search on Twitter
A few months ago, I was trying to find an article on AI that I had remembered tweeting. So, I started scrolling through my list of tweets. Even though I am not the most prolific tweeter, it was soon apparent that this was a futile approach. But searching “AI” wasn’t particularly helpful either.
Then I noticed that after you enter a search on Twitter, on the left hand-side of the results page, there are search filters and an Advanced Search option. For example, you can filter any search to focus on tweets from People you follow or Near you.
To search your own tweets (as I was doing) Advanced Search is your best bet. It includes the typical advanced search options (i.e., All of these words, This exact phrase, Any of these words, etc.) and then you can specify the accounts to search. In this case I used my Twitter handle – @lvanderbij.
And voila! There’s the article I was looking for.
Lesha Van Der Bij (@LVanDerBij) is CEO & Founder of Optimize Legal – keeping law firms and businesses up-to-date on changes to the law.
Flab
Your prose should be tight, toned and vigorous if you want to engage rather than repel your reader.
Too often, though, lawyers resort to flabby and lethargic constructions like these:
- Please be advised that … [omit and just give the damn advice]
- make available [offer, provide]
- … when I am able [heard on voicemail and seen in out-of-office replies; do people think when I can is too colloquial? it’s perfectly good]
- quoted as saying [this always sounds like either I’m not saying that this person actually said this (in case I get into trouble for suggesting that) but she has been reported (by others!) to have said … or just I haven’t bothered to check, but …]
- duly authorised [something can’t be unduly authorised, can it? duly authorised is a redundancy]
Consider Client Confidentiality–Disable Message Previews
Today’s tip is to consider whether reminders or message previews on any of your devices could compromise client confidentiality.
Between calendar reminders and email/text previews that appear while you’re working–or that pop up on your phone’s lock screen even when you’re not using it–much has been written about how notifications are constantly interrupting our workflow and concentration.
But what about the potential for client communication to be unwittingly displayed when you aren’t expecting it? It’s worth thinking twice about whether any pop-up notifications could be revealing private information.
If you can’t figure out how control these settings on your device (not always an easy task!), a quick online search for your particular device or app will show you to disable previews and notifications.
Outlook Mail – What Happens When I Click on the Question Mark?
You may or may not have noticed that there is a question mark on the top right-hand corner of your Outlook mail application. If you have noticed, chances are you have never clicked on it, assuming that it would bring up a list of unhelpful FAQs or, even worse, the old “Clippy” office assistant.
A few weeks ago, I was having a trouble with Outlook, and out of desperation I clicked on that question mark. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I opened up a chat box with a help team at Microsoft. They asked me a series of questions, and over the course of a couple of days we worked through and eventually resolved the issue. And, yes, it was apparent that I was dealing with actual humans.
So, an interesting discovery regarding Microsoft Outlook, particularly if you have your own business or home computer.
Lesha Van Der Bij (@LVanDerBij) is CEO & Founder of Optimize Legal – keeping law firms and businesses up-to-date on changes to the law.
Finding a Canadian Treaty Online
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) defines a treaty in Article 2 as “an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument, or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation.”
Treaties can be bilateral (between two countries), multilateral (between three or more countries) or plurilateral (between one state and a group of states).
In Canada, treaties fall into one of two categories: those that do not require new legislation in order to be implemented and those that do. For treaties that don’t require legislation, the Canadian government will wait at least twenty-one sitting days after a treaty is tabled and then begin the process of bringing the treaty into force. For treaties that do require legislative changes, the Government will generally wait a minimum of twenty-one sitting days before introducing the necessary legislation, although exceptions can be made if a treaty needs to be urgently ratified. (For more information on the process see https://treaty-accord.gc.ca/procedures.aspx?lang=eng.)
For example, the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, signed in The Hague in 1970, is a multilateral treaty of which Canada is a signatory. Canada signed the Convention on December 16, 1970, but did not ratify it until June 20, 1972. The legislation was tabled in the House of Commons on June 23, 1972 and the Convention came into force in Canada on July 24, 1972. (The in force date differs greatly by country.)
The Canadian Treaty Series is available at https://www.treaty-accord.gc.ca/cts-rtc.aspx and you can search Canada’s treaties at http://www.treaty-accord.gc.ca/search-recherche.aspx.
Plain-Language Info on Canadian Copyright Law
Administrator’s note: thanks to Lesley Ellen Harris of Copyrightlaws.com for this guest tip!
Do you sometimes feel that there’s too much information out there?
Do you wish there were a list of the top 5 to 10 online articles you need to read to get from point A to point B?
These posts on Canadian copyright law provide a basic understanding of a variety of topics.
- 10 Myths About Canadian Copyright Law
- 8 Facts About Canadian Copyright Law
- Canadian Copyright Law Quiz
- The Balance in Canadian Copyright Law
- Who Owns Copyright in Canada?
- Duration of Copyright in Canada
- Moral Rights in Canadian Copyright Law
- Orphan Works in Canada: Unlocatable Copyright Owners
- Canadian Versus U.S. Copyright Law
- Canadian Librarians and International Copyright
