Getting Feedback

Between blogging at Slaw.ca, posting legal research tips at Slawtips.ca, and taking courses towards Lean Six Sigma certification, this poor blog has not had much attention in 2014.  Christmas is the traditional time for guilt trips. Rather than focusing on the negative feelings from leaving this site without nourishment, I decided to give a compliment to the Attorney At Work site.

An excellent Daily Dispatch post by Mary Lokensgard on December 18, 2014 titled How to Ask for Feedback is one example of why I think highly of Attorney at Work.  I also appreciate their focus on one really good idea every day.

I agree with Mary that feedback is a dialog.  It is an innovation tool.

To put feedback into a legal research perspective - wouldn't you like to KNOW if what you provided was too little, too much, or just right? Isn't it better for your requester to know when you had too little time, too much time, or the predicted amount of time to complete the task?

I see feedback as a key driver for expectation management.

Thanks Attorney at Work for the excellent intel in 2014.

Environmental Law Centre blog

One of the areas I don't often have an opportunity to research is environmental law.  Infrequent review of a subject area is one of the things that can make for inefficient research, especially in a regulatory rich subject like environmental law.  To combat symptoms of inefficiency, it is a grand idea to preface your research with a look at specialty commentary in the form of well crafted legal blogs.

Check out the Environmental Law Centre blog for your next brush up on this area of law.  Well written commentary, posts rich with relevant links, and excellent and consistent use of categories.

Link to other Canadian law blogs by topic or writer type at Lawblogs.ca. Law blogs are free, available at your desk or mobile device, they link to publications and other sources, and often written by people with expertise to share.

Statistics, Blogging and Groundhog Day

Thanks to a tweet by Get Noticed Get Found the world has statistical evidence and an infographic that proves law blogging is more successful than Ground Hog Day rodent predictions:

Courtesy of: Get Noticed Get Found

Desirable personality traits in the legal industry

One of my favourite "To Read" sites is 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. Today they share
Elephant Post: What Is The Most Important Trait To Have In Your Profession?. I would highly recommend you read this whole post which has contributions by a wide variety of legal folk who chose to comment on one of a list of 24 personality traits that Greg Lambert and his blog colleagues identified from the book Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman.

The list of traits included:

Zest: approaching life with excitement and energy; feeling alive and activated
Grit: finishing what one starts; completing something despite obstacles; a combination of persistence and resilience.
Self-control: regulating what one feels and does; being self-disciplined
Social intelligence: being aware of motives and feelings of other people and oneself
Gratitude: being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen
Love: valuing close relationships with others; being close to people
Hope: expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it
Humor: liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing a light side
Creativity: coming up with new and productive ways to think about and do things
Curiosity: taking an interest in experience for its own sake; finding things fascinating
Open-mindedness: examining things from all sides and not jumping to conclusions
Love of learning: mastering new skills and topics on one’s own or in school
Wisdom: being able to provide good advice to others
Bravery: not running from threat, challenge, or pain; speaking up for what’s right
Integrity: speaking the truth and presenting oneself sincerely and genuinely
Kindness: doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them
Citizenship: working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group
Fairness: treating all people the same; giving everyone a fair chance
Leadership: encouraging a group of which one is a valued member to accomplish
Forgiveness: forgiving those who’ve done wrong; accepting people’s shortcomings
Modesty: letting one’s victories speak for themselves; not seeking the spotlights
Prudence/Discretion: being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks
Appreciation of beauty: noticing and appreciating all kinds of beauty and excellence
Spirituality: having beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe

Not surprising to me, librarians who contributed identified curiosity (x3 if you include Greg), social intelligence, citizenship, hope, and grit.

I was surprised that open-mindedness made the list from a (clearly superior and clever) Helpdesk Supervisor.

One of the personality traits that isn't on the list is Self awareness. In my opinion, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and the things that motivate you or drive you to procrastinate is a crucial part of being good at your profession. If you are unaware of what is driving you, it is difficult to know what kind of road to choose. Perhaps self awareness is less a personality trait and more a learned or naturally acquired skill.

I look forward to next week's Elephant Post offering of the least desirable personality traits in 'your' profession. Check it out next Friday, or be brave and contribute.

Writing Mojo

There is an interesting post on the Socialite Librarian blog about her loss of writing mojo.

What is your inspriation for relevant, frequent writing?

From the frequency of posts at this blog, I am suffering from the Socialite's syndrome, though I do meet my community obligations at Slaw.ca and Slaw Tips.

Perhaps treating writing as more of a community responsibility is the key to frequent blog posts. What motivates you?

CLawBies 2010 Nominations

It's CLawBies Season - Canadian Law Blog Awards. Time to reflect on my go to resources for insight into Canadian Law.

Law21.ca Jordan Furlong offers deep and thoughtful insight into Law as and industry, trends, and law practice management. Jordan's blog makes me think about where the industry is going. More importantly, at least to me, he makes me think about what I can do as a knowledge manager and law librarian to make sure my organization is prepared for the future.

I am surprisingly intrigued by ipblog.ca, my new colleague Richard Stobbe's blog. Richard joined our firm in 2010 and I confess that I was unaware of his blog until this year. I say surprisingly intrigued, becasue until I started reading Richard's blog, I didn't have an engaged personal interest in Intellectual Property. I am nominating Richard for a CLawBie because I find that I don't skim his posts, I read them.

All About Information by Dan Michaluk is another of the "read rather than skim" blogs on my favourite go to list. Dan offers great case summaries and his engaging personality comes through in his posts which always makes me read to the end to see if there is a surfing reference or a note about his family.

I find CLawBie nominations really difficult. There are so many great reads in the Canadian legal blogging scene. Thank you to all of the lawyers, librarians and technologists who take the time to share their knowledge with Canadian law blogs, especially Simon Fodden at Slaw.ca, Connie Crosby, and Steve Matthews.

Redefining viruses and the value of social networking

No this isn't a post about H1N1, though Field has a great seminar on pandemic planning. This is another post about Twitter.


Thanks to a CBA webinar delivered by Doug Jasinski on Social Media for Law Firms that I attended on September 30, I now have a really good measuring strategy to show social media use from a value perspective. Let me explain...


Last Thursday I posted to Slaw.ca about an Alberta Masters order that allowed for substitutional service via Facebook. This is new territory for litigation and the post generated quite a bit of interest. There were 5 comments though one was me clarifying the unreported citation. Slaw has a significant following as it is an important and popular place to read about Canadian Law and Technology. I feel very privileged to be a contributor.


My contact information is available on the Slaw Contributors page so when I offered to email copies of this 3 page order, there were several people who requested a copy - a quick review of my sent items shows that I emailed it to 10 people outside my firm...one of which was Doug who mentioned the decision in his presentation and referenced Field Law as the source. Thanks Doug!

Another person who showed some interest in the decision was Ellen Henry, Counsel with the Law Society of Manitoba. The Law Society sent an eLaw - Litigation Update to their members about the decision and it was forwarded to me by Karen Sawatzky, librarian at Pitblado LLP.


As of today there were 14 Retweets about the Slaw post. Retweets are links to a blog post from a twitter account or copying a tweet from someone you follow that references the item to alert your network of something you read. One of the tweets was me of course, since one of the ways I use Twitter is to share my work. My tweets also update my Facebook status (I hope this became useful cocktail party conversation for my school friends).


As Doug displayed in his seminar, you can quantify Twitter. I counted up the number of followers for everyone who mentioned my post using twitter. I was astonished to see that 10,491 people (give or take a few duplicates) received a short note about the Masters order I shared through Slaw.


If even 10% of the people who were notified were interested enough to read my post, that is over 1000 individuals who might recognize my name. They may connect me with Field LLP and if so, my firm just got some great, positive, attention. If one percent of those people remember my firm name when they have a legal issue in Alberta, that could lead to 10 new clients.

While working out these numbers, I could not help but think of the word virus. I might define virus like these molecular virology folks:

The concept of a virus as an organism challenges the way we define life:

• viruses do not respire,
• nor do they display irritability;
• they do not move
• and nor do they grow,
• however, they do most certainly reproduce, and may adapt to new hosts.

There is no doubt that reproduction has occurred. New hosts include Gary Wise and Pamela Pengelley to name just a couple of bloggers covering the story themselves.

I think there is new meaning of virus that is certainly not negative. I rather like being part of this little pandemic.

Costs, online legal research, and blog searching

Nina Platt at Strategic Librarian wrote a nice summary of the benefits to a client for their lawyer performing online (disbursable to the client) legal research. Her post was in response to an unfortunately worded costs award by U.S. District Court Judge Willis B. Hunt in Fulton County. This little nugget, which was not widely posted about at the time denigrated high fees by counsel in a class action suit, including legal research.

I read the decision a couple of weeks ago, thanks to a post at the Law Librarian Blog, and dismissed it from my mind as punitive comments from one judge about the particular firms involved in one litigation file and their fees.

Nina's approach to this issue is much better. Rather than dismissing the comments as one-off, she takes a permanent approach to the issue. She reminds us of the importance of using technology tools effectively to save time, and money, for clients in the research gathering process. She also allows any future researcher to plug "class action coca-cola hunt costs" into Google and see commentary on the judges costs decision in the context of legal research.

Nina has assisted in the use (or not) of this case law as precedent in costs awards. Thank You.

This scenario is also an excellent reminder to think about using 'public' sentiment and social media tools like blog and wiki searches as we would have used mainstream media along with scholarly legal work in the past.

Blogs provide an excellent source of commentary about the law. Consider the excellent legal blog content represented in the ABA Journal Blawg 100 list or the sites nominated for CLawBies.