Technology and Practice Innovation Articles

With COVID cases spiking and cities re-entering lockdown, we can assume that the Ontario government will continue to extend its emergency orders allowing the remote signing and witnessing of wills.

2019-2020 OBA President, Colin Stevenson sits down with Chris Bentley, the Managing Director of the Legal Innovation Zone, to discuss where legal innovation and technology is headed; how, as a busy lawyer, you can make sure you are keeping up on the latest developments and what new opportunities these developments are presenting.

To use a law practice management system, or not to use one, should no longer be the question. If it still is, hopefully the good advice from your colleagues in this newsletter will convince you that you should be using an LPM. The focus of this article is how an LPM can help you enhance your productivity and profitability.

by Martin Felsky, PhD, JD, Senior Counsel, Heuristica Discovery Counsel LLP and Special Advisor to the Canadian Judicial Council on Information Technology. “BigLaw may not be able to access [Office]365 for years,” warns the headline. Is cloud computing simply too risky for lawyers?

The OBA's Innovator in Residence, Chris Bentley, puts the focus on the legal consumer through the lens of the 2019 CLIO Legal Trends Report. The results may surprise you. Getting to know your consumer is to key to streamlining your practice and ultimately maximizing your ROI and clients' satisfaction.

The message from the legal community at this year's TECHxpo conference was pretty clear: harness that ingenuity that you apply to your legal work, and apply it to tech now. For those who follow this route, your future is bright!

Founded is a legal automation and cloud minute book service often described as “QuickBooks for Law.” It is used by thousands of small business owners across Canada to get incorporated and manage routine legal needs.

The legal economy has changed considerably in the past decade. Until recent years, the practice of law has been slow to adjust to its changing demands. The urgency of the changes has placed higher demands on the availability and delivery of affordable and quality legal services. This has amplified calls for law firms and practitioners to adapt to the growing needs of users of the legal system and to ensure its efficient and effective operation.

The market for law firm practice management software has blown up in the past decade. When it comes to bookkeeping and client relationship management (CRM) programs, many of us were either trained on, or continue to use older legacy systems, despite their obvious deficiencies: constantly having to back up the data on a server, slow and irrelevant updates, centralized storage as opposed to cloud storage, and technical and complicated interfaces. The latest and greatest technologies tackle many of these deficiencies and more by providing a user-friendly experience, free access to support, mobile apps, cloud-based storage solutions and more.

Faced with the prospect of innovating their practices, many lawyers – busy with cases, client meetings, and court appearances – tend to resist because of two weighty questions:  why, and where would I begin?  This newsletter brings you the answers.