Sources: WWE Champion CM Punk medically cleared to compete on this Monday's Raw

As WWE Champion CM Punk?s potential title defense against Ryback approaches on the Jan. 7 edition of Monday Night Raw, WWE.com sources indicate that The Straight Edge Superstar has been medically cleared for in-ring competition several weeks after his undergoing knee surgery. The?decision, if confirmed, returns Punk to action effective immediately, meaning he will defend his championship as scheduled in a Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match against Ryback.

The bout had originally been scheduled for the WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs pay-per-view, but Punk?s sudden trip under the knife suspended that contest until the champion was fully recuperated. His status was in doubt as recent as Dec. 31, when his recovery timeline from the procedure was called into question by Punk's personal physician (WATCH). WWE Chairman Mr. McMahon had gone so far as to schedule a potential replacement match of Ryback vs. Paul Heyman should Punk prove unable to compete, but pending approval, it appears The Chairman?s worries are assuaged.?

Our sources also indicate that a final decision on the champion's status will be presented to the WWE Universe on WWE Main Event tonight at 8/7 CT on ION Television.

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2012-12-31/cm-punk-cleared-to-compete

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Top 10 Canadian Albums of 2012 | On the Danforth Online

By Daniel Polowin

10. ?Leonard Cohen -?Old Ideas

After a somewhat unfortunate decade, this septuagenarian Canadian icon staged a comeback in 2012 with a?worldwide?tour and this platinum-selling album. Cohen is at top form in this, his first album of new material in eight years. Accompanying the bluesy instrumentation and the smoky baritone vocals we?ve come to expect from Cohen are some of his most moving lyrics yet. Cohen returns to his familiar meditations on love, sex, and God but with the added poignancy of a poet in the autumn of his life.

9. ?A Tribe Called Red -?A Tribe Called Red

Combining electronic, hip hop, reggae, dubstep, and dance with First Nations musical elements, this unique group, based out of Ottawa, has already been nominated for a Polaris Prize for this stellar debut album. Featuring?traditional?First Nations drumbeats and vocal chanting, A Tribe Called Red dub their unique style ?powwow-step.?

8. ?Carly Rae Jepsen -?The Kiss

Perhaps you?ve heard ?Call Me Maybe,? the song of summer 2K12 with possibly the catchiest melody ever written. After a pivotal endorsement from fellow Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber, this song went viral, with thousands of parody covers and?lip-dub?videos. While ?Call Me Maybe? is the main event on this, Jepsen?s first internationally released album, it is accompanied by other solid?sugary-sweet bubble-gum pop songs that suggest that Jepsen will not be a one-hit wonder.

7. ?A.C. Newman -?Shut Down the Streets

This is lead singer of the New Pornographers Carl Newman?s third solo album and his best yet. More introspective and wistful than the power-pop of his band work, Newman?s songs on this album are some of his most affecting, with lyrics about family, home, and fatherhood. Standout tracks include ?Strings,? ?Hostages,? and ?Encyclopedia of Classic Takedowns,? featuring guest vocals from Neko Case.

6. ?Metz -?Metz

Admittedly, this is not for everyone. Toronto-based trio Metz are loud, noisy, and aggressive. Playing post-hardcore sludge-punk, Metz?s debut album features screaming vocals, thundering drums, and ferocious guitar-work. But there is art in all this chaos and pop elements like vocal harmonies, tambourines, and piano riffs, evoking nineties bands like Nirvana and the Jesus Lizard. If this type of music appeals to you, we highly recommend seeing Metz live for the full punk experience.

5. ?Grimes -?Visions

Grimes is the?vehicle of Vancouver-born, Montreal-based musician, artist, and music video director Claire Boucher. Visions is her third album and biggest commercial and?critical?success. With an eclectic mix of influences and styles that Grimes describes as ?ADD music,? I imagine this album as the future official soundtrack of outer-space. Watch the video for one of the standout tracks off?Visions below and note Grimes? unique fashion-sense.

4. ?Kathleen Edwards ? Voyageur

Ottawa-native Kathleen Edwards? fourth studio album is produced by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver (her boyfriend) and features notable guest musicians like Norah Jones, the Good Lovelies, and Megafaun. Edwards, with her beautiful and haunting voice, is a master of alt-country.?Voyageur, which Edwards labels her ?divorce album,? features some of her most accessible rock music ?to date but also some of her saddest and most cathartic songs.

3. ?Mac DeMarco -?2

The second album from this Edmonton-raised and Montreal-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is a triumph. Mixing folk, glam-rock, country, and R&B, DeMarco sings off-kilter yet simple pop songs about cigarettes and his girlfriend, accompanied by warm and inviting bedroom-recorded instrumentation. The standout track off this album is the lovely ?My Kind of Woman.? Just turning 22 this year, the future looks bright for DeMarco if he continues releasing gems like?2.

2. Purity Ring -?Shrines

This duo from Edmonton released the best electronic album in a year with tough competition; even more impressive is that it?s their debut. Standout songs include ?Ungirthed,? ?Lofticries,? and ?Belispeak,? but the entire album is a cohesive collection of great tracks with ghost-like vocals and danceable synth beats. Though masked under heavy-production, the lyrics are excellent: literary and impressionistic yet accessible and catchy. Shrines is an impressive artistic statement from this young, up-and-coming, and unique band.

1. ?Japandroids -?Celebration Rock

Not a great year for rockers, but Japandroids? appropriately titled second album is redemption for true rock & roll. While missing some of the aggressive punk of their debut, Celebration Rock has similar catchy riffs over songs about partying, intoxication, and love, with more crossover appeal and pop touches. Songs like ?Fire?s Highway? and ?Younger Us? evoke the driving rock ballads of Bruce Springsteen, while the slower closer ?Continuous Thunder? hints at a more introspective direction for this duo, showing that while Japandroids still rock hard, they are growing up.

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Source: http://onthedanforth.ca/2012/12/31/top-10-canadian-albums-of-2012/

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CRITIQUE ARTICLE 2: Use of Career Education and ... - Blog ...

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Source: http://palabap11.blogspot.com/2013/01/critique-article-2-use-of-career.html

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Fiscal deal would raise tax rates, sticking point remains: source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An emerging deal to avoid the U.S. "fiscal cliff" would raise $600 billion in revenue over the next 10 years by increasing tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households making above $450,000 annually, according to a source familiar with the talks.

The deal would also delay a series of automatic government spending cuts, known as the "sequester," though a sticking point remains on how long that delay would last.

The White House is pressing for it to be delayed a full fiscal year and to include offsets made up of a mix of spending cuts and revenue, the source said.

The deal would permanently extend middle-class tax cuts for 114 million households and includes a permanent fix for the so-called "alternative minimum tax." It would extend unemployment insurance for 2 million people for one year.

The deal would raise the estate tax for estates worth $10 million per couple or more to 40 percent from 35 percent.

The agreement would return capital gains tax rates for individuals making $400,000 a year and couples making $450,000 a year to what they were under President Bill Clinton. Including a 3.8 percent tax from Obama's 2010 healthcare law, dividends and capital gains would be taxed at a rate of 23.8 percent.

The deal also prevents a 27 percent cut to reimbursements for doctors who see Medicare patients, known as the "doc fix," and does not include cuts from Obama's healthcare law to do so, according to the source.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Roberta Rampton, and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fiscal-deal-raise-tax-rates-sticking-point-remains-181132626--business.html

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Millinocket firefighters save several pets from fire - Bangor Daily News

MILLINOCKET, Maine ? Firefighters battled thick smoke to rescue two cats and a dog from a fire that damaged the cellar and living room of an Aroostook Avenue house Sunday morning.

Firefighters had to stop homeowner Thomas Jameson from going back into his house at 423 Aroostook Ave. to retrieve his pets after he had rescued a dog and a cat, Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte said.

With flames burning into the cellar ceiling and first-floor living room and smoke thick throughout the rest of the house, Turcotte went inside and found a dog and a cat and Firefighter-EMT Sam Monteith rescued a cat, Turcotte said.

?It was the funniest thing,? Turcotte said. ?The cat I found was just lying there, unresponsive, and I thought it was dead. I shook it a little bit and it came right alive. It hissed and clawed at me. I was thinking, ?Oh my goodness.??

Firefighters have pet-sized breathing masks to help resuscitate pets, but didn?t need to use them on the animals. Jameson, however, was treated for smoke inhalation at Millinocket Regional Hospital after refusing treatment at the scene, Assistant Fire Chief Thomas Malcolm said.

The fire apparently started in an ash box in the basement directly beneath Jameson?s living room fireplace. The ash box is large, approximately 16 inches across and about two feet deep, and embedded in cement, but was piled high with ash because it hadn?t been cleaned in a while, Turcotte said.

?It appears there was quite a bit of hot ash in there,? he said.

Ash that fell to the box from a fireplace fire the family started the night before apparently ignited thick building timbers hanging over the ash box. Turcotte said the timbers might also have ignited because they were badly dried out after decades of exposure to ash box heat.

Turcotte smelled smoke at about 8:55 a.m. and either he or a neighbor called 911. When firefighters arrived about five minutes later, heavy black smoke was pouring from the front door, Turcotte said.

Thick basement smoke and intense heat made finding the seat of the fire difficult, but firefighters doused the flames before they could spread very far into the living room area, Turcotte said.

East Millinocket firefighters were called immediately to the scene because Millinocket is down one engine, and they assisted in fighting the flames, Turcotte said. The flames might have eaten into the first floor and become uncontrollable had the fire burned much longer.

?They did a really good quick stop,? Malcolm said. The fire ?could have gone right up the chimney chase but it didn?t. They saved a lot with the initial knockdown.?

The Jameson family won?t be able to occupy the house until repairs are made. Damage estimates run from $30,000 to $40,000.

The fire is Millinocket?s second in about a month. A malfunctioning space heater sparked a fire that destroyed most of a second-floor apartment on Katahdin Avenue on Nov. 28.

Sunday?s fire, Turcotte said, underlined the importance of keeping fireplaces clear of ash buildup. He encouraged homeowners to have their chimneys and fire boxes cleaned professionally or at least emptied.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/12/30/news/penobscot/millinocket-firefighters-save-several-pets-from-fire/

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Something from nothing I: The relevance of science to philosophy ...

Do theistic metaphysical systems such as Thomism or Scotism have any stakes in the findings of the empirical sciences? ?A discussion of formal causes in science and challenges to the principle of causality.

According to the positivists, the very existence and success of these sciences is a refutation of religious and metaphysical ways of thinking; these are thereby proved either wrong or meaningless according to whether they have any empirical content. ?This view is notoriously self-refuting, and I trust few of my readers have much sympathy for it. ?Those who see value in both metaphysics and science will therefore claim that the two address different questions and different aspects of being.

For some, this conviction leads to a very sharp line drawn between the empirical sciences and the philosophy of nature; the former addresses the phenomenal world, the latter ontological reality, and the findings of one have very little significance for the other. ?The existential Thomist Jacques Maritain often seemed to take this view. ?Maritain thought he could intuit metaphysical principles, not by abstraction from the observed world, but directly through an ?intuition of being? that he was convinced he enjoyed (see especially A Preface to Metaphysics). ?Using this ?intuition?, things that seem logically perfectly possible (e.g. infinite space or a contingent being existing for an infinite time?c.f. his defense of the 3rd way in Approaches to God) can be judged actually impossible. ?Thus, Thomists often assert that the emergence of life, and sometimes of every new species, requires direct divine intervention, even though the observed laws of nature would seem to have no trouble accommodating such things. ?For an example of Maritain?s intuition at work, consider his treatment of general relativity in The Degrees of Knowledge. ?He considered the question of whether spacetime is really curved or if gravity simply mimics such an effect, a reasonable philosophical question. ?Maritain?s response, as I recall, is that when we imagine space, we must think of it as Euclidean, therefore space is really flat. ?What kind of an argument is this?

I am unsatisfied with this overly strict separation of philosophy of nature and science. ?It reduces science to a matter of data fitting with no connection to underlying truth. ?As Stephen Barr and I have argued, it is also false to say that science ignores formal causes. ?Emergent phenomena appear quite explicitly in solid-state physics (e.g. band structure, phonons) and thermodynamics. ?One can hardly imagine doing biology at all without invoking form and function. ?Aristotelians should be gratified that hylomorphic composition has proven inescapable even in the hard sciences. ?Since forms are in science, science can meaningfully contribute to discussions of what things are, not just how they are observed to behave. ?For example, physics at least strongly suggests that heat is random motion of constituent particles and light is an electromagnetic wave, a pattern of motion in an electric and magnetic field. ?One needn?t conclude then that light is ?really? a colorless mechanical oscillation?that is Cartesian prejudice long made obsolete by field theory. ?Electromagnetic waves obviously do have color. ?That these discoveries about heat and light, although they are empirically based, are indeed formal is attested by their certainty. ?We may possibly learn much more about the behavior of nonideal gases or the behavior of light at high energies or in nonlinear media, but it?s impossible to imagine this affecting the overall identifications with random motion and electromagnetism, just as future refinement in our understanding of human physiology can?t possibly shake our recognition of human beings as distinct biological organisms. ?The role of philosophers, then, is to identify the distinctly formal element of scientific discoveries. ?They point out when a distinct pattern has been identified, one that can be recognized and understood independently of refinements in our knowledge of the underlying matter. ?It is often said that every scientific theory is one experiment away from refutation. ?However, these nuggets of formal knowledge, obtained by scientific-philosophical cooperation, are more solid.

What of the more general principles of the philosophy of nature and metaphysics, such as the principle of causality (for the Thomist) or sufficient reason (for the followers of Leibniz)? ?Do the sciences address these at all? ?I admit that I have never experienced Maritain?s ?intuition of being?, and I am not privy to its secrets. ?I also have no way of knowing if it is anything other than his private fantasy. ?Thus, I prefer to build metaphysical principles on abstraction from the sensible world, just as Aristotle himself did. ?General principles having to do with identity and causality should be thought of as the general requirements that any understanding of nature must obey if it is to describe a coherent, intelligible universe. ?Logical consistency is one obvious such prerequisite, and hence the laws of identity and noncontradition, as the metaphysical bases of logical consistency, are seen as metaphysical truths, assumed rather than tested by science. ?However, logical consistency may not be the only prerequisite for an intelligible universe. ?Many metaphysical systems assert that some laws on the operation of causality are also needed.

Restrictions on the operation of causality are the lynchpin of any cosmological argument for the existence of God, the necessary self-subsistent Being who holds all contingent beings in existence. ?The argument must take as one of its premises some statement that contingent/finite/composite beings can?t come into existence or maintain in existence ?by themselves?. ?Why not? ?How is it logically or mathematically impossible to say, as a brute law of nature, that elephants come into existence out of nothing with a rate/probability of one per year per cubic light year? ?It isn?t. ?One could make a consistent mathematical model of a universe in which this is true. ?But would it be coherent?

In a universe where finite beings pop into existence out of metaphysical nothing at a certain rate, we must ask where this rate for each type of object comes from. ?What is it?s ontological ground? ?There are three possibilities that I can think of.

1. The rate is grounded in some background reality into which the created being emerges. ?Then we don?t really have creation from nothing; we have creation from this background object by exercise of the potencies of this existing object.
2. The rate is grounded in ?the laws of nature?. ?That is, these laws are regarded not as descriptions of the nature of existing objects, but as causally active entities (or their enforcer, whatever it is) in their own right. ?Physicists talking to the public about ?the laws of physics? allowing creation from nothing often sound as if this is what they believe. ?However, once we reconceptualize the laws of physics as actual beings, position 2 really becomes a version of position 1. ?In fact, it?s a version of position 1 that suggests a Platonic Demiurge, although I doubt the New Atheists realize this.
3. The rate is grounded in the created object itself. ?Part of the nature of each object is its probability for self-creation.

Only position 3 presents a threat to the cosmological argument. ?Thus, it is sufficient for natural theology to prove that position 3 is incoherent. ?This can be argued as follows. ?Take an object A with self-creation rate p. ?Now imagine another object B whose nature is identical to the first except its self-creation rate is y*p, where y is some arbitrarily large number, large enough that the universe should momentarily fill up with Bs. ?Why doesn?t this happen? ?The only response is that the hypothetical universe is only one with As but not Bs. ?However, before they self-create, every type of object is equally non-existent. ?There is no way of saying that only certain types of objects can self-create if position 3 is true, i.e. if creation is grounded in the emerging object. ?Thus, every logically conceivable object must self-create at every rate, and an intelligible universe is impossible.

It has been objected that creation from nothing happens all the time in particle physics, in the form of particle-antiparticle pairs spontaneously popping out of the vacuum. ?This is an objection that philosophers should take very seriously. ?The phenomenon arises in several contexts. ?In the presence of strong electric or gravitational fields, real particles can be created spontaneously (in the sense that the effect is probabilistic), although the mass-energy, and hence presumably the causal agent, of the new particles comes from the background field. ?The temporary creation of virtual particles also appears in perturbation theory calculations of various scattering rates, decay rates, and correlations. ?As an aside, I think the ontological status of virtual particles is far from clear. ?One can use the same Feynman diagram methods to solve certain classical problems (e.g. the harmonic oscillator), and the virtual states that appear in the calculation are pretty obviously artifacts of the perturbation expansion. ?So in QED, one can ?correct? the noninteracting photon propagator by adding contributions from the photon temporarily splitting into an electron-positron pair. ?Does that mean photons really spend part of their time as pairs, or only that the noninteracting photon is just an approximation to the ?true? photon of the full nonlinear theory and the perturbative expansion shows us how to build the true propagator from analytically tractable simpler ones? ?In any event, even these virtual pair creations are not ?from nothing? since their diagrams always attach (eventually) to the real particles. ?In the above example, the pair comes from a photon. ?In any case, the identification of the vacuum in quantum field theory with metaphysical nothing is the most egregious misstep of all. ?The vacuum can have a nonzero energy, and it is possible that cosmologists have already measured it. ?(The so-called ?cosmological constant? or ?dark energy?). ?Indeed, the existence of a vacuum is not even a generally covariant fact, since an accelerating observer will see particles where an inertial observer sees none. ?Actually, the vacuum has a great deal of structure loaded into it via the Hilbert space we erect to describe it as one state among many and the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian to describe its evolution, which includes information about all possible particles and their energies. ?What grounds these expressions? ?Why can?t I stick energy terms from non-existent particles into the Lagrangian? ?If I do, my answers will be wrong. ?If one attaches quantum field theory to position 3, it becomes vulnerable to all of the?objections to that position. ?It therefore seems that modern particle physics, in spite of its ability to ?create? particles, must be wed to position 1 or 2. ?Position 1 seems to me more natural, given the mathematical similarity of particle physics to the theory of perturbations in solids; in the latter case it is clear that the particles are oscillations of an underlying lattice which provides the metaphysical ground for all the particles? properties. ?I repeat what I said about light: ?asserting that elementary particles are excitations of something doesn?t mean that they?re mechanical oscillations in some sort of ether.

A more serious challenge comes from quantum cosmology. ?In particular, Vilenkin and Hawking and Hartle have proposed models (based on reasonable semiclassical and mini-superspace approximations to a full quantum treatment of the metric of the universe) in which a closed spacetime manifold, representing the whole universe, apparently tunnels into being out of nothing. ?These models evade many of my above objections. ?There is no background space or field to provide the obvious ?something?. ?Since spacetime manifolds themselves are not (or needn?t be) embedded in any background space, this scenario doesn?t fit into the above disproved case of a creation rate per time per volume. ?One might assert that there is no way to identify points on different manifolds and that therefore universes can?t interact, so there is no empirical problem with saying that an infinite number of different universes?every possible one?can and do pop into being out of nothing.

Note that it is irrelevant whether any particular published scenario describes our actual universe. ?Their authors themselves regard them as simplified models, but even nothing like this ever happened, the damage to the cosmological argument would be the same, since that only depends on what is coherently possible. ?A more pertinent inquiry is whether these universe-creation models, e.g. the Hawking-Moss instanton, have been interpreted correctly. ?My impression is that discerning reality is more difficult when working with instantons than when working with the full quantum theory. ?Tunneling ?from nothing? is an obscure and problematic notion. ?Again, something along the lines of position 1 would probably be more natural: ?the spacetime metric is an excitation of some background entity, and the ?nothing? from which it emerged was that entity?s ground state. ?(?Third quantization? models of universe creation lend themselves very easily to such a reading.) ?(A position 2 interpretation could also work, and is at least rhetorically the one preferred by most cosmologists. ?To this, my points on position 2 would apply.)

However, even if I could argue that a position 1 interpretation is more natural, the causality requirement needed by the cosmological argument is still overthrown if a position 3 interpretation is still tenable. ?To genuinely prove the principle of causality, we must grant the alternative every leeway and show that it still can?t work. ?The proponents of self-creation, however, must grant their opponents the right to take the proposed self-creation principle and apply it categorically to every possibility that the principle allows and wreck as much havoc as he can. ?Is it really true that universes can?t interact? ?If the terms in the action are grounded in self-creating metrics, than I can stick anything into them that I like, even if I have to introduce arbitrary mappings between manifolds to make interactions between universes work. ?And I?ll bet I can do this in ways that make two universes interacting distinct from one bimetric universe. ?This is only the first idea that comes to my mind for how to try to wreck a cosmological model that espouses a position 3 interpretation. ?One senses the opportunity for an arms race between theist and atheist theoretical physicists. ?Probably this would not be decisive in itself, but onlooking philosophers would have their imaginations stretched, and they would have a wider sense of possibility than everyday experience provides when formulating their putatively necessary principles.

In my defense of religion, I presented something like the no-popping argument above. ?I then proposed an explanation of this principle, namely that beings for whom multiple instantiation is possible must be receiving their existence from outside. ?This allowed me to disregard possibilities such as that contingent beings have perpetually existed on existential inertia or that there is a force that suppresses self-creation in an already occupied universe (what I call the ?crowding out? possibility) without having to find a particular inconsistency in any of them. ?This has always struck me as the weakest part of my argument, because I?ve never proven that there is no rival metaphysical principle that could explain no-popping without ruling out the other atheist alternatives. ?An argument that took direct aim at a stronger alternative, the best theoretical physicists could muster, would have had a stronger effect and made the leap to metaphysical principle smaller. ?Thus, I have entitled this post part 1 of a series, hoping the implicit promise will prompt me to address this issue properly.

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Source: http://orthosphere.org/2012/12/31/something-from-nothing-i-the-relevance-of-science-to-philosophy/

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2013 Tips and Predictions ? Part Three! - Thoughtful Legal ...

? Stay frozen or face the truth
Time won?t wait for us to choose??

Lyrics, Music and Recorded by Fountain of Tears.

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This is the third and final post in the 2013 Tips and Predictions theme. It has been wonderful to read such informative and insightful thoughts from all around the globe on the future of law. Accordingly, here are the last but certainly not the least of these great ideas:

Stephanie Kimbro, MA, JD, is the Director of the North Carolina branch of Burton Law, LLC.??Prior to working with Burton Law, Stephanie operated a virtual law office for six years delivering unbundled North Carolina estate planning and small business legal services to clients online. She is the recipient of the?2009 ABA Keane Award for Excellence in eLawyering, was named an?ABA Journal?Legal Rebel in 2010 and won the?Wilmington Parent Magazine?Family Favorite Attorney Award six years in a row for her virtual law office. Stephanie has published two books,?Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online, ABA, October, 2010 and?Limited Scope Legal Services: Unbundling and theSelf-Help Client, ABA, March 2012. She is also the co-founder of?Virtual Law Office Technology, LLC?(VLOTech), which was acquired by Total Attorneys in the fall of 2009.

In addition to practicing law, Stephanie writes about the ethics and technology issues of delivering legal services online and is interested in the use of technology to increase access to justice. She has provided presentations and guest lectured for many state bars, law schools and other organizations interested in legal technology and other law practice management topics.

Kimbro a member of the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services and serves on the advisory board of the?International Legal Technology Standards Organization?(ILTSO), the board of the?Legal Services National Technology Assistance Project?(NTAP), and is a member of the ABA?eLawyering Task Force, Chair of the ABA LPM?s Ethics and Professional Responsibility Task Force, a member of the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA)?Law Practice Management?(LPM) Council, and the NCBA Tech Advisory Committee.

Stephanie has graciously provided us with a very insightful look into how technology is going to change the way that legal services are delivered, marketed and structured. ?Here are her thoughts:

• We will continue to see the number of legal technology start-ups being introduced to the consumer legal marketplace. These companies are going to focus their efforts on consumers, but will also attempt to cultivate strong attorney networks that will provide their services with the value add of licensed legal assistance. Existing legal tech startups may be acquired by larger legal service companies or fail to obtain the funding necessary to scale to the next level. Of the technologies introduced in these platforms we will see two interesting developments that will be a little different than the typical Q&A or forum platforms typically offered to consumers. These companies are adding better matching systems using algorithms, consumer preferences, and online behavior to match the legal needs of the individual with the appropriate legal guidance/forms and potentially with the best lawyer to handle their particular legal need. We will also see the expert systems in some of these platforms increase in sophistication as they learn and improve from user feedback.

• The focus of these companies? services will start to shift more from business law and startup legal services to more personal legal services for the average consumer. We may see companies negotiating with other non-legal social media and networking applications for access to user data which may be used to help predict or identify consumer?s legal needs as a way to target advertising for their platforms.

• Lawyers will become more aware of the need for online marketing that extends beyond the use of social media and focuses more on brand building online using analytical tools that focus on ROI rather than just online reach. As part of this, more lawyers, especially solos and small firms, will consider joining forces with one or more of these legal startups. Navigating those networks and figuring out how to convert any leads generated from them into paying clients will be a learning process for both the lawyers and the companies looking to maintain and develop strong relationships with lawyers. As a result of the increased engagement by lawyers with consumers through these networks, there may be increased scrutiny of the potential ethical issues that might arise from these online interactions.

• From the consumer perspective, we will continue to see the public turning to the Internet to look for personal legal services. The law suit between Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer may provide us with some interesting information about quality, quantity, and process of massive online delivery as well as some fun conversation over the next year.? More of the public will be aware of virtual law firms as an alternative online option, but the majority will still turn to the larger online brands of Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer when those can be used instead. Accordingly, lawyers with virtual law offices will learn to efficiently automate and sell basic legal documents and focus their energy on marketing their online brand and their bespoke work or niche practices to differentiate themselves online from other virtual practices and the services of the online legal service companies.

• Even clients of larger law firms by this point have realized that their firms cannot justify the traditional high billable hour and will pressure them to use more cost-effective methods of delivery which will include an emphasis on outsourcing and the use of online management and collaborative systems. More sophisticated clients will also be questioning their firm about the use of expert systems that help not only save on costs, but that can predict potential outcomes (and therefore the effectiveness of different strategies) for the client?s matter and whether the firm employs such systems. Quantitative legal prediction as a resource for basic consumer needs or for use by solos or small firms will not be widely available in the next couple of years. However, larger law firms with sophisticated clients who can afford to invest in the technology may start the process of cumulating data that will build systems to predict legal outcomes and assist in decision making.

• I think only a small number of law firms will still be forward thinking enough to offer forms of online dispute resolution in their practice areas. As complementary to their traditional services, rather than ODR, some firms may integrate the use of simpler online negotiation and settlement tools, such as the use of the app PictureItSettled, or online game-theoretic bargaining systems, such as those created by FairOutcomes.

• I also predict that a slow moving and quiet revolution will start this year in the legal services community as the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and state legal aids go through a major shift in thinking about how online and mobile delivery can increase access to justice. (The LSC is holding a second technology summit this January.) The collaboration with legal service companies, private practitioners, and law schools will result in a less fragmented picture of access in our country and push all of these parties out of their bubbles and into reevaluation of how working relationships between themselves and existing resources can be used to increase pro bono and self-help assistance. Limited scope representation handled pro bono or even low bono will become a standard introduced and accepted by most state legal aid organizations as they realize that this will encourage the increased volunteer activity of private practitioners and the donation of technology and resources from legal service companies. Years from now, this revolution and the increase in access from the innovative collaborations that result will provide empirical, results-based proof that we can use to argue for less restrictive rules on non-lawyer ownership of law firms and the removal of lawyer advertising rules that restrict innovations in delivery methods.

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Nate Russell?hails from private practice where he was a civil litigator and family lawyer. Before his legal career he worked in media, including TV and internet. Currently Nate is a legal community liaison at?Courthouse Libraries BC, where he brings his legal experience and his interest in emerging information technologies to bear on improving the programs and resources Courthouse Libraries BC offers lawyers in British Columbia.

Nate?s objective is to help fellow lawyers, especially those in small firms and solo practice, get the best out of our branches and improve their research and practice management skills, so they can best serve the public.

With Nate?s background, it is not surprising that his predictions lie in the area of continuing legal education and professional development:

• I would like to predict, though it may be more to hope, that the same good sense that gave rise to the elimination for 2012 of the ?audience test? for CPD accredited activities like teaching and writing will continue forward.

• For 2013, someone will propose (and it will not be strenuously or convincingly argued against) that CPD-accredited writing ought to expand beyond the rigid confines of ?law books or articles intended for publication?, to include practice-oriented blogs, and writing for PLEI websites that?may or?may not?result in ink-on-paper-bound-in-cardboard. Other criteria could replace an ?intention? ?to publish, for example criteria that a law-related web article or blog post of a minimum length must appear on a site controlled by an established provider of public legal education and information and/or information for the legal community (i.e. LSS, Justice Education Society, People?s Law School, Courthouse Libraries BC or Clicklaw).

• The elimination of the ?audience test? has raised the ladder to let CPD out of the ivory tower, but its presence has yet to be felt fully in the streets.

• That there is a tremendous service-mindedness among the Bar. That is beyond doubt. In a CLE-TV presentation this summer Access Pro Bono shared the statistics that in 2011 alone 600 lawyers donated over 7,000 of volunteer hours. The energy is there, and I predict that with a little enablement (by the Law Society and non-profit legal information institutions in this province), a vast and comprehensive body of online commentary could be produced sooner than we may think. Let?s check back in December 2013!

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Thomas Spraggs?holds a Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees. He articled at a personal injury firm in Alberta and continued as an associate at that firm before returning to Coquitlam, BC to lead?Spraggs & Co.?Thomas has applied innovative approaches to practice management and an progressive approach to technology to lead Spraggs & Co to become a highly respected award-winning firm. Tom is currently undertaking an MBA at the same time as leading his busy firm.

Tom is also a former competitive swimmer which would ?help explain how he manages to carry on his extensive trial practice. ?Thomas is a member of the law societies of British Columbia, Yukon and Alberta. He?s a member of the?Trial Lawyers Association of BC?and the?American Association for Justice.

Tom states that after much thought here are his 2013 predictions in regards to technology and the practice of law:

• 2013 will be less dynamic from a technology change perspective than in previous years. Management accountants in larger firms will be challenged as to what is traditionally perceived as ?needed technology vs. desired technology.? Individually, lawyers will probably ignore the boring technology at the office and opt for cool and innovative products that access data from the cloud. Clients also expect instant access to relevant information from their lawyers outside of the office which bootstraps the cloud based computing model further. The new and highly anticipated Windows 8 tablets, in addition to the ever amazing iPad, will become a catalyst for significant increases in tablet workplace computing as productivity increases. These productivity increases are both perceived and measurable, this will likely result in the conclusion that these tools are highly effective, especially for collaboration. The management accountants realize that ?needed technology? which is usually a desktop networked over a LAN is an assumption that is worth challenging.

• The cloud will continue to evolve as people realize that licensing software on a subscription basis is good value. Renting software that is constantly updated as it is used/needed is far more economical than the old business models. 2013 will also be the year that voice recognition is everywhere and so will awkward misspellings in emails as a result. Forgiveness of such computer generated typos?, I don?t know.

• Mobile computing is also allowing lawyers to work in more places away from the office, which is facilitating better work/ life integration (not really balance though) and a mini hiring boom for experienced and skillful female lawyers who recognize opportunities for working with progressive firms as a result of these technologies increases. All in all, the future is mobile cloud based computing which is now trending to normalcy. Lawyers are keeping in step.

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As the writer of this blog, this is my chance to chime into the discussion. ?A little about myself. ?I am David J. Bilinsky, the Practice Management Advisor/Consultant and lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia. I was recently named a Fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution (NCTDR) at the University of Massachusetts. ?I am also a Fellow and past Trustee of the College of Law Practice Management and past Editor-in-Chief of ABA?s Law Practice Magazine.

I am an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University teaching a totally online, graduate level course in the Masters of Arts in Applied Legal Studies program.? This MA program received the 2011 Award of Excellence from the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education. I have also ?designed and will be teaching a course on legal technology for the University of Toronto Law School in 2012-13 as well as a course for the law school at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg Virginia.

My mission in life is to empower lawyers to anticipate the changes, realize the opportunities, face the challenges and embrace the expanding possibilities of the application of practice management concepts to the practice of law in innovative ways that provide service excellence.

I am fortunate to be the founder and Chair of the Pacific Legal Technology Conference?(next conference October 2013!)??and a past Co-Chair of the American Bar Association?s TECHSHOW. ?I have a background in Mathematics and Computer Science (BSc) as well as a law degree from the University of Manitoba and an MBA from UBC.

Last year I did a Top 10 list of predictions (the success or lack there of to be determined by you the humble reader at the end of this post!).

Following that tradition, here is my Top 10 List of Predictions for 2013:

#10 Law Schools will embrace distance education as a way to expand their market and to bring in sessional lecturers that ordinarily would be cost-prohibitive:

These new lecturers will expand the traditional curriculum to offer much more practical legal training to allow newly graduates to launch into practice to overcome the difficulty in securing articling and associate positions in traditional firms.

#9 Education in Law Schools will incorporate greater MBA-related training:

This follows prediction #10 in expanding the range of courses offered by law schools to law students to better prepare them for a career of law practice by grounding them in business concepts and entrepreneurial outlooks. ?Related to this will be the explicit recognition by legal regulators that knowledge of legal practice concepts (management, technology, marketing and finance) is as integral to the practice of law as is knowledge of ?black letter law?. This was affirmed in part by the ABA in August 2012 recognizing that knowledge of technology is a facet of competent representation and revised their model rules accordingly.

#8 Non-lawyers involved in the delivery of legal services:

Ontario and BC are currently expanding the ability of paralegals to render legal services. ?I believe this will be matched in other Canadian and American jurisdictions. ?I believe other near-legal professions will call for greater powers to render legal-type services in order to match the increasing need for affordable access-to-justice (such as Notary Publics in BC).

#7 Lawyers as Leaders:

The profession will call for greater emphasis for lawyers to assume leadership roles in many facets of society ?in order to create new opportunities for law graduates and lawyers and to expand the influence that lawyers have on society (and to prevent the fleeing of lawyers from the profession).

#6 Effect on Judiciary / Court services:

Courts have been among the last institutions to be affected by the reforms created by the Internet. ?Either courts will restructure and ?incorporate the potential cost/benefit advantages offered by Online Dispute Resolution or Alternative Dispute Resolution ? or ? new tribunals will be established to take certain types of cases away from the courts and place them in new tribunals that will incorporate ODR reforms.

#5 Access to Justice:

Legal service organizations (?Legal Aid?) will be looking for ways to increase access to justice via reforms as their budgets become increasingly squeezed and the calls for them to service more clients increase. ?I would look for Legal Aid ?to move beyond ?bespoke? legal services and more of a commodity-based delivery structure.

#4 Globalization Effects will continue to be felt:

Large law firms in Canada will be chomping at the bit to join in the globalization movement that is happening across the world. ?This will place new pressures on legal regulators in Canada to loosen how lawyers are regulated in Canada to match reforms in other parts of the world.

#3 Alternative Business Structures:

In order to get around the rigidity of the Multi-disciplinary Partnership concept, there will be an increasingly-louder call for lawyers to be able to enter into looser business structures that do not call for complete lawyer control of the business entity. ?This will be due to the reforms happening in other parts of the world lapping on our shores.

#2 Greater Uniformity across Jurisdictions:

Canadian law societies will be adopting a common model code (for example, The new Code of Professional Conduct for British Columbia which comes into effect on Jan 1, 2013 and which is based on the Federation of Law Societies? Model Code of Professional Conduct). ?Globalization efforts will call for increasing uniformity across jurisdictions for laws and regulations in order to allow for ease of commerce.

#1 Technology will continue to reform Law and Legal Practice:

The relentless march of Moore?s Law and the breathtaking application of technology to all types of problems will mean that those who deliver legal services will continue to be under pressure. ?Not only must lawyers understand technology (see the ABA reforms in #2 above) but consumers of legal services understand technology ?- and will be waiting for lawyers to latch onto the advantages that are offered and reform how they render legal services as a result. ?If lawyers do not ? then there are any number of organizations (see LegalZoom supra in #2 below from 2012) that are only too willing to try to apply technology to the practice of law. ?This will result in such aspects as the unbundled practice of law, the continued emergence of the e-lawyering movement ?and the continued growth of Online Dispute Resolution. ?While the ?technological singularity? may yet be in the future, there is no denying that technology is the most disruptive force working on the legal profession at this time.

Now:

One thing about being a crystal-ball gazer, you should look back and check your accuracy! ?Accordingly, I wanted to look at Last Year?s Predictions to see what progress (if any!) was made along my (predicted) lines:

#10: Mobile/Tablets will Invade the Enterprise:

Accordingly to the 2012 LTRC (the Legal Technology Resource Center of the American Bar Association) Survey on the use of Legal Technology by lawyers, 33% of lawyers use a tablet computer (and of those, 91% are iPads).

#9: ?Regulators will Start Putting some Governing Principles around The Cloud:

The Law Society of British Columbia in 2012 released its Cloud Computing Working Group Report?and will be shortly releasing their Cloud Computing Checklist for use by lawyers and law firms considering going to the cloud.

#8: ?Web-based Collaboration with Clients will Emerge as Clients Reject Email as too Insecure:

Well I was a bit overly optimistic here. ?Again the 2012 LTRC survey found that secure portal use was up to 25% from 20%. ?A modest increase but by no means a home run. ?What was interesting is that solo/small firm adoption of secure portals accounted for most of this increase as their use of this technology grew from 1% to 11%

#7: ?Social Media Impacts will continue to be Felt in Litigation, Employment and Family Law in Particular.

Social media evidence is growing and shows no signs of abating. ?Social media evidence has become a lightening rod of sorts; in some jurisdictions, steps are being taken to limit a prospective employer?s ability to gain access to a potential employee?s private social media pages.

#6: ?Security and Privacy will Emerge as a Concern for Clients of Law Firms.

I think the fact that encryption use by law firms has grown from 23% to 33% of reporting firms according to the 2012 LTRC study shows that law firms and their clients are increasingly concerned about the security of their communications.

#5: ?Law Schools will Have to Prepare Students to actually Practice Law.

According to an August 4, 2012 article in the ABA Journal:

?Law schools have dramatically increased all aspects of skills instruction?including clinical, simulation and externships?in the wake of a 2004 change in law school accreditation standards requiring that students receive ?substantial instruction? in skills generally regarded as necessary for effective and responsible participation in the legal profession, according to the survey, conducted by the curriculum committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.?

If American law schools are changing then it won?t be long before Canadian law schools follow suit.

#4: ?Self-Regulation of Lawyers will come under Increasing Scrutiny, not for Ethical Reasons but for Economic Ones.

An article published in the 80 Fordham Law Review 2761 (2011-2012) entitled ?Comparative Perspectives on Lawyer Regulation: An Agenda for Reform in the United States and Canada? by Deborah L. Rhode and Alice Woolley ?identifies the problems in American and Canadian legal regulation and proposes reform strategies based on initiatives being taken in Australia, England and Wales.

#3: ?Innovations being tried in the UK and elsewhere will be felt in North America. Lexpert reported on June 29, 2012 as follows:

[P]artners at London-based Herbert Smith LLP and the Australian firm Freehills agreed to a merger that creates Herbert Smith Freehills, the eighth-largest firm in the world, with 2,800 lawyers.

The global behemoth will be led by joint CEOs and managing partners David Willis and Gavin Bell, who in their press release alluded?to the growing importance of global firms, and the advantages of international structures.

?This merger,? said Willis ?will therefore put us in a strong position to provide clients with the single global offering they increasingly demand.?

?The merger,? said Bell, ?will give Herbert Smith Freehills the platform to become the leading global law firm across Asia Pacific, a region likely to see continued substantial growth and to become an increasingly important part of the global legal services market.

The full-equity continues to exploit reforms in the UK and Australia that allow firms to create alternative business structures (ABSs), raise equity internationally from non-lawyers and (in Australia, at least) list shares for public trading ? advancements toward legal corporatization that are prohibited in Canada and the US.

#2: ?LegalZoom and other Online Providers will emerge as a Major Competitive Threat to Main-Street Lawyers

LegalZoom.ca?is now here. ?? How much of a threat is it at the current time? ?Regarding the parent company, LegalZoom.com, according to Techcrunch.com in an article dated May 11, 2012:

LegalZoom offers documents and subscription services to make it easier for individuals and businesses to accomplish basic legal tasks. As evidence of the company?s traction and impact, the S-1 says LegalZoom has served about 2 million customers in the past 10 years. It also says that in 2011, those customers placed 490,000 orders on the site, and during that period, more than 20 percent of limited liability companies formed in California did so through LegalZoom.

The company?s revenue has been growing steadily, if not dramatically, in the past couple of years ? it was $156 million in 2011, up from $121 million in 2010 and $103 million in 2009. LegalZoom also became profitable for the first time last year, with $12.1 million in net income.

So it appears that as far as being a major competitive threat in Canada, that is not (yet) true. ?But I am hedging my bets on this one.

#1: ?ODR and other Alternative Dispute Resolution Methods will be Embraced by Cash-Strapped Governments

The Ministry of Justice in British Columbia announced the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act that subsequently received Royal Assent on May 31, 2012.

According to the news release from the BC Government:

?[T]he Civil Resolution Tribunal Act will create an independent tribunal offering 24/7 online dispute resolution tools to families and small business owners as a speedy and cost-effective alternative to going to court. The tribunal would address disputes by providing parties with information that may prevent disputes from growing and resolve disputes by consent or, where necessary, by an independent tribunal hearing.?Resolving a dispute through the tribunal is expected to take about 60 days, compared to 12 to 18 months for small claims court.

Giving families alternatives to seeking solutions in court is among the B.C. government?s justice reform initiatives to achieve efficiencies and deal with growing resource pressures. The February 2012 Green Paper, Modernizing British Columbia?s Justice System, identified tribunals as a simple and less expensive solution to easing delays in the court system.

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So there you have it?the tips and predictions for 2013 from thought leaders all over the globe. ?There is one certainty ? as lawyers either we stay frozen or face the truth -?Time won?t wait for us to choose.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under Adding Value, Business Development, Change Management, Firm Governance, humour, I'm a Mac, Issues facing Law Firms, Law Firm Strategy, Leadership and Strategic Planning, personal focus and renewal, Technology, Tips, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://thoughtfullaw.com/2012/12/31/2013-tips-and-predictions-part-three/

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