On May 1st, 2013, LAWPRO held its Annual General Meeting and released its 2012 Annual Report, available here. The report includes the company’s financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis, including a report on operations for the 2012 year. The results and report are prefaced by remarks from both Susan T. McGrath, chair of the Board of Directors, and LAWPRO President and CEO Kathleen Waters.
In an effort to better understand sole and small-firm involvement in providing pro-bono legal services, the Ontario Bar Association is conducting a very short survey. Completing the survey should take no longer than two or three minutes and the information will be used in assisting the OBA’s Pro-Bono Task Force to determine what role the OB Amight play in the provision and delivery of such services.
Click here to take the survey.
All Evernote users should immediately change their passwords.
The following text appeared in a post on the Evernote blog this morning (March 2, 1013) and is also being sent to all Evernote users as an email communication:
Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.
As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset. Please read below for details and instructions.
In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed.
The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)
While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data remains secure. This means that, in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords. Please create a new password by signing into your account on evernote.com.
After signing in, you will be prompted to enter your new password. Once you have reset your password on evernote.com, you will need to enter this new password in other Evernote apps that you use. We are also releasing updates to several of our apps to make the password change process easier, so please check for updates over the next several hours.
As recent events with other large services have demonstrated, this type of activity is becoming more common. We take our responsibility to keep your data safe very seriously, and we’re constantly enhancing the security of our service infrastructure to protect Evernote and your content.
There are also several important steps that you can take to ensure that your data on any site, including Evernote, is secure:
Avoid using simple passwords based on dictionary words
Never use the same password on multiple sites or services
Never click on ‘reset password’ requests in emails — instead go directly to the service
Thank you for taking the time to read this. We apologize for the annoyance of having to change your password, but, ultimately, we believe this simple step will result in a more secure Evernote experience. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Evernote Support.
The Evernote team
If you use Evernote, please change your password immediately.
AvoidaClaim.com is pleased to be one of the winners of the 2012 Clawbies, which honour the best in Canadian law blogs. We won for Best Practice Management blog. Click here to see the full list of winners and runners-up. There are some great blogs listed that you will definitely want to bookmark!
Here is the announcement:
It’s the rare blog that can truly be described as a “must read,” but Avoid A Claim by the Lawyers Professional Indemnity Company (LAWPRO) fits that bill. Authored by legal practice management trailblazer Dan Pinnington, Avoid A Claim is essential reading far beyond the borders of Ontario, picking up an audience throughout North America for the latest news on the frauds and scams that criminals try (too often successfully) to inflict on lawyers. All this, plus valuable practice management tips, makes Avoid A Claim the best of a very strong field.
Congratulations to all the other winners and runners-up. Its a testament to the vibrancy of the Canadian law blog scene that in 2005 there were 43 blogs to choose from when awarding the Clawbies, and this year there were over 400!
We are pleased to announce LAWPRO has launched its own Facebook page.
The page will allow LAWPRO to distribute content on our corporate activities and social responsibility initiatives, upcoming events and deadlines and risk management information from our publications, including LAWPRO magazine. “Like” the new page by visiting www.facebook.com/LAWPROinsurance.
The Law Society of Upper Canada just released the final report of the Articling Task Force, Pathways to the Profession: A Roadmap for the Reform of Lawyer Licensing in Ontario. This Task Force was formed to address concerns about the articling program, and in particular relating to the growing number of unplaced licensing candidates. The report outlines a various options for adapting or changing the articling process, including ending the articling requirement as we otherwise know it today. Needless to say, this report and the future of articling have generated a lot of discussion and debate.
On October 25, beginning at 9:30am Eastern, Convocation will debate the final report of the Articling Task Force. The Law Society will broadcast the Convocation debate live via a public webcast. This is a first!
And there is a second first: Concurrent to the debate there will be a simultaneous online discussion featuring a panel of lawyers and legal commenters. The members of the panel will be Lee Akazaki, Omar Ha-Redeye, Jasminka Kalajdzic, Mitch Kowalski, Catherine McKenna, Antonin Pribetic, Douglas Ferguson and Garry Wise.
And there is a third first: You, yes you, can participate live in this discussion and debate, either on the event page or on Twitter.
The decisions made on the future of articling may bring significant changes to the licencing process in Ontario. It promises to be a lively discussion and debate. Take the time to listen to and participate in this important debate.
For more information on how to watch the webcast or participate in the discussion, visit http://www.lawsocietygazette.ca/articling/.
In 2002 practicePRO launched the LAWPRO CPD Premium Credit. It was a way to encourage lawyers to attend programs we felt had a strong risk management component by rewarding them with a $50 credit (up to $100 in any policy year) on their insurance premium.
In that first year we approved 12 CPD programs with a combined attendance of 2,200 lawyers. Ten years later, and with the advent of the Law Society’s mandatory CPD requirements, we approved 213 CPD programs with a combined attendance of over 53,000.
We feel the program has been a huge success at getting the practicePRO risk management message into CPD programming, but we also feel its time for a name change. There has been some confusion among lawyers about the difference between LSUC CPD requirements and the LAWPRO CPD credit.
So to better represent LAWPRO’s reasons for offering a premium credit, and to avoid confusion with the Law Society’s CPD requirements, the LAWPRO CPD premium credit has become the LAWPRO Risk Management credit as of September 16, 2012.
The new name reflects the aim of the premium credit: To encourage lawyers to attend CPD programs that contain significant risk management content that will help them avoid claims. The process by which lawyers can claim the credit will stay the same, and we will continue to approve programs that touch on areas of law in which we see a lot of claims, or that address the causes of claims generally (poor communication, time management, etc).
For more information on how we determine which CPD programs qualify for the Risk Management premium credit, click here. To see a list of programs approved for the 2014 premium credit, click here.
The 6th Annual 2011 CLawBies (the Canadian Law Blog Awards) were handed out today (New Year’s Eve). AvoidAClaim was runner-up in the Best Practice Management Blog category.
Congratulations to Samantha Collier for her Social Media For Law Firms blog, the winner in this category, and to my friend and co-runner-up David Bilinsky for his Thoughtful Legal Management blog.
Great to see a vibrant and growing Canadian blawgosphere. See the CLawBies site for a full list of winners and runners-up.
[This is the text of a Fraud Alert that LAWPRO sent to Ontario Lawyers December 15, 2011.]
LAWPRO continues to see high numbers of bad cheque frauds targeting Ontario lawyers. On a monthly basis, 250-300 lawyers advise us that have been targeted by bad cheque frauds. We are seeing the same types of scams over and over again, and on a weekly basis we are seeing two or three new fraudster client names. And these frauds are becoming more sophisticated. Very experienced lawyers have been successfully duped. One of the most convincing frauds we have seen, an IP licence dispute scam involving a client named Dan Nagasakii from CCP Group International, has been reported to us several times over the last few weeks.
Be extra vigilant as we approach the Christmas and New Years holidays! From past experience, we know that fraudsters are more active just before long weekends and holidays.
Bad cheque frauds continue to be the most common type of attempted fraud we are seeing. These otherwise legitimate-looking legal matters create circumstances to dupe a lawyer into quickly disbursing funds on a bad cheque or bank draft that was deposited into a trust account. The fraudster gets real money and the lawyer is left with a trust account shortfall. Common scenarios include the payment of spousal support arrears, business debt collections, and personal injury settlements.
This AvoidAClaim blog post lists the common red flags of an email fraud scam.
To help lawyers identify fraudulent matters, LAWPRO is posting information on individual confirmed frauds on the AvoidAClaim.com blog. Click the Confirmed Frauds button to see a full list of the names of confirmed fraudsters. For each confirmed fraud there are individual postings that allow you to see the actual back and forth communications between lawyers and fraudsters. You’ll also find images of the fake supporting documentation the fraudsters are supplying, including identification, bad cheques and bank drafts.
You can help us help other lawyers avoid being duped by forwarding copies of the emails and supporting documents that you receive on any fraud attempt to fraudinfo@lawpro.ca.
Keep your guard up
Some of the fraud attempts are very obvious: Poor spelling, bad grammar and/or completely untenable fact circumstances (e.g., multi-million dollar lottery wins or inheritances) should sound alarm bells.
However, some frauds are extremely sophisticated and look like completely legitimate legal matters. Both new and experienced lawyers have been temporarily fooled into working through file opening and initial stages of the matter before they recognized or determined they were the target of a fraud. Unfortunately some lawyers are being duped by these frauds. Don’t be complacent. The fraudsters go to great lengths to create scenarios that otherwise appear to be legitimate legal matters. Recently we have seen several matters that originated with phone calls, direct and personalized emails or through firm website intake forms. The fraudsters are prepared to engage in extensive and ongoing communications over weeks and even months, usually by email, but also by phone, and on occasion, even in person. Here is an example of communications that went back and forth over several weeks. They will provide information, names and addresses that are tied to your local area.
How to handle a real or suspected fraud (more…)
The Department of Justice just announced that the Federal Child Support Guidelines (Federal Guidelines) have been amended to update the Federal Child Support Tables (Federal Tables) used to determine child support amounts. These amendments will come into force on December 31, 2011.
The 2006 Federal Tables must still be used to determine child support owed before December 31, 2011. However, the updated Federal Tables should now be used to figure out how much child support should be paid from December 31, 2011 onward.
On the Department of Justice Web site you can find the updated Federal Tables in PDF format and the Child Support Online Lookup to determine specific child support amounts under the updated Federal Tables.
SLAW