IN THIS ISSUE:
 Cover Story  
Investment Chill
by Sandra Rubin

It has been more than a year since Ottawa prevented a foreign takeover in the BHP/Potash deal, but many companies abroad are still wary of investing in Canada

No one likes to see their deal spiked by a government regulator — targets of hostile takeovers excepted, needless to say. The client is out hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and may privately question the quality of strategic advice. And you better believe the lawyers aren't any happier. This is reputational stuff, so they'll slice and dice the entrails a hundred different ways to make certain whatever the impediment was is structured around the next time out.

That's what has some people rattled about BHP Billiton's failed takeover of Potash Corp. more than a year after the federal government blocked it. There are no entrails to study.

No one knows for sure why Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government issued a surprise interim decision that the deal was not of net benefit to Canada, because BHP showed a pragmatic streak of its own and withdrew its $40-billion offer. That meant the government was not required to provide reasons for its adverse determination.

 Feature Story  
The Social Fronteer
by Marzena Czarnecka

Lawyers eventually accepted telephones, the fax machine, email and the web as vital business communication tools. The time has come to accept social media

Meet Jim Lebo, QC, a Calgary commercial litigator whose career odometer, in his own words, “ran past 30 this year.” Also information technology enthusiast, social media advocate and novice blogger. Why? The partner with McLennan Ross LLP, a regional law firm in Alberta, is at a very comfortable place in his career. Clients know him — and come back to him. Peers know him — and refer clients to him. If any lawyer can make the argument that he doesn't need social media, it's Lebo.

Instead, he just launched a new blog.

“So, you want to know, why is this, an old man like me, starting a blog?” Lebo asks. The answer has a long backstory. Lebo's been an early adopter of technology throughout his 30-year career. He fell in love with e-mail in the early 1990s and got hooked on the Blackberry long before “Crackberry” entered the lexicon. He got introduced to Facebook by his teenage kids when it stormed the web — “but I kind of shunned it,” he confesses. “I was quite interested in it, but I did not get on it or want to — it seemed too personal.”
Seismic Changes in the UK
by Julius Melnitzer

A major legislative overhaul to how lawyers are regulated in the UK was finalized last October, and reverberations will be felt everywhere, including Canada

Far less happens in two years than expected, but what happens in 10 can be beyond your wildest dreams.” That's how Tony Williams, former Managing Partner of Clifford Chance and Andersen Legal, and now the founder and principal of Jomati Consultants LLP, a UK-based management consultancy specializing in the legal profession, responded when Lexpert asked him about the impact on lawyers of the UK's revolutionary Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA).

The legislation, which has been phased in gradually over the past five years, has become widely known as the “Tesco law” because it raises the discomfiting spectre (for lawyers, at least) of supermarkets and others, like financial institutions and accountants, offering legal services. What is incontrovertible is that the LSA is nothing less than a massive overhaul of how legal services are delivered in England and Wales — and even at this early stage, a harbinger of what lies ahead for the profession internationally.

Among the LSA's most significant innovations is the creation of a distinction between regulated and unregulated legal activities. Organizations that provide legal services are only regulated under the Act if they undertake one or more “reserved” activities, which broadly speaking embrace litigation and advocacy, probate services, and conveyancing. Entities that provide only unreserved legal activities, such as drafting wills or acting as mediators, will not be regulated and will be open to anyone.