Law Times

Lawyers seeking top municipal jobs across Ontario BY KaBeer Sethi For Law Times hile it seems names like Ford and Chow have sapped up much of the dis- cussion about the provincewide municipal elections next month, there are many other candidates, including several lawyers, who will have their names on the ballot across Ontario. One of those lawyers, Toronto's Ari Goldkind, is skeptical of poll- ing numbers focused on candidates like Doug Ford, Olivia Chow, and John Tory and says his chances have improved as two rivals took their names off the ballot. Despite rank- ing low in the polls so far and with no previous political experience, he's running for mayor of Toronto and says Torontonians are "hungry for something exciting." "People don't want to choose between Ford, Chow or Tory, oth- erwise known as who's the least awful," he says. "Those with name recognition never keep their promises and the people of Toronto have someone more exciting to choose from." Goldkind participated in his first mayoral debate last week in the wake of the recent withdraw- als by higher-profile candidates Karen Stintz and David Soknacki. He says he remains "extremely op- timistic" about his campaign. "People know I'm right and are excited to hear me speak," he says. "No one's calling me a fringe candi- date anymore. Those days are done." Toronto's mayoral race has, of course, been grabbing the headlines for months. Controversial incum- bent Mayor Rob Ford was the lat- est high-profile candidate to drop out due to health problems after Soknacki and Stintz withdrew a few weeks ago. Doug Ford has now re- placed his brother on the ballot with Tory now solidly in the lead in most recent polls. But John Nunziata, a lawyer and former federal MP now seeking to return to politics, cau- tions against those early predictions. "You should never rely on pub- lic popularity polling," says Nun- ziata, a candidate for a seat on To- ronto council. "A better indicator is going door to door and asking people what they'll do on election day. You don't LEGAL ACCOUNTING & PRACTICE MANAGEMENT www.ghostpractice.ca | 800.340.3234 Untitled-1 1 14-04-29 10:16 AM Is dot-lawyer domain a good idea? New option best for those starting from scratch, experts say BY YaMri taddeSe Law Times awyers are weighing the pros and cons of paying a pretty penny to snap up an Internet domain name with the word "lawyer" on the right side of the dot. The dot-lawyer domain will only be available to those who can prove they're lawyers, according to the Inter- net Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It's one of hun- dreds of new generic top-level domains ICANN has recently introduced. The sunrise sale phase, which was only available for trademark holders, closed late last week. Early-access reg- istration now costs anywhere from $150 to 12,000 for a dot-lawyer domain name. After the early-access period closes, lawyers can sign up for about $36 per domain name, which is significantly higher than an annual payment of about $10 for a dot-com web site. Lawyers can also preregister for domains like dot-law and dot-legal that will become avail- able later. The new generic top-level domain names could offer a good chance for those who weren't able to score an ideal web address in the crowded dot-com space, says Monica Goyal, a Toronto-based lawyer and a software entrepreneur. But an untested domain name with a high price tag could be a deter- rent for many lawyers, she adds. "The downside is that it's still new, it doesn't have the pres- tige of the dot-com," says Goyal. "It may take a while for this to ac- tually catch on." While there will likely be early adopters, Goyal says "people are still going to want to have that dot-com [generic top-level domain] because it's kind of prestigious in a way." Steve Matthews of Stem Legal Web Enterprises Inc. in Vancouver says he won't be advising his clients to switch over from their existing domains to one of the new ones. "I'd actually tell them quite the op- posite," he says. "Domains gain value the longer that you own them and you manage them and you run a web site on them. So the longer a domain is in existence and the longer your firm has been on a particular domain, Google is going to treat it better in the search engines. You've built branding on it; there's a lot of value there." But if a lawyer or a law firm is start- ing from scratch, "it's another story," says Matthews. He notes exact-match searches are possible through the new generic top-level domains, which boosts the chances of ap- pearing higher in a Google search. "If you're a Vancouver trademark lawyer and you have vancouvertrademark.lawyer, having that search phrase in TECH SOLUTION Lawyers embracing document exchanges P3 MENTAL-HEALTH SUPPORT Lots of help available to lawyers P7 FOCUS ON Litigation P8 Mark Hayes says he won't be rushing to get his own dot-lawyer domain name. Photo: Robin Kuniski See Nunziata, page 5 See Domain, page 5 'As a tax lawyer, I don't want to see property taxes rise for the people of Kitchener,' says James Rhodes. PM #40762529 TECH SOLUTION Lawyers embracing document exchanges TORONTO | BARRIE | HAMILTON | KITCHENER 1-866-685-3311 | mcleishorlando.com cLeish Orlando_LT_Jan_20_14.indd 1 14-01-15 3:15 PM $4.00 • Vol. 25, No. 31 September 29, 2014 e: ssoil@docudavit.com www.docudavit.com Litigation Support Our Document Management Services include: Scanning • Indexing • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) • Electronic Document Capture and More - Call Us, We Can Help! ntitled-1 1 2014-09-26 9:29 AM L aw TIMes L aw TIMes L W

• Cover