It’s time baby boomers stop living off the avails of future generations. The Harper government’s plan to revamp the Old Age Security Act should be cheered by Canadians under 50, of which there are plenty — about 25 million, according to Statistics Canada. If the government goes ahead with OAS reform, they will no longer be called on to pay the freight to carry those who benefited the most during the country’s strong growth.

At the time of writing, the government had not tabled its budget, so the plan for OAS reform was unclear. But ministerial speeches indicate the Conservatives are willing to take on the greying of Canada’s population. At the centre are baby boomers, those Canadians born between 1946 and 1965 (disclosure: I fall into the late-stage boomer category, being born in ’61). The first wave of the baby boom became eligible to collect OAS benefits starting in 2011, when they turned 65. Assuming the program doesn’t change, the last boomers will start collecting OAS benefits in 2030.

In January 2012, OAS benefits amounted to $540 a month — indexed to inflation. The government starts clawing back those payments when net income exceeds $67,668, and the entire amount is clawed back when net income reaches $109,764. To put that in perspective, in 2009, a Canadian male earned an average salary of $45,200, while a female earned $31,100, according to Statistics Canada. The median income for a family was $68,410.

Spending for OAS is funded out of government’s general revenues. The problem is that as Canada’s population ages, spending for OAS will skyrocket, rising to $108  billion in 2030 from $36 billion today, a threefold increase. By 2030, there will be more people over 65 than under 14, with two workers for every one person in retirement, compared to a ratio of  4:1 today. It’s a tremendous burden facing future generations, many who aren’t born or haven’t entered the workforce yet.

They will do so carrying an inordinate amount of student debt. The average student loan upon graduation is $27,000, according to the Canadian Federation of Students. They will also be paying much more for a house than their parents and grandparents did and it’s unlikely they will see the kind of rise in property values that have fuelled much of the rise in wealth over the past few decades.

The OAS was first introduced in 1952. It was modified in 1965 to accommodate the creation of the Canada Pension Plan. In 1967 it was amended to create the Guaranteed Income Supplement. The system has been credited with providing Canadian seniors a stable form of income. Interestingly, the original age for benefits to kick in was 70, which dropped to 65 in 1969. During that time, the life span of Canadians has expanded and most can expect to live into their 80s.

Moreover, recent surveys suggest Canadians expect to work beyond the normal retirement age of 65. A survey by Sun Life Financial in late 2011 found that less than one-third of Canadians expect to be fully retired at 66 and 48 per cent plan to ease into retirement and continue working part time. A retirement target of 65 seems outdated in a world where 60 is the new 40. In fact, some countries are raising their mandatory retirement age to 67 or more.

There has been much teeth gnashing over the Conservative government’s move to tackle OAS reform. Much of the consternation seems unnecessary. The government said it won’t impact existing seniors and changes will be phased in. There is ample wiggle room to rein in costs by raising age eligibility requirements or lowering claw-back thresholds. OAS should be a social program to support those most in need — a safety net and not a meal ticket for all.

This is more about defining what government should be and foisting responsibility on Canadians to ensure they are preparing and saving appropriately for retirement. Most working Canadians don’t contribute to RRSPs or TFSAs, the programs designed to help them save and get through their retirement years.

It shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility to provide for all. Governments in Canada cannot continue to be all things to all people. Just ask Greece, or for that matter Ontario. The recent Drummond report warns that without tackling serious issues, such as public pensions and overspending, Ontario is on track to run $30-billion deficits. That will bankrupt the province.

It’s been 45 years since the OAS act faced serious amendments. That’s a long time in politics. Kudos to Canadian politicians for tackling the sacred cow of OAS reform. It’s time boomers paid their own way, while they still have working years left to save. It’s the least we can do for future generations.

Jim Middlemiss blogs about the legal profession at WebNewsManagement.com. You can follow him on Twitter

@JimMiddlemiss and he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Does your law firm wield clout in the cloud? It’s a question law firm managers and marketers need to ask in the exploding world of social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. These sites draw hundreds of millions of users and present law firms with an unprecedented opportunity to market their knowledge worldwide.

Klout.com is a web site that purports to measure your online influence in the social media world (think of it as the Nielsen ratings for online geeks). It does so using algorithms to gauge activity and influence in social networks, measuring things like “re-tweets,” “mentions,” “likes,” and “comments.” Klout uses a scale of 1 to 100. For simply existing, you get a 10 and build from there. An average Klout score is about 20, and those who achieve 50 or more sit in the 95th percentile, according to a recent tech podcast.

It’s interesting to look at the Klout scores of Canada’s 20 largest law firms (see them all at canadianlawyermag.com). Most law firms now at least have a Twitter feed, Facebook page, and LinkedIn group, and many have added a YouTube channel.

I looked at law firms by size, and how they are ranked according to their Klout score as of Dec. 26, 2011. The findings show that size doesn’t matter in the online world. In fact, one of the highest-ranked law firms is Atlantic Canada’s Stewart McKelvey. It’s tied with Norton Rose Canada for top score. As well, Miller Thomson scored well, as did Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, neither of which is near the top of the heap when it comes to size. Despite having the greatest number of tweets, and the highest number of LinkedIn and Twitter followers, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, one of the biggest law firms in the country, scored in the middle of the pack.

Interestingly, Stewart McKelvey and Miller Thomson both achieved their high scores despite having a low number of tweets and followers. Why is that? Because they both scored well in influencing other people who are active in the social media world. They are positioning themselves as thought leaders, which is where you want to be when it comes to influence on the Internet.

Take Miller Thomson’s Stuart Rudner, an employment lawyer who actively blogs. His personal Klout score is 48, which qualifies him as a Klout “specialist,” influencing 655 others. Those 655 others then influence others and so on.

In fact, social media can be the great equalizer when it comes to competing with larger firms. Lawyers in small and medium-sized firms can comment on legal developments, share information, and build profile and reputation just as easily as lawyers at brand-name firms. In his book, Social Media For Lawyers: Twitter Edition, Adrian Dayton documents instances where lawyers land files using social media and responding to chatter, including how he brought in one of his first clients using Twitter.

More interestingly, though, is the shift underway among in-house lawyers in their use of social media. A 2010 survey by InsideCounsel magazine reveals interesting trends. While in-house lawyers rely on traditional media as their go-to source of information, 43 per cent cite blogs and 26 per cent cite social media like Twitter and Facebook as their top go-to sources. More than half expect their consumption of news and information via new media platforms to grow — particularly so for lawyers under 40.

The survey suggests that in-house counsel are increasingly looking at lawyers’ bios on web sites and following blogs to stay abreast of legal developments. Half feel that in the future, high-profile blogs will play an important role in influencing law firm hiring decisions (but only 10 per cent feel a firm’s prominence on Twitter will influence hiring decisions).

It’s a new frontier. Digital communications matter more today than they ever have. Looking at how Canadian firms compare to their U.S. counterparts, Skadden Arps has a Klout score of 33, with 86 tweets and 1,657 Twitter followers and 3,929 LinkedIn followers. Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP has 1,214 tweets, 1,998 followers, and 2,209 LinkedIn followers. Its Klout score is 34. So Canadian firms are in the same league.

Interestingly, Clifford Chance LLP, that global legal giant, can only muster a Klout score of 13, the same as mine. But I haven’t tweeted, though I expect that will change by the time you read this.

The Internet has been the great equalizer in many industries, particularly retail, where small mom-and-pop stores can compete with global enterprises. It has also disrupted many more industries such as newspapers, books, music, and film. Legal services are not immune and social media is only starting to play a role in everything from how lawyers build profile to how they communicate and interact with clients. So you have to ask yourself, does your law firm have Klout?

Jim Middlemiss blogs about the legal profession at WebNewsManagement.com.

You can follow him on Twitter

@JimMiddlemiss and he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

It took the U.S. legal system 15 weeks to convict Conrad Black of fraud charges, the majority of which were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. It will take the Law Society of Upper Canada almost two years to decide whether or not Black’s lawyers, Beth DeMerchant and Darren Sukonick of Torys LLP, were in a conflict of interest when they advised him and his companies on the non-compete agreements at the centre of his criminal charges.

It’s a sign of stunning ineptitude that the LSUC can’t prosecute lawyers in a timely fashion. It informed them in January 2006 that they were under investigation for actions dating back to 2000. A discipline hearing, which started as an important test of the law society’s conflict rules, has become a prosecutorial folly.

What many thought should have been a slam-dunk for outside prosecutor Paul Stern has turned into a shambles, which should leave benchers shaking their heads and asking hard questions.

Even Black in his book, A Matter of Principle, questions the law society. In a fascinating, inside look at the U.S. justice system through the eyes of an accused, he writes of the now-retired DeMerchant, a former Torys partner, and Sukonick, who was an associate at the time: “I was never overly impressed with their imagination, and some of their advice was incorrect, but I don’t think they were unethical or negligent. The singling out of them, as well as the Law Society’s rather banal allegations, seems to me to be shabby and tokenistic placation of opinion by the Toronto legal establishment, at the expense of two relatively defenceless scapegoats.” (Black’s book provides a candid opinion of lawyers and personalities he dealt with in his career and legal tribulations.)

The Torys lawyers are charged with six counts of failing to adequately disclose their conflicts of interest and obtain consent of their clients in breach of Rule 2.04 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. The discipline hearings started badly for the LSUC in 2009; 168 boxes of materials were unearthed that hadn’t been disclosed by Torys, prompting an adjournment.

It has been downhill since. A major law society witness about conflicts — lawyer Gar Emerson — was kicked off the case because of a conflict. Another witness withdrew after it was determined he was not qualified to provide expert testimony on the matters in question.

There was also an earlier attempt by LSUC counsel to take the hearing in camera, much to the chagrin of the discipline panel and defence lawyers Phil Campbell and Ian Smith. That turned into a needless sideshow over public access to the hearings and if companies involved had waived their privilege, even though much of the material had been publicly disclosed in court documents.

The panel sat for one day in 2009, 31 days in 2010, and 35 days in 2011 (at press time). Despite that, and 16 days of DeMerchant cross-examination, they are only through a couple of the charges. Another seven days of hearings were expected in 2011 and 24 days are set for 2012.

Compounding matters, one of the panelists hearing the complaint, Paul Henderson, was appointed to the bench.

LSUC spokeswoman Susan Tonkin says, “a number of factors can affect the length of a hearing, including the complexity of the proceeding, volume of materials, number of witnesses, number of motions, and, occasionally, unforeseen events.” Law society officials wouldn’t disclose the cost of the prosecution. A six-year case wouldn’t come cheap and if the LSUC loses, the fees will easily reach millions of dollars when defence costs are added in. Then there are the likely appeals.

Yet, if convicted, it’s unlikely the lawyers would be disbarred. They’re not accused of misappropriating funds. Rather, a suspension would likely be in order. Any victory at this stage would be Pyrrhic at best.

Sadly, Sukonick will almost spend more time fighting these charges than he has practising law and his career has been, if not destroyed, then certainly waylaid.

There’s a strong feeling on the street that DeMerchant, who earned as much as $900,000 annually, should have fallen on her sword and saved her junior by pleading guilty, taking her lumps, and moving on. The handling of this case, combined with the persecution of Joe Groia for his comments towards the prosecutor in the Bre-X/Felderhof case, has shaken the confidence of many lawyers when it comes to the law society’s judgment involving prosecutorial decisions affecting members.

The profession desperately needs guidance when it comes to matters of conflict of interest and commercial deals. The LSUC should draft new rules; there’s a good chance they would pass before this prosecution ends. This test case had the potential to clear the air. But it has become a circus — much like the Groia affair.

Jim Middlemiss is an Ontario lawyer and co-owner of WebNews Management Corp. You can reach him by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it