Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 35 G Glenford Jameson was an early adopter when it came to pod- cast listening. Back at the turn of the decade, when just a tiny fraction of the population even knew what the term meant, he used the downloadable radio-style shows to unwind at the end of long days reading case law while studying at Dalhousie University's Schulich School of Law. "It's a great medium," Jameson says. "I've been listening for a long time." Just more than a year ago, he was ahead of the game again, this time as producer and host of his own podcast, Welcome to the Food Court, which explores issues in the food law niche where Jameson has built his legal practice. By now, though, his lawyerly instincts had fully kicked in. At a firm meeting to discuss the launch, one question dominated: What does the law society think about all this? "We went through the Law Society of Upper Canada's bylaws, and checked the rules of professional conduct. It was a classic lawyer moment," Jameson says. "We wanted to know if they had any prohibitions we should know about; maybe that was why virtually nobody else was podcasting." That tendency toward caution may help explain why the podcast boom is only just making an impact in the Canadian legal community, two years after the launch of Serial, the real- life crime drama widely credited as the catalyst for the genre's explosive growth. That show, a spinoff from another heavy- weight in the field, This American Life, became the fastest-ever podcast to hit five million downloads, within weeks of its launch in October 2014. Now two seasons in, the show's total downloads are counted in the hundreds of millions. "We tend to be a little bit slow when it comes to adopt- ing technology," says Gordon Firemark, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer who runs his own podcast training course aimed specifically at the profession: Power Podcasting for Lawyers. "Lawyers are often pressed for time, which can be a road- block to many, and there is also some fear and uncertainty about the expense of launching a podcast, which in my view is misplaced," adds Firemark, who recently celebrated a decade in the podcasting business. Earlier this year, Edison Research, a U.S. pollster that tracks the podcast industry, found 21 per cent of respondents to its annual Infinite Dial survey on online listening habits had con- sumed a podcast in the last month. That proportion has almost doubled since 2013, when the same survey found just 12 per cent listened to podcasts on a monthly basis. And Emma Durand-Wood of web strategy outfit Stem Legal says she's seen a similar trend among Canadian lawyers looking for a share of that growing audience. The firm runs a directory of legal blogs in Canada, which also accepts submissions from legal podcasts. "We've noticed a bit of a spike in podcasts in the last year. Quite a few new ones are popping up," Durand-Wood says. Trusts and estates boutique Hull and Hull LLP can lay claim to the title of Canada's longest-running legal podcast, clocking up almost 500 episodes of Hull on Estates in the decade since its launch in 2006, a short time after Apple first built a dedicated podcast directory into its iTunes product. The podcast started as part of a concerted marketing push in a variety of online media, and then just never stopped, according to Suzana Popovic-Montag, the Toronto firm's man- aging partner. "We were looking for new ways to set ourselves apart, and to engage a wider audience," she says. "One of the things that was drilled in from the get-go was that if you start you must continue. I think at the time we were concerned we might run out of topics, but that has never been a problem. There are always things to be said about what's in the news, new cases and updated interpretations of old principles." Participation among the firm's lawyers is voluntary, but a rotating schedule that shares the load of hosting duties, com- bined with relatively short episodes, has kept them all on board. "I think it helps everyone internally. This is what we do day in and day out, and sometimes the best way to learn the mate- rial is to talk about it," Popovic-Montag says. "It's hard to draw a direct line between the podcasts and new business, but when you have new clients coming in and saying they feel like they already know you, that's a great feeling. And it's something they would never get just by reading your words." Mark Holthe, a newer addition to the pantheon of legal pod- casters, saw his show, the Canadian Immigration Podcast, as a good way to raise the profile of a firm based in a smaller urban centre, Lethbridge, Alta., while informing the public about the basics of immigration law. Initially a one-man show, Holthe has since started inviting on fellow immigration lawyers as guests to talk about their particular specialties in practice. "A conversational style works far better, and it's also a great way for me to showcase some of my colleagues who are doing wonderful work, but maybe don't have a huge marketing bud- get," says Holthe, a partner in immigration law firm Holthe Tilleman LLP. Immigration lawyers seem particularly susceptible to the podcasting bug, with at least three Canadian shows devoted to the subject. This summer, Vancouver immigration lawyers Peter Edelmann and Steven Meurrens started up their own offering, Borderlines, but any competition is all friendly, accord- ing to Holthe, who has even had Meurrens on his own show as a guest. "My goal here isn't to corner the market, although maybe it should be," jokes Holthe. "It's a very collegial world." Edelmann says there's plenty of room for different takes on immigration law. "Mark's podcast is quite client focused, whereas ours is geared more to lawyers. We're talking about policy and the intricacies of legal analysis around issues like foreign workers and pathways to permanent residence," he says.

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