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Thirty minutes from death, convicted murderer Warren Lee Hill’s life was spared. It’s the latest development in the case that has made multiple trips to state and federal appeals courts since its inception in 1990, when he murdered a fellow prisoner. He lives to fight another day thanks to a last minute intervention by both the Eleventh Circuit and a state appeals court, reports the Atlantic. The state court wanted to take another look at Georgia’s lethal injection procedures....

No one was jealous of Instagram’s in-house counsel after the furor over their new terms of service (TOS), but at least we can all learn from their misery. This isn’t the first time Internet users have panicked over an update of a company’s user agreement. Over the past year it’s happened several times, and it’s often the same or similar terms that upset users again and again. To prevent an Instagram-style backlash from happening to your client, here are five important things to consider when your company chooses to update its terms of service:...

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered hearings on Philadelphia’s attorney fees for death penalty cases. The move comes after a petition by the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. The non-profit argued that the attorney’s fees for death penalty cases in Philadelphia was so low that it violated criminal defendants’ constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. How low is the fee? The group says that fees in Philadelphia are $2,000 for pretrial preparation....

The BBC may not be alone in dealing with a libel case after allegedly defamatory statements were made about British politician Alistair McAlpine: Twitter users may be on the hook too. Last month, the BBC broadcast a news story that erroneously linked McAlpine, a former member of Britain’s House of Lords, to a child sex abuse case. While the report didn’t mention him specifically, it gave enough details that others were able to identify him....

For those lawyers that find themselves longing for a different kind of desk job, or maybe one outside of the pits of justice, or trenches, or whatever else battle test lawyers are calling the courts these days, there’s good news! And you don’t even have to leave your desk. A new partnership between Google and Udacity will offer free online career courses geared toward helping both new and mid-career job seekers....

Thursday’s Supreme Court Ruling on the Affordable Care Act has people talking, tweeting, and Facebooking all over the country. The ruling’s personal impact means that most people have strong opinions one way or the other about the opinion. They’re airing those views on social media. FindLaw users are no different and we’ve gotten a lot of response from consumers and legal professionals giving us their reactions to the health care ruling....

What would your mother say? Seriously, what would she say if a federal court rules prostitution is legal? “Oh my goodness!” “Are you kidding me?” “What the —-!?” Her response might depend on when she was born, but it is a question that a federal court will soon decide. And who knows what the answer will be. Say What? In the past, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been pilloried as the “Ninth Circus....

Hackers looted $10 million from an ATM network, affecting financial institutions throughout the United States and overseas. The MoneyTaker group, named after malware used in the crime spree, started siphoning accounts no later than May 2016. After penetrating one U.S. bank, they raided at least 20 other companies – including one law firm. So it’s not just about looking over your shoulder when you use an ATM; better check out who is handling your money....

One of the hallmarks of good advocacy is to see a case from both sides. Like being the devil’s advocate, it helps to see the strengths and weaknesses of a situation. This is especially appropriate when it comes to assessing the malpractice liability of your law practice. So consider your liability from an insurer’s point of view because virtually every carrier will ask these questions to assess your risk of malpractice:...

She was “older than her chronological age.” It’s the mantra of many statutory rapists, this notion that she was “mature” and “consented.” It was also the saving grace of another rapist, former teacher Billings Senior High teacher Stacey Rambold, who admitted to raping 14-year-old student Cherice Moralez. She committed suicide while his prosecution was pending, reports the Billings Gazette. Rambold will now serve 30 days, with credit for time served. Judge G....

Among the most important ways that attorneys get new clients is through referrals from other attorneys. Having a solid base of referrals ensures a fairly steady stream of business, and it doesn’t hurt to know other lawyers, either. Of course, the operative question is, “How do I get in touch with attorneys?” There are a lot of ways, but today, we’ll discuss direct mailers. Are direct mailers worth it? Unlike billboards or even Internet ads, you can focus direct mail marketing on a very specific audience, which increases the chance of a response....

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed several criminal counts in a child pornography that centered around reasonable expectation of privacy to a peer-to-peer network. Although the defendant attempted to defend himself pro se, his “several garbled motions” on sovereign citizen theory were not enough to convince the court that he enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy. This case marked the first time the Fifth Circuit confronted the issue of whether or not P2P networks are subject to the usual “reasonable expectation” test....

We recently read an interesting article about office oversharing, and were slightly amused by the fact that many of the examples cited in the piece involved attorneys, or people who worked in law offices. In a survey of 514 corporate and professional employees, three in five stated that they work with someone who overshares at least once a week, according to the Wall Street Journal. So that got us thinking, as someone running, or working at, a small law firm, what should an attorney do to stop office oversharing?...

Legal malpractice occurs when an attorney fails to meet the professional and ethical standards of being a lawyer. The harm can be to the court, a client, opposing counsel or a party unrelated to the action. Ultimately legal malpractice’s biggest victim is the lawyer who perpetrates the wrong. As unique as the cases themselves, legal malpractice can come in a variety of forms. Avoiding legal malpractice, whenever possible, will not only help preserve your professional reputation but also allow you to concentrate on what you are good at – being a lawyer....

When the story of the guy who was fired from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) after complaining about his Comcast service first broke, his finger-pointing at the cable company sounded to me like insane rambling paranoia. It might be, but not only has Conal O’Rourke provided a lot of documentation to the media to back his claims, but he’s now filed suit against Comcast. True or false, we may know soon: The conversations seem to have been recorded, reports Ars Technica, and while Comcast is keeping them under wraps because of the ongoing litigation, this should be a fun case to watch....

Last month, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling that The Coca-Cola Company (Coke) was in compliance with a provision of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and employee-employment policy when they placed the plaintiff employee Franklin Owusu-Ansah on a paid leave of absence and required that he undergo a psychiatric/psychological fitness-for-duty evaluation. “… covered entity shall not require a medical examination and shall not make inquiries of an employee as to whether such employee is an individual with a disability or as to the nature or severity of the disability, unless such examination or inquiry is shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity....

Now that Satya Nadella has been named as Microsoft’s new CEO, what lessons can companies learn from him? Besides the fact that Nadella can rock the hell out of the casual chic, tech dad look, his long-time employment at Microsoft and low public profile sets him apart from several of the other tech CEOs. Here are three lessons to learn from Microsoft’s new CEO. Since Nadella was already working for Microsoft, it’s unlikely that there will be any breach of contract issues that could arise from other lateral company moves....

With all the focus on your online and offline marketing strategies, case management, and overseeing your staff, one thing that often falls by the wayside is overhead. Introductory discounts to things like research services and Internet access have expired, hiking your monthly rates. The costs of consumables, such as printer cartridges for your six-year-old laser printer have skyrocketed due to planned obsolescence. Your budget is bleeding from a thousand paper cuts....

Most clients, like most lawyers, are good people, so in your career you hopefully won’t have many issues with clients not paying. The few times it does happen are quite enough. Those fees are, of course, how you make your living, which means you need to find a way to get “deadbeat” clients to pay up. Even if you’re lucky enough that you can let the fee go and not feel the pinch on your wallet, it still hurts your pride to let someone cheat you and walk away....

While legal bloggers often opine on the potential doom and gloom that artificial intelligence and robots will bring to the legal profession, there may be more than one way to handle the incoming robot lawyer apocalypse. In a recent special business report in the Miami Herald, it’s posited that AI and robot lawyers won’t supplant human lawyers, but will likely just change the landscape of what a human lawyer does. This idea seems to already be borne out by the technology that has already been implemented, as a majority of legal tech is aimed at improving an attorney’s efficiency, despite the fact that we lawyers begrudgingly accept these cost cutting, time saving, revenue reducing advances....