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There is a shortcut to persuasive writing, and it’s been around for 100 years. It’s like we got lost along the way, retreading the same old path of legal writing. Heretofore’s and therefore’s later, many lawyers still don’t get it. Perhaps we are too proud to admit that we need editing. We should take a page from Ernest Hemingway, one of the most influential writers of the past century. He was not a lawyer – which may be one of the reasons he was a great writer – but he was a master of concise and simple prose, which is the key....

Judges and state bars have had various things to say about the technological competence of lawyers, but so far, only one state bar includes technology training as part of a lawyer’s CLE requirements. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that their bar association is just so dang social media savvy, the one state is Florida. However, two more states may soon be adding their names to the list of places where lawyers are going to be required to take continuing legal technology education....

New year, new taxes. Taxes aren’t due until April, but if you’re smart, you’ll get an early start on getting documents together for your CPA. A few weeks back we gave you tax-preparation tips for small firms; today, we’ll discuss one of the more confusing deductions for business owners – the home office deduction. The home office deduction has been confusing – until now. For the 2013 tax year, the IRS has simplified the method for determining the home office deduction....

Assess your document retention practices as they pertain to metadata.Impose a litigation hold that preserves all potentially relevant electronically stored information (ESI), including metadata (whether or not you think metadata is likely to be requested in discovery targets).Discuss the kinds of metadata that are associated with potentially relevant ESI and devise a protocol to propose to litigation adversaries.Be prepared to testify about the scope of your ESI resources, and the methods you used to preserve, collect, and produce ESI, including metadata....

The point of most marketing is to solve a problem. Most of the time, the problem is pretty easy. When your product is dog food, the problem you’re solving is that dogs need food. Then the strategy comes in: Why do they need your food, and not your competitor’s? Legal marketing is a little different. People contact attorneys for lots of different reasons, so in order to effectively determine your strategy, first you have to know what problem you’re solving....

Whoopsie! You’ve made an error in your patent filing – one which wasn’t discovered until after the patent has been prosecuted and granted. Don’t worry, you wouldn’t be the first. And instead of leaving you with a garbage patent, the USPTO allows for relatively easy corrections of small mistakes. Now, thanks to a recent Federal Circuit case, we have a bit more information on just what counts as a small mistake – and it turns out those mistakes don’t have to be too small, after all....

You’re probably a fine lawyer, but if you’re like most others, you could be better. What you probably don’t know is that the difference between a good lawyer and a great lawyer could be as little as the great lawyer’s ability to better utilize technology in the market-place. Let’s take a look at some bare necessities. These days, nobody – especially lawyers – should be without OCR technology, “optical character recognition” technology that allows you to turn typed matter into digitally searchable documents....

If an act, say a conspiracy to misuse a word, is incomplete, it’s inchoate. Is a completed act choate? Not if you’re Antonin Scalia. The Supreme Court Justice hates the word so much that he’s interrupted oral arguments (not rare) to chastise a lawyer (rarer) for using the phrase. But when it comes to commonly misused phrases, Scalia might want to save his rage for more prolific offenders. (Plus, plenty of legal dictionaries allow choate, so Nino might be a little picky here....

Lloyd Fields and James Creach were training police in Jordan when a local officer started shooting at them. The Americans were in the country to teach basic police skills, but they died that day in 2015. The Islamic State, a terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attack. Back in the United States, the families of the slain men sued Twitter for supporting ISIS by allowing the group to use Twitter accounts....

Apple gets sued all the time – at least twice last month over Siri’s voice commands. In the latest lawsuit, a company is suing Apple over its patent for a “hands-free, voice-operated remote control transmitter” that is used to control appliances. In plain language, that would be Siri. Apple fans are calling the plaintiff a “patent troll,” although that name is reserved for those who buy patents just to sue over them....

Fidelity Investments, the largest U.S. provider of workplace retirement plans, is facing a putative class action in Massachusetts alleging that Fidelity improperly uses customer money earned in overnight accounts to pay its own operating expenses, Reuters reports. Earlier this month, three Massachusetts residents filed suit against Boston-based Fidelity, accusing the company of using “float income” – income generated from retirement fund assets – by temporarily investing it for its own benefit, in violation of ERISA....

Federal prosecutors have charged three Chinese citizens with insider trading that netted them more than $4 million in illegal profits. But these weren’t your typical tippees. The men didn’t get their insider scoops from their family, friends, or colleagues. They got it from hacking into at least two New York law firms, stealing the emails of M&A partners, and trading on the information they found. The three men, Iat Hong, Bo Zheng, and Chin Hung, are charged with “devising and carrying out a scheme to enrich themselves by obtaining and trading on material, nonpublic information....

It’s exactly like the plot of a college comedy: student isn’t ready for a final exam, so he calls in a bomb threat. Except, the only twist was that he used an anonymous temporary email service and and anonymizing web browser to cover his tracks. Yet, he was caught rather quickly. How did the FBI track down Eldo Kim? And did the much lauded Tor browser, used by political dissidents and journalists to stay anonymous, fail?...

Government agencies are usually pretty slow to adopt technological advancements. The federal Veterans Affairs Administration, to give one example, is still notoriously paper-dependent, with its non-digitized files stacked so high they could pose a safety risk to workers. And lawyers are no better. Even forward-thinking firms have been slow to adopt technologies that are already common in other industries. But, some government lawyers are bucking the trend, putting data analytics to work, and slowly changing the justice system as a result....

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts spoke at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judicial panel over the past weekend, discussing the inner workings of the U.S. Supreme Court. In his statements at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference, he addressed some cutting edge issues involving the day-to-day affairs of SCOTUS, including the use of social media by the Supreme Court justices and judicial clerks. Justice Roberts mentioned that he encourages Supreme Court clerks not to tweet, reports Huffington Post, fearing that they may unintentionally reveal confidences through posting status updates....

President Trump has a plan to appoint younger judges, and Allison Jones Rushing fits that plan. At 36, Rushing is the youngest nominee to a federal appeals court in 15 years. She also fits the generally youthful profile for potential judges who made the president’s recent short list for the U.S. Supreme Court. Rushing will have to put in some years on the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals before she makes that list....

There have been a record number of wage and hour lawsuits this year, according to federal judicial caseload statistics. So far this year there have been 7,064 lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (which covers wage and hour claims). In all of last year, there were only 7,006 such claims. A decade ago, only 2,035 such cases were filed, reports NBC. The reason for the spike in lawsuits?...

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Tesla founder Elon Musk was asked about the legal implications of autopilot on the Tesla Model D, which will come to market throughout next year. Musk was very careful to point out that there’s a difference between “autonomous” driving and “autopilot.” The former sounds more like what Google’s driverless cars are seeking: “You can go to sleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk explained....

US v. Nguyen, 09-2410, concerned an appeal of the district court’s imposition of an 83-month sentence, followed by four years of supervised release, requiring defendant to submit to a drug test within fifteen days of her release from confinement and periodic drug tests thereafter during the supervised release term, following defendant’s conviction for possession with intent to manufacture 1,000 or more marijuana plants. In dismissing the appeal, the court held that defendant’s claim that the district court violated Rule 32(i)(1)(A) is weak, and the claim that the court violated the Court Interpreters Act is simply wrong as, in light of defendant’s representations, it appears that the absence of translation of the PSI report into Vietnamese had no effect on her substantial rights....

Summer is here and the beach is calling – someone else’s name? For many lawyers, getting away to enjoy the summer is no easy task. But it’s not impossible and the benefits of taking a moment away from the law firm can be great: vacations can help you avoid burn out, devote time to relationships, relearn your children’s names. With a little planning, even the busiest lawyers can get away for a summer vacation or two....