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If your taxes haven’t been processed yet, you are either (a) slacking or (b) using H&R Block (zing!). If you haven’t yet filed, this discussion of possible deductions could save you money or prevent an audit. If your tax season is over and done with, this will help with tracking deductions for next year. Auto Expenses You probably know that the lease or purchase of a company car, if only used for business purposes, is tax deductible as a business expense....

Do you care about the industry want to enter? Does it do something that you believe in, that you want to be a part of? Do you care about the legal challenges companies in that industry face? If you haven’t decided on the industry you want to be a part of, that’s a symptom that you don’t want to be inside counsel – you just want out of what you are doing now....

Political corruption is old hat in Louisiana. Huey Long. Edwin Edwards. William Jefferson. The string of insurance commissioners that could set up their own cell block while serving corruption sentences. Louisianans practically expect scandals from their elected officials. Judges, however, are a different class entirely. Say what you will about the state’s politicos, but Louisiana judges tend to provide the state with pearls of civil law wisdom and legal color commentary....

You’re no fast food cashier, but attorneys could learn a thing or two from McDonald’s. The world’s largest burger joint brings in billions of extra dollars a year, simply by asking “would you like fries with that?” It’s the classic example of upselling. Now, you don’t offer fries with your practice, but that doesn’t mean you can’t upsell and cross-sell. And it’s a great way to increase your business without having to take on new clients....

As companies are pushed further into the electronic age, it’s important for corporate counsel to understand the complexities of e-Discovery and to find the most efficient and cost-effective ways in which to leverage e-Discovery tools. For those who have yet to spend some serious time in the e-Discovery trenches, here’s a quick primer on what you need to know about e-Discovery and why you need to know it. Why Is e-Discovery Important?...

An energized, self-motivated workforce is a dream for any business. Happy employees are more productive employees, and if law firms want their attorneys to be more productive, they might want to fight the lawyer loneliness problem. While it may not come as a surprise that lawyers rank among the loneliest of American workers, it is certainly shocking to hear loneliness be described as being as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day....

Apple and Samsung finally settled the biggest patent battle in recent history. When the companies first litigated over cell phone and tablet designs, Steve Jobs was still alive. He called it “thermonuclear war.” But do corporate competitors ever stop being competitors? Will their lawyers really lay down their weapons forever? Not Over ‘Till It’s Over After the dust settled in the seven-year legal battle, Apple emerged as the relative victor. The terms of the settlement were confidential, but it probably cost more than $100 million in fees to reach a $539 million verdict....

You’ve probably noticed that we seize every chance we can find to write about Louisiana football in this blog. And we thank you for your indulgence. Usually, the relationship between the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Louisiana’s gridiron greats is tangential. Sometimes, football players find their way to the appellate court for their off-field pursuits, so we at least feel justified writing about them. This week, we started crossing our fingers that the Saints bounty program — one of the biggest scandals in the NFL history — could eventually make its way to the Fifth Circuit....

A federal appeals court rebuked President Trump’s latest travel ban against people from Muslim-majority countries, saying the executive order “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.” The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said the First Amendment forbids government from establishing “any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another.” In ruling on International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, the appeals court affirmed a federal judge’s issuance of a nationwide preliminary injunction against the controversial executive order....

Tech geeks take Twitter! That’s right, instead of Bieber trending, this morning, anyone who has ever had a major computer failure took to Twitter in an exercise of catharsis. The game? Express your tech horror in five words or less. As the guy who has served as the de facto IT department for his family, high school, a small law firm, and more, reading these tweets is giving me flashbacks....

If you poll attorneys on what it is they most hate about their jobs, collecting money from clients will probably rank near the top of the list. A recent survey found that for the most part attorneys only get paid for a fraction of the hours they work during the day. The reasons weren’t given as to why the attorneys were not getting paid, but one reason may be that they simply could not get clients to pay up....

If you’re like me (and thousands of other legal professionals), you probably got an email from Dropbox about a week ago, letting you know that you’ll need to reset your password. “Huh,” you thought, “I didn’t even remember that I had a Dropbox account.” And then you went about your day. But that email wasn’t just a friendly reminder that Dropbox still existed – it was one of the first, oblique, acknowledgements of that Dropbox was hacked in 2012, and lost 68 million usernames, emails, and passwords as a result....

Greetings from Cupertino! Okay, we’re actually a few miles from Cupertino, but close enough, right? Today was a big day for Apple, with a rehashing of the previously-announced iOS 7, a free surprise for all new iOS devices, and two new iPhones added to the lineup as of September 20. For more on iOS 7, see our previous WWDC coverage. Otherwise, for Apple iCrack, read on: The iWork suite is now free!...

Baby Buddies, Inc. v. Toys “R” Us, Inc., No. 08-17021, involved an action alleging that Toys R Us’s pacifier holder infringed plaintiff’s copyright in its own similar pacifier holder. The court of appeals affirmed summary judgment for defendant on the grounds that 1) the parties created distinctly different designs from an aesthetic perspective; and 2) no reasonable jury could conclude that the pacifier holders were substantially similar at the protected level....

From the ‘what-was-he-thinking file,’ Jaime Bauzo-Santiago gets an ‘A’ for honesty but an ‘F’ for felony stupid. The defendant thought it would be a good idea to ask the judge in his criminal case for a new lawyer. So he made his request in a personal letter, signed and delivered through the prison mail system. In that letter, however, he also admitted his crime. He appealed his conviction, but he’ll have to work out a different response over the next 15 years....

Should an employer offer a courtesy interview to an underqualified, current employee who applies to an opening within the company? Probably not based on a recent case in the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The First Circuit rejected a discriminatory hiring appeal from a Plymouth County Sheriff’s office employee last week, finding that the district court had properly granted summary judgment for the sheriff’s department. The First Circuit Court of Appeals uses the four-part McDonnell-Douglas test to assess discriminatory hiring claims....

Facebook hasn’t had much luck turning its users’ info into paid ads. Ars Technica reports that first, Facebook Beacon was shut down in a settlement as a result of a class action privacy litigation. Now, Facebook’s Sponsored Stories is getting tweaked as a result of a settlement approved by a district court judge on Monday. Facebook launched Sponsored Stories in 2011 and it worked like this: when users “checked in” or “liked” a business, their posts, along with their profile photo, started appearing in the right column where ad appeared....

Apart from answering the same question about whether it’s legal or not, for in house and general counsel, it can be a real headache when a company’s employees decide they want to protest. But if it’s not your company that your employees want to protest, do you really want HR disciplining employees for walking out to protest gun violence, or to show solidarity with survivors of sexual assault? Generally, in that situation, that answer is going to be no, even though no private employer is likely to face a meritorious claim of First Amendment retaliation, and especially if the harm of an employee skipping a half day of work to attend a protest isn’t really costly....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Should you have human rights specific to the new digital age? The answer is a clear YES, according to Gerd Leonhard, the author of the new book titled “Technology vs. Humanity.” Indeed, Leonhard sets out five potential human rights in what he calls a Digital Ethics Manifesto. So, what are these proposed rights?...

Does your company offer a finder’s fee for locating investors? If so, you may find that your finder’s fee agreement may not be enforceable, a new article at Inside Counsel warns. Companies that seek to raise money through a private securities offering routinely dole out finder’s fees, attorney Randy Johnson writes for Inside Counsel. Finder’s fees are usually determined by how much money the finder’s efforts bring in for the company....