It’s the start of the year and just as you may have New Year’s resolutions for your personal life, you may also want resolutions for your role as general counsel. While there were plenty of corporate legal lessons to be learned in 2012, now is the time to look forward to the new year. In fact, just this week, there were plenty of new laws that went into effect that may impact your company....
You’ve got to spend money to make money, right? Right. But you don’t have to spend all your money. When it comes to lawyer marketing, there are a few strategies you can take to improve your marketing without breaking the bank. To help you sell your services better, without having to sell the farm, here are our top tips on cost-effective lawyer marketing strategies, from the FindLaw archives. Sure, you can run an ad in the local paper, take out a billboard by the highway, or run a commercial on late-night T....
Here at FindLaw, we understand the pressures of being a legal professional - most of us are recovering lawyers - so we want to help by tossing you that preferred life preserver of the legal profession, the short list. Though Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has been known as one of the more conservative appellate courts for years, the majority of the judges on the 15-member court were appointed by Democrats....
If the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t want to wade into the interstate Lake Lanier water rights dispute, maybe the Supreme Court will. In September, the Eleventh Circuit rejected a request from Florida and Alabama to vacate a three-judge panel’s unanimous decision regarding the long-running water rights dispute between Florida, Alabama, and Georgia over Lake Lanier water withdrawal. Florida and Alabama asked the Supreme Court to resolve the Lake Lanier dispute on Monday....
Lakeland, Florida used to have this … thing. Before every city council meeting, they’d have a Christian chaplain lead a prayer. Obviously, this leaves out a lot of people. Tradition is one thing, but you’ve got to balance that with the feelings, rights, and religions of others, right? Fair enough, except they were pretty much wrong. The rule is not all-inclusiveness. Per the Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh and the Eleventh Circuit’s later decision in Pelphrey, we recognize the tradition of opening legislative or deliberative bodies with invocations....
One of the biggest problems that an in-house lawyer will have to address is what to do with inadvertent business disclosures of valuable company information. In fact, many of these disclosures can be made (mistakenly) by your business in an attempt to build strong business relations. Sounds good. But what do you do to address problems that are sure to arise due to good-faith disclosures? It usually starts like this. Your company, a fresh start-up, small business, or closely held corporation, develops close commercial ties with other companies in the industry sector....
If a law firm creates an actual physical product, like an easy to use legal guide for non-lawyers, can the law firm sell that guide? Or perhaps more apropos for today, if a law firm buys a program or website that can render legal services without the assistance of an attorney, like generating basic form documents, can a law firm sell those services, ethically speaking? Generally, the answer is an all too familiar: Yes, but …...
One of the coolest things about the future is that you can imagine what it will be like. Like, how about a robo dog to serve your complaint? Or a lawyer bot to do all your discovery? Or a judge that dispenses justice like a vending machine? Wait, we already have some of those. But robo dog… Law Tech We’ve known robots would take over the law for some time. Two years ago, they were already taking 23 percent of lawyer jobs....
In Williams v. Thaler, No. 08-70046, a capital habeas matter, the court of appeals affirmed the denial of a certificate of appealability, on the grounds that 1) the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain a second or successive habeas application because petitioner failed to move in the appropriate court of appeals for an order authorizing the district court to consider the application; 2) petitioner did not demonstrate that a Texas court would hear the merits of his third application for post-conviction relief on the grounds of unavailability of the factual basis of his claim; 3) petitioner failed to demonstrate that reasonable jurists would debate whether executing petitioner would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice; and 4) petitioner did not convince the court of appeals, by clear and convincing evidence, that the state’s discovery violations prevented him from fully and fairly presenting his case....
When it comes to great legal words, few are as baffling as certiorari. Though most lawyers know that it’s something that SCOTUS can grant, more often than not, even we lawyers will use the truncated “cert.” rather than risk butchering the pronunciation, let alone the spelling. Thankfully, today, the full Latin phrase, certiorari volumnus, is not used. The term dates back to the 15th century. In Latin, the word literally means “we wish to be informed....
Former GlaxoSmithKline general counsel Lauren Stevens has been re-indicted for obstructing a probe into Wellbutrin off-label marketing as part of her duties for the company. Stevens’ case has deep ramifications and has been closely watched. The question of just how much a GC can rely upon (and/or hide behind) outside counsel’s advice will play out. The prosecution may prove to be the first wave of a sea change in how federal prosecutors pursue not just companies, but company executives for wrongdoing....
Last week, a federal judge approved a settlement in a major “Flash cookies” lawsuit, which alleged that use of the data technology in online advertising violates the privacy rights of millions of internet users every day. Quantcast and Clearspring, the two major internet marketers named in the suit, have agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the claims, $2 million of which is being distributed to universities and research groups analyzing online privacy issues....
The Blue Ridge Parkway is home to some of the most breathtakingly beautiful scenery in America. It’s not a wonder then, that the romantic Sleepy Gap Overlook of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Buncombe County, North Carolina has been home to a few rendezvous. More than a few, actually. The forest fires of passion became so enflamed that the Park Rangers conducted a sting operation to target homosexual activity in the park....
If you’re considering bringing more lawyers into your practice, hiring support staff, or just want to see how your riches measure up against your neighbors’, we’ve got good news for you. Robert Half Legal, the staffing agency, has released its 2016 Salary Guide. The guide breaks down typical salary ranges for a wide variety of legal careers, from attorneys in midsize firms with 7 years experience to compliance managers fresh out of school....
A great way to network and get your name out among your peers is to become a CLE speaker. But let’s face it, not all CLE speakers are spectacular. How can you make sure you’ll be invited back? First, of course, you have to get selected to be a CLE speaker in the first place. There are several ways to do this, such as contacting the CLE organization with a brief biography and a description of your practice area....
A trademark and law school parody, all in one app. It’s common knowledge that today’s law grads, for lack of a better term, are screwed. Six-figure debt, no jobs, yadda yadda. And as lawyers, we’re often amused by some of the more ridiculous trademark battles out there, like trademarking “candy” and “saga” for all videogames and then going after games that bear no resemblance to your candy-crushing puzzle game. Take both jokes, turn them into a game, and you get Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer....
He who shall mess with the judge’s vacation time shall find himself in contempt. Well, not really. But it may seem like it. Last year, Clark County District Court Judge Valorie Vega set aside four weeks on her calendar for a murder trial. When the trial took nearly two weeks longer, she held its participants hostage. Trial proceedings continued until 3 a.m., when the jury began deliberations, reports the ABA Journal....
Derek Matthew Beaulieu is either incredibly dedicated to the service of Massachusetts’ parents and children in juvenile court, or, he’s an over-biller who misrepresented the amount of work he did for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The ABA Journal reports that it was the latter, as the state’s bar association just suspended his license for the four years it will take to pay restitution for the overbilling. In 2008, Beaulieu billed the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) for 1800 hours, the Connecticut Commission on Child Protection (CCP) for 1,143....
Another chapter in the LCD price-fixing scandal has come to an end. Sharp and Samsung, along with Chimei Innolux, Hitachi, HannStar, Chunghwa and Epson, have agreed to settle claims brought by 8 states. The companies were accused of operating an international cartel between 1999 and 2006, when Japan, Korea, the European Union and the United States announced a joint investigation into the matter. Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin soon joined in, filing lawsuits that were later consolidated in the Northern District of California....
We know what you’re thinking: who is Mary Meeker? She’s the Miss Cleo of tech trends, the oracle (no pun intended) of the Internet. Every year, her Internet Trends report provides insight into traffic trends, user behavior, and predictions for the next year. Though her 164-slide presentation contained a lot of information, one trend is especially important for legal marketing: the continued rise of mobile. Mobile is important? Shocker, right? Any idiot could see that coming....
