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“Analytics” is everywhere these days, from social media to baseball. It’s the process of aggregating a bunch of data and then using those data to formulate trends or come to conclusions. The legal world is embracing analytics, too – and in some interesting ways. A startup company called Ravel Law just debuted a platform called Judge Analytics, which seeks to aggregate data about state and federal judges so that litigants can fine-tune their strategies for specific judges....

If you’ve ever tried to get money from the government, you know how painful and fruitless the process can be. Preventing them from taking your client’s money through a Medicare lien claim is equally as arduous, pitting your resilience and paperwork skills against an inefficient mess of a system that is uncommunicative, slow, and drowning in acronyms (COBC, MSPRC, HICN, etc.). To make matters worse, delays in clearing Medicare liens can be caused by anything from forgetting to file a form (your fault) to using a highlighter to point out duplicate or erroneous charges (their insanity)....

If a court uses a poop emoji, what does that say about the law? Is it a sign that the law has gone to poop? Or is it a sign that the law is catching up to the times? If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an emoji should at least be admissible evidence. Right? Emoji This You can’t blame the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for making poop part of the record....

Two years ago, the European Court of Justice embraced the “right to be forgotten,” establishing new, tougher privacy protections for EU citizens. The major impact of that right, so far, has been the elimination of unwanted results from Google and other search results. But the right to be forgotten isn’t exactly absolute, researchers at New York University have found. With just a few clicks, Europe’s privacy rules can be easily elided....

Federal agents arrested an ex-Apple engineer as he was about to board a jet because he allegedly stole self-driving technology from the company. Xiaolang Zhang, 33, was at the international airport in San Jose, California, when authorities caught up with him. He has been charged with one count of grand theft of trade secrets and faces up to 10 years in prison. According to court records, Zhang told his employer he was leaving to be closer to his mother who was “in poor health” in China....

With one selfie, a Syrian refugee has brought Facebook to a day of reckoning. A German judge will soon decide what to do about Anas Modamani, who took a selfie with chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015 and posted it on Facebook. The photo went viral as a symbol of Germany’s open-door policy to refugees, but some fake news stories used the photo to link Modamani to terrorism. Modamani, who sued for injunctive relief in Wurzburg, wants Facebook to prevent the photo from being shared and to delete all false news stories that have used it....

In re: Mouzon Enters., Inc., No. 09-13330, involved a creditor’s appeal from the bankruptcy court’s order holding that the motion filed by debtor seeking to vacate the Consent Order was not barred under Rule 9024. The court of appeals reversed on the ground that the bankruptcy court erred in holding that an order resolving a claim that has been objected to, but not litigated, constitutes an order “entered without a contest” for the purposes of Fed....

It goes without saying that in order to represent a party in court, she has to know about it, right? Sure, it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. After all, members of a certified class aren’t universally notified before a suit is filed. But even then, the named plaintiffs (or class representatives) are aware of the lawsuit and have consented to representation. And the class members are given a chance to opt-out....

Thanks to Apple, Beats Electronics – makers of those oh-so-hip headphones with the lowercase “B” on them – has deeper pockets than when it was just Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Apple scooped up Beats, Iovine, and Dr. Dre back in August for $3 billion. Monster, which formerly designed and made “Beats by Dr. Dre” headphones, wants a piece of that. It’s suing Dre, Iovine, and electronics maker HTC for what Monster calls “corporate betrayal” relating to HTC’s 2011 acquisition of an ownership stake in Beats....

Petitioner’s request for review of a decision of the NLRB (Board), arising from allegations of various unfair labor practice charges, is denied where: 1) the Board decision was properly issued by a two-member quorum pursuant to 29 U.S.C. section 153(b); and 2) the Board’s decision is enforceable on the merits. Read Narricot Indus., LP v. NLRB, No. 09-1164 Appellate Information Argued: September 23, 2009 Decided: November 20, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge King...

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. For many decades, Americans have taken to the roads to get from one place to another. And, in more recent times, Americans have become addicted to their smartphones – texting, posting, online searching, making purchases, among many other uses of their devices. Put the two together, driving and smartphone use, and there is a clear recipe for potential disaster....

In plaintiff’s case against its competitor, involved in the life sciences equipment market, for unfair competition arising from hiring of plaintiff’s employee, district court’s judgment is affirmed where: 1) district court had proper jurisdiction over plaintiff’s claims; 2) court did not err in refusing to dismiss the claims against defendants in Rhode Island for improper venue, nor did the court abuse its discretion in denying defendant’s motion for transfer of venue; 3) defendants have failed to demonstrate that the non-competition provision in the Employee Agreement is unenforceable, and as such, defendant’s argument that they could not have interfered with the Employment Agreement fails; 4) defendant need not have shown that either the employee nor defendant used plaintiff’s trade secrets, as disclosure or acquisition is sufficient to constitute misappropriation, subjecting defendant to liability for actual loss and unjust enrichment; 5) viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence supports the damage award; and 6) district court did not err in its evidentiary rulings as defendant failed to preserve some of its claims and failed to adequately develop others....

In the year of the “Twitter President,” it’s fitting that the most notable tweets involved President Donald Trump. Trump managed to keep the social media company in the spotlight at a time when it was losing market share. Some predicted Twitter would not survive the year, but as the President’s go-to platform, it is not going away anytime soon. Here are some of the most notable tweets of 2017, and quite naturally they involve Trump....

Mark Lanier, a high-profile Houston lawyer, didn’t complain too much when an appeals court reversed his $151 million win. But he didn’t like that the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said he was “unequivocally deceptive” at trial. The appeals court said he misled jurors by saying his expert witnesses were unpaid and that the opposing experts gave “bought testimony.” The problem, the appeals court said, was that Lanier paid his experts after the trial....

Critics of the proposed SOPA copyright law could face an uphill battle in their fight to kill the bill, a House committee hearing suggests. Intellectual property lawyers, on the other hand, could emerge as big winners. A Google representative was the only person to testify against the Stop Online Piracy Act during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, the Huffington Post reports. Committee members were hostile, attacking Google for its role in an online pharmacy scandal earlier this year — “a public declaration that the company’s lobbying might not help to moderate SOPA,” the Post opined....

If there was one blog out of our 19 blogs for lawyers that I could pick as my favorite, it would be FindLaw’s Technologist: gadgets, tech tips, landmark cases, and other forms of legal geekery, all in one place. And it shows in our product: not only is Technologist one of our most popular blogs, but it’s on the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 (a list of the top legal blogs) for the second straight year....

Getting hacked can be a real pain. You have to change all of your passwords, contact your financial accounts, and pray that there wasn’t any truly sensitive information floating around in your inbox (such as a social security number). And if this is your professional account, you likely have sensitive client information in your inbox as well. Did we mention that more hackers are now aiming their keyboards at lawyers?...

This geek just fell in love. Google Hangouts requires a Google account, and a learning curve. Skype (now a happy member of the Microsoft family) requires its own login and learning curve. Facetime is Apple-only. Basically anything outside of Chatroulette (not linking to that dirty, dirty site, I promise) requires some sort of login and in some cases, downloaded software. WebRTC, an open source project developed by Google and supported by Mozilla (the Firefox folks), is Web chat without any extra software, and is compatible with the newest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Chrome Beta for Android....

In addition to being on TV for most of the 1990s, and providing a platform for a post-“Bill and Ted” but pre-“Matrix” Keanu Reeves, “The Devil’s Advocate” confirmed for the world that lawyers are evil. Al Pacino’s character was literally the devil. How else could he be a defense attorney? In practice, we do sometimes joke about “selling our souls” to BigLaw, but can you practice law and still have a soul?...

Chalk this one up to One Percenter problems. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) operates the Florida Turnpike system, and collects tolls from vehicles using the turnpike. Motorists sometimes pay the small tolls charged with $50 or $100 bills. To discourage payments with counterfeit bills, FDOT implemented a policy that required toll collectors to record a Grant-or-Benjamin-paying vehicle’s make, model, color, tag number and state of issuance in a Bill Detection Report....