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Those following the John Edwards saga already know the former democratic vice presidential nominee has a tough legal fight ahead. But John Edwards lawyer’s opening statement might just be the strategy needed to keep the former senator from a conviction. Alison Van Laningham, Edwards’ attorney, took to the offensive immediately. But not in a way most would expect. Rather than expound on Edwards’ innocence, she instead shifted the blame to Andrew Young (Edwards’ former aide) and his wife Cheri....

From pomegranate juice to something I understand: beer. Lagunitas, maker of hoppier-than-thou India Pale Ales (IPAs), filed a lawsuit against the other national brewer of IPAs, Sierra Nevada, claiming trademark infringement. But after negative reaction on social media, Lagunitas owner Tony Magee announced late Tuesday the company planned to drop the lawsuit, SFGate reports. What was the issue? No, Lagunitas wasn’t brazen enough to claim that it owned the letters “IPA....

Small firms and solos often spend a lot of their days drafting business contracts. Meeting a company’s legal needs often requires lots of transactional or contract work. Most attorneys recognize that it’s easier to draft a legal document when you have some guidance. Enter FindLaw’s Corporate Counsel Contracts Center. The contracts database contains legal documents from many of America’s top companies. There are about 5,000 contracts in the archive, and it’s been recently updated with new documents from Fortune 500 companies....

A county sheriff accused of creating a sexually hostile work environment by hugging and kissing a coworker isn’t entitled to summary judgement, the Ninth Circuit has ruled. Yolo County Sheriff Edward G. Prieto was accused by Victoria Zetwick, a correctional sergeant, of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act based on allegedly over a hundred “unwelcome hugs and/or kisses” over a 12-year period....

People used to ask me, “What kind of a lawyer are you?” “A good one,” I liked to reply. It usually brought a smile, and always brought a follow-up question: “No, like, what kind of law do you practice?” In the law practice world, clients seem to expect that lawyers have a specialty. It almost goes without saying, but here goes anyway: there are pros and cons to being a general practitioner....

In the sci-fi thriller ‘Minority Report,’ Tom Cruise sees tailor-made advertisements targeting him pop up wherever he goes. It’s a paranoid’s delusion come true. Well, it’s not science fiction anymore and it’s not in your head. Advertisers are following you wherever your cell phone, smart device, laptop, or computer goes. And it’s going to get worse, so what do you do? Throw out your devices? Melt your face to hide your identity?...

If you look into lawyer salaries, there’s one number that appears consistently: $160,000. This is the number often cited as the starting salary of first year associates at BigLaw firms such as Latham Watkins, DLA Piper, and Jones Day. This $160,000 figure has remained largely unchanged for years and is expected to basically carry over into 2016. It’s easy for many attorneys to be dazzled by this number and to make their primary mission to get into one of the BigLaw firms without taking into full account some of the trade-offs....

For the past 13 years, InsideCounsel has hosted SuperConference, an event boasting experts speaking on panels, exhibitors and sponsors from leading technology providers and law firms, and draws more than 450 attendees ranging from in-house counsel to general counsel. This year, the 14th Annual InsideCounsel SuperConference will take place from May 12-14, 2014 and will be in Chicago. Here are some details about the event, and why you should consider attending....

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit to stop an alleged Ponzi scheme that promised high returns for real estate investments in Chicago. The complaint says hundreds of investors dumped at least $135 million into EquityBuild to buy, renovate, and develop real estate in the south side. The father-son enterprise raised money from more than 900 investors and continues to solicit more. According to reports, they promised 12 to 20 percent returns....

‘Shocking’ barely describes the treatment of Terry Lee Morris. When he refused to answer questions at his criminal trial, Judge George Gallagher ordered deputies to jolt the man with 50,000 volts of electricity. They administered the punishment through a shock belt, which is supposed to be used for security purposes. Morris was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor and sentenced to 60 years in prison, but a federal appeals court reversed and remanded for a new trial....

This week, the Texas law against sanctuary city policies was upheld, again, by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, this time sitting en banc. The preliminary injunction, which the circuit court stayed pending the first appeal to the panel, was all but fully dismantled by the full appellate court. The only part of the law that the court did not lift the injunction involved penalizing officials that failed to endorse the anti-sanctuary law....

Today, technology must be utilized effectively to manage the torrent of info coming your way. The more that can be automated by machine, the better. We’ve done pieces on technology and the law before, and today the saga continues. Here are a few more programs to consider for your firm. If you don’t like to write, you must be having a tough life as a lawyer. Most notable firms designate column writing (now blogging) duties to associates, but partners will occasionally write about the really interesting cases with the most novel issues....

Running a small or solo practice is no easy task. Whether you are truly solo, or have a few underlings, or a couple other attorneys, on your team, most small law shops have to deal with the same basic challenges. According to a recent survey and info-graphic published by Thomson Reuters (FindLaw.com’s parent company- thanks mom and dad!), over 80 percent of small firms reported not only an increase in price competition, but also an increase in competition from non-traditional legal services providers....

Twitter spammers everywhere take notice: the company is out to get rid of you. The social media giant has filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco aimed at stemming spam on its site. The Twitter spam lawsuit identifies six defendants as the primary culprits of the company’s problems. TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, and TweetBuddy are some of the alleged spammers and spam tool providers that Twitter has identified, Mashable reports. Twitter claims the defendants’ actions have cost it over $1 million in anti-spam measures....

Permit requirements under the Clean Water Act apply to state agencies engaging in reclamation efforts. W. Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Inc. v. Huffman, 09-1474, concerned a challenge to the district court’s grant of an environmental group’s request for declaratory and injunctive relief requiring West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for reclamation efforts at abandoned coal mining sites....

Our first reaction: are people still filing these? Dallas Buyers Club is an award-winning movie. Like every other movie out there, good or bad, award-winning or flopping, it gets pirated on the Internet, most commonly via Bittorrent file-sharing networks. Bittorrent is far from anonymous. Anyone on Bittorrent can see the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of every other person connected to the file. With the IP addresses and a court order, copyright “trolls” can go to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and ask for real names....

There’s a running Twitter joke with our friends at @SCOTUSblog. Because their name is so similar to the nation’s high court, many tweeters mistake them for the real thing, and express their great displeasure over court rulings in 140 characters or less. Instead of kindly clarifying the mistake, the mystery person behind the account typically tweets back snarky responses. It’s wonderful. The latest, and most amusing, was a tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to address the E....

The smoking gun memo. The “hey, this is really bad for us, and we’re totally nuking the neighbors, but my legal opinion is don’t tell anyone” memo. That’s what Exxon Mobil had: a memo from their in-house attorney, Rosemary Stein, to an employee. The memo was privileged legal advice, but a doc reviewer let it slip through the cracks. Louisiana has a claw-back provision, but before opposing counsel returned the Stein Memo, he forwarded it to basically the entire state bar....

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt another blow to President Trump’s travel ban orders, saying that immigration policy is “not a one-person show.” “We conclude that the President, in issuing the Executive Order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” the court said in State of Hawaii v. Trump. It is the second court of appeals to rule against the president’s latest travel ban. The first appellate decision, issued by the U....

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the California prisoner release case this week, affirming a prior federal court order that California release 30,000 inmates from its prison system. Now California’s governor and Legislature will have two years to come up with a plan to draw the prison population down from 200% of capacity to 137%, reports the San Jose Mercury-News. Meanwhile, prison authorities will likely continue a process begun after the original 2009 trial court order....