Posts

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Many people are nervous about the various perils lurking on the Internet. They want to be able to protect themselves and be secure when to comes to their personal data. Frequent advice given is to make sure to change passwords often, use complex passwords, not open emails or attachments from unfamiliar sources, and to be careful about sending personal data from Wi-Fi hotspots....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. A block on the website The Pirate Bay has been partially lifted by the Court of Appeal in The Hague, according to ZDNet. The Court of Appeal came to this result, reasoning that the block was disproportionate for two particular Internet Service Providers and also because it generally was not effective. The Pirate Bay, as a search engine, can locate tiny information files known as torrents that implement content downloading on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing system....

The government shutdown may be over for now, but national cybersecurity is still in limbo. Agencies furloughed security teams. Patches and updates to websites were deferred. Meanwhile, federal workers went looking for jobs in the private sector. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it’s hard to reboot cybersecurity once it goes down. Cyber Slowdown Industry experts saw it first-hand. With the shutdown, cybersecurity slowed down. Chris Eng, vice president of research at Veracode, said a lot of work was “not being done....

Attorneys have a duty to their clients to keep their confidential information secret. This duty of confidentiality is one of the building blocks of trust that you will have with your client. Without it, your client may not tell you everything you need to know. Still, as in-house counsel, you may be faced with situations where you will be forced to choose between keeping your client’s secrets and whistleblowing. This oftentimes arises when you are notified of a client’s potential criminal act....

Back in February, we wrote about Kind Snacks suing Clif for trademark infringement, à la trade dress violation, related to the new, very similar packaging of Clif’s Mojo nutrition bars. Earlier this month, a federal judge denied Kind’s motion for preliminary injunction. But the biggest takeaway has to do more with social media, than trademark infringement. Read on to see why. The Claim Kind sued Clif when it unveiled new packaging for its Mojo bars, which borrowed some design elements (they say so themselves in emails submitted as evidence), including a transparent bar, with opaque ends....

Judges ordered Virginia legislators to adopt new district lines that mostly likely will change the balance of political power in the state. The new districts will tip the balance in favor of Democrats, who claim in a lawsuit that the traditional boundaries diluted votes of African Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the gerrymandering case late last year. With judicial oversight, lawmakers say the redistricting will change everything. It could happen even before the Supreme Court rules....

Lawyers may accept digital currencies in payment for legal services, according to a new ethics opinion. The Nebraska ethics opinion is the first by a state ethics body, according to the ABA Journal. The Lawyers Advisory Committee issued the opinion in response to a growing use of the technology in the area, where bitcoin ATMs are already in use. There are conditions, however, such as the requirement that lawyers immediately convert digital currencies into cash....

Becoming in house counsel is the Holy Grail for a lot of attorneys. The common perception is that you put in ten grueling years at a law firm, and then you can jump to a cushy in house position. But are these tales of leisure for in house counsel just myths? To say that all in house lawyers work less hours and enjoy a better quality of life than their law firm counterparts would be untrue....

You don’t have a previously unannounced hearing, it seems. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) just posted a security alert about an ongoing email spam scam (say that three times fast), alerting lawyers about an impeding court hearing. The attachments, of course, contain nasty malware. And the emails aren’t just coming from faux federal courts – some state courts are affected as well. Plus, it gets worse. Some of the fake email messages appear to be coming from BigLaw email addresses....

In the criminal case that won’t die, Rodney Anton Williamson (“RAW”) makes his way to the Fourth Circuit once again - after prevailing somewhat with SCOTUS with a remand order. Cops caught RAW with kilos of cocaine after using a wired snitch to record a conversation. RAW claimed the conversation – which occurred after a sealed indictment had been issued – violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination....

It’s one thing to have your LinkedIn or Dropbox account compromised by hackers. It’s another to have hackers break into your email account, impersonate your typo-filled writing, then convince opposing counsel to send a $63,000 settlement payment to the hacker’s offshore bank account. Unfortunately, that’s just what happened to one Virginia attorney. The lesson: if you know your email has been compromised, clue in opposing counsel, or you could be responsible for whatever loss follows....

In US v. Snipes, No. 08-12402, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed actor Wesley Snipes’ convictions, after a jury trial, on three counts of willful failure to file individual federal income tax returns, on the grounds that 1) because the general extension of the motions deadline by the district court could not have waived 18 U.S.C. section 3237(b)’s clear twenty-day deadline, the district court’s denial of the five-month late elective transfer motion was not an abuse of discretion; 2) there was no abuse of discretion in refusing to grant a novel pretrial, post-grand jury hearing to challenge the claimed venue found in a facially sufficient indictment; and 3) defendant’s sentence did not create an unlawful disparity because the district court noted that misdemeanants who, like defendant, had willfully failed to file their personal income tax returns, had engaged in similar behavior to the felons who had received similar sentences....

Last week, The New York Times published an article 10 years in the making. It followed up with some women who had “opted-out” of their careers a decade ago to be full-time mothers, and tracked their career paths. The three women profiled wanted to “opt-in” again to their careers, but were facing obstacles along the way. Which makes us ask: What can companies do to reduce “opt-outs” and help women thrive in corporate environments?...

There has been lots of talk about artificial intelligence in the legal sphere lately, much of it centered around the idea of robot lawyers and the end of attorneys as we know them. All this, despite the fact that we’re still a ways away from deploying AI legal tech in any large-scale, meaningful way. But at ILTACON, the annual gathering of the International Legal Technology Association, some technology leaders proposed a slightly different vision of the legal tech future....

It’s been in vogue for a while to drug test recipients of state and federal welfare, on the theory either that welfare recipients take a lot of drugs or that since “we” are paying “them,” then we get to conduct intrusive searches into their lives. The Eleventh Circuit Court last week affirmed that the state of Florida cannot conduct suspicionless drug testing on welfare recipients. Florida’s law, passed in 2011, requires drug testing as a condition of eligibility for welfare benefits....

Web design: Many have tried, and nearly as many have failed miserably. And while a do-it-yourself site, with a barely recognizable color scheme and misspelled words might be OK for your local hobby group, a lawyer’s professional site demands quite a bit more. It needs to be clean, modern, and as mistake-free as possible. And it really, really can’t have any of these things: A visitor counter. (There have been 98 visitors to this site since 1996!...

Everyone’s least favorite holiday, tax day, is fast approaching. If your fiscal year matches the calendar year and you (or better yet, your accountant) haven’t gotten all your tax filings in order just yet, don’t worry. You’ve still time to get everything together – and to make sure you’re getting all the tax deductions you’re entitled to, while avoiding some common law firm tax pitfalls. To help you out, here’s FindLaw’s top tax tips for your small firm or solo practice....

Nobody likes it when somebody hovers over their work – especially when that somebody is an attorney. But lawyers are directly responsible for the work of their employees, and it presents a serious challenge. You have to depend on them, but you can’t expect them to do everything. So if your paralegals are getting you into hot water, maybe it’s because you are pushing them into deep water. Maybe you need to supervise just enough to not agonize....

Frank Andrews got his prescription at Target. Unfortunately, the dosage was ten times the prescribed amount and he suffered renal failure. He lost his negligence suit because he failed to present timely expert evidence and other reasons in Andrews v. Target Pharmacy.. Maybe this is why you shouldn’t necessarily buy prescriptions at the same counter where you buy household cleansers. Be careful where you find your lawyer, too. Expert Testimony The case started to unravel in pretrial discovery....

Many attorneys might think that by slashing fees and becoming the cheapest lawyer a client can find, you can drum up new business. It’s true that lowering the amount you charge might make you more appealing to clients. But, you shouldn’t act so fast. Being the cheapest attorney in town isn’t necessarily the best marketing move. After all, there’s a certain stigma attached to being thought of as the “cheapest.” And, many people might believe that there is some truth to the old saying that you get what you pay for....