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It’s happened to you before: You get an unsolicited email from someone you don’t know, claiming that someone else did something to him and now he wants to sue. You’re pretty sure this person got your email address from the state bar website, because you’ve never heard of this person before. Opening up the email, and the inevitable attachments, you find a litany of charges and poorly constructed pleadings. What should you do now?...

Wanted: Young, Black, Female, Muslim Attorney experienced in Herpes defense. That’s the short version of this excruciatingly intricate request from a prominent member of the Marin County, California community. We could make tasteless jokes about the thirty-year age difference between the man-behind-the-ad and his baby mama, or about herpes transmission (eww), but that just wouldn’t be becoming. Instead, we’re just going to use this as an opportunity to warn you of a few signs of the hypothetical client from hell....

Congratulations: Your closely held corporation is a person. And when it comes to religious beliefs, that fictional person, it seems, takes after its figurative parents – its closely held owners. What does the Supreme Court’s landmark Hobby Lobby ruling mean for your company, your religious beliefs, and your requirement to provide either contraceptive coverage or insurance coverage for other services that run contrary to your beliefs? Opposed to Providing Contraceptive Coverage?...

You know you can’t just sling vulgarities at your opponents across the pleaded aisles of the halls of justice. Nevertheless, in pleadings filed across the country, attorneys often struggle with the age old question concerning pejoratives, vulgarities and curse words: Is directly quoting bad or taboo language, without censure, okay in a pleading? This dilemma can often lead to the attorney’s most dreaded nemesis: extreme over-thinking and paralyzing over-analysis, over something that, in effect, is trivial....

Pace Salsa really is the best. Hot Pace Picante? Mmmm … so good. It also has (had?) a Twitter account: @Pace_Foods, which stirred up quite the controversy over the weekend. Kyle Kinane, a stand-up comedian, noticed that a ten-month old tweet, accusing the company of using homophobic advertising, was favorited by @Pace_Foods, and responded to with, “GRAB THE SOUTHWEST BY THE BOTTLE.” Kinane tweeted back. Same response. So he did it again, and again, with each anti-Pace tweet being favorited and responded to with the ALL-CAPS command....

The legal secretary is the backbone of any law office, handling a lot of the logistical functions like taking calls, mailing, and scheduling. Because the legal secretary’s work is the foundation for the business side of the law firm, hiring a bad secretary affects everyone in the office. When you’re hiring a new legal secretary, avoid these three mistakes lawyers make so that your new legal secretary is, in a word, awesome....

Yep, the courts are catching up to WestLaw. After all, who uses hardback reporters anyway? My volumes of Supreme Court Lawyers’ Edition are about 15 years out-of-date and only exist to make me look smart (and compliment my office motif). As part of its effort to catch up with the times, the Fourth Circuit is amending Rule 36(b) and will no longer distribute paper copies of published opinions in slip opinion format to everyone who requests them....

As general counsel, you will need to wear a lot of different hats. And in taking on your different roles, you may have noticed that different moods and even different personality types can have varying degrees of effectiveness. For example, sometimes it may make sense to be silent and remain behind the scenes advising your company. While at other times, you may want to be vocal and take the lead in discussions....

In-house counsel may be tempted simply to apply a common sense approach to marketing and advertising issues you may encounter. After all, operating on good-faith and honest disclosure works well-enough for general law practice, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Advertising and marketing are actually subject to numerous federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Keeping track of which laws govern which industries can be quite a chore. But it must be done....

Google’s Android operating system is rapidly gaining market share in the smartphone world. Analysts expect that by the end of the year it will surpass Apple’s iOS, Research in Motion’s Blackberry, Microsoft Windows phones and Nokia’s Symbian. By 2014, it could become the worlds number one mobile phone operating system. The growth is so massive that according to Google, 200,000 Android phones are activated on a daily basis. That’s not the say that the future of the phone is certain....

Shell Co. (Puerto Rico) Ltd. v. Los Frailes Serv. Station, Inc., No. 09-1279, concerned Shell’s suit against a former franchisee under the Petroleum Practices Marketing Act, and challenges to district court’s grant of Shell’s motion for a permanent injunction and dismissal of defendant’s counterclaims. The district court’s grant of Shell’s motion for permanent injunction is affirmed for the most part, but, the portion of the injunction ordering and compelling defendant to allow Shell to continue in possession of the service station until the expiration of the lease in 2014 is vacated as Shell made no showing of irreparable harm that might justify an order giving it possession of the property for the full term of the lease....

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a petition to review whether workers at a Nevada warehouse may be entitled to compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act for time spent going through security screenings while off the clock. Though the case stems from the Ninth Circuit, the High Court’s decision could impact the Eleventh Circuit, especially since the two circuits’ rulings conflict with each other. The Court recently denied pay for changing clothes before work....

There have been nine tech giants accused of involvement in the PRISM surveillance according to the information provided by the now out of the jurisdiction Edward Snowden: AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo, and YouTube. All of these companies who were linked to the PRISM program, according to The Washington Post, have staunchly denied involvement or even knowledge of the surveillance, which seems odd in light of federal law which immunizes them from suit based on their involvement....

The ACLU filed a police brutality suit on behalf of a disabled woman who was allegedly abused by border patrol agents and suffered a miscarriage a day after the incident. According to The Texas Tribune, U.S. citizen Laura Mireles alleges that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Officer Riano physically and verbally abused her and “applied handcuffs with such force that the fire department had to be called in to remove them....

Without a code of conduct in its legal department, a company is like a rudderless ship. The rudder, a relatively small device on a ship, dictates its direction. In a storm, a rudderless ship will flounder and likely capsize. Likewise, a company will fail without a corporate legal department guided by a code of conduct. It gives lawyers direction and a moral compass in troubled times. Decision-Making According to studies, 73 percent of workers in an organization with a written code of conduct believe it helps them do their jobs....

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a grand jury investigation target must turn over records and documents pertaining to foreign bank accounts which were used to evade U.S. taxes, Talk Radio News reports. While a district court had previously held that the target could invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid disclosure, the appellate court concluded that the government is allowed to demand the documents under the Required Records Doctrine....

Domino’s manipulated reports to approve higher advertising and promotion fees in a scheme to boost stocks and dividends for insiders, according to a new report. In a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, a corporate insider laid out the alleged scheme. Ultimately, the whistleblower says, officers, board members, and others enjoyed “higher stock prices and dividends through share repurchases and dividend payouts.” The SEC has not filed charges against Domino’s, but the agency will investigate whether the franchisor violated securities laws or was just doing business as usual....

A high-profile feud over abortion laws continues in Texas, where a judge stopped – again – a law that would require abortion providers to bury or cremate fetuses. The fetal burial law, set to take effect in February, applies to abortions, miscarriages, and ectopic pregnancies. The decision was a defeat for lawmakers and the state Attorney General’s Office, which defended the statute in Whole Women’s Health v. Smith. Judge David A....

It’s both the saddest and cutest story ever. After all, it involves an autonomous security robot getting canned by an animal shelter. One of Knightscope’s gloriously cone shaped security robots, aptly named K9, has been taken permanently off duty by the San Francisco SPCA. The SF SPCA got their robot in order to patrol around their building and in their parking lot, allegedly to deter homeless individuals from congregating around the building, and hopefully stem some of crime they’ve been experiencing....

Earlier this year we wrote a post about Starbucks and its smart non-reaction to a parody coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks, gleaning lessons in when to let it go. A few months later, and Disney is teaching us a similar lesson – and this time really, figuratively and literally, “Let It Go.” For those of you who don’t know the reference, we’re guessing you don’t have a young child in your life....