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Last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held oral arguments on whether to issue an emergency stay of the district court’s order enjoining enforcement of Texas’ abortion law pending the outcome of the appeal on the merits. It’s telling that Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, who was the most hostile of the three judges to the opponents of the law, wrote the opinion here. The Fifth Circuit lifted the stay yesterday, allowing the law to be enforced, which, according to The New York Times, necessitated the immediate closure of 13 abortion clinics that weren’t in compliance with the questionably necessary requirements forcing abortion clinics to become little hospitals....

In March, a Fifth Circuit panel decided that the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) was liable to property owners who suffered billions of dollars in damage during Hurricane Katrina. Tuesday, the same panel decided that the Corps decisions regarding the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) — the channel at the center of the lawsuits — were judgment calls based on public policy considerations. Now, the panel says that plaintiffs can’t sue the Corps....

After recently announcing his planned retirement from Ford Motor Company, David Leitch looks poised to fill Bank of America’s soon to be vacated general counsel seat, according to the Wall Street Journal We’re guessing that retirement doesn’t look quite as alluring as a freshly printed offer with just the right number of perks to go along with it. Our guess is that it’s a good deal. If the past is any indicator, Leitch won’t have to be BofA’s GC for very long....

This is the first full week of 2014, and the Fifth Circuit is already prepping to pump some new blood into its workforce. If you have at least a high school education, or you’re plain curious about what working for the Fifth Circuit might be like, read on! In a vacancy announcement posted on January 3, the Fifth Circuit revealed that it has at least one position open for a “Generalist....

In US v. Young, No. 08-4117, the Fourth Circuit faced a challenge to a conviction of defendant for drug related offenses and a within-guidelines sentence of 136 months’ imprisonment. In affirming the conviction, the court held that the district court did not err in concluding that the officers complied with their knock-and-rule announcement obligations. The court also held that there is no basis to suppress the evidence found in defendant’s house, and that the evidence was sufficent to support defendant’s conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine....

You may be ready to upgrade your office software, but are you ready for your help desk to keep you on hold – for hours? Those hours aren’t billable and could cost you money. That’s a huge burden for your techie problem solvers – not to mention a potential time sink for your team. Experts say it’s best to give IT folks fair warning about the torrent of calls that’s sure to follow every upgrade....

Europe. It’s a fine place – except for France. Just kidding. Maybe. The European Court of Justice, which has precedential force over the entire 28-country European Union, just made a controversial ruling that prioritizes personal privacy over an open and honest (if not public-shaming) Internet. And it’s all because of the French – and some Spanish dude. An Embarrassing Home Repossession Mario Costeja Gonzalez, of Spain, has an unremarkable story. Many years ago, his home was repossessed and auctioned off....

Here, some wisdom, from forty years ago, that still rings true today. Wasn’t it only a few years ago that, with the proliferation of cell phones and iPods, that the death of the wristwatch was supposedly upon us? – Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Hack attacks have been in the news for a while. But the most recent headlines seem to indicate that hackers are far outpacing security efforts to contain them. In the last week, we have learned that a major health insurer was compromised, possibly exposing the data of 80 million health accounts. Data relating to medical patients is very sensitive, and the number 80 million is staggering in scope....

Legal tech promises to make the industry quicker, more agile, more efficient. You can take in clients online, have your AI-robots handle their simplest matters, even mine your email data to determine how happy they are with your services. But do you? When it comes to law firms and legal technology, there’s a lot more written about what could be done than what actually is. The question of how firms actually use legal technology came up after a recent quarrel in the legal blogosphere....

Is there a problem that your social media contacts can’t solve? I have yet to find one. My new-parent-friends are constantly pitching baby questions into the social ether and getting rapid responses about formula and diapers. Every time I want to find new books to read, I ask my Facebook friends for recommendations. Crowd-sourcing makes life easier. Especially when looking for an attorney. So if your social media profiles don’t indicate where you live and that you’re an attorney, you need to change that....

Don’t worry that robots might kill your job prospects; worry that they might kill you. This is not a test. It’s a real-life situation, and not a scary-movie scenario. Well, it was a movie but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that military experts want AI to have an automatic trigger. And of course, they are aiming at lawyers. AI Needs Restraint That’s because legal scholars are fighting back....

Trying your first jury trial can be nerve-wracking. What’s more, as you almost surely know, there are normally procedural requirements barring attorney should be making their trial debut in a homicide case. So telling the jury in a murder trial that this is the first case you’ve ever tried is never recommended. Rakofsky had repeated disagreements with his local D.C. counsel, causing his client, Dontrell Deaner, to become “visibly frustrated,” the Post says....

Many employers don’t allow employees to troll around the facility after or before working hours. Why? The reasons vary: security, a distraction-free workplace, keeping people from working off the clock, etc. But now, if your company has such a blanket policy, it may have to have an exception: the Section 7 exception. That’s right, the NLRB’s favorite tool for blocking social media and workplace conduct policies is now making an appearance in off-duty facility access policies....

When an incident between citizens and the police takes place, oftentimes the reliability of witness testimony can hinge on the believability of witness testimony or a question of character. And persons of some ethnic and social demographics have often felt that the police have enjoyed an unfair presumption of credibility. This has been a point of frustration both for lawyers and their clients. But lately there has been a growing social movement to push back, manifested in the form of police (mis)conduct databases....

If you haven’t been near a public school in the last few years, you may have missed out on one of the biggest public policy battles of the past decade: Common Core education standards. The Common Core State Standards Initiative seeks to set out a single, comprehensive set of standards of what every student should know in English and math in every grade, from Kindergarten to the senior year of high school....

Alienation of affection is a holdover from another era, before chivalry and duels died. How old is it? Like Alexander Hamilton v. Aaron Burr old, but that was “an affair of honor.” Alienation of affection is the other kind of affair. Like when you want to shoot somebody in the groin, but instead you get to sue their pants off. Criminal Conversation Here’s what happened in North Carolina, one of a handful of states that still recognize claims for alienation of affection and criminal conversation – a euphemism for extramarital sex....

If you’re a transactional attorney, then you know the drill. Every three months your life is turned upside down as your clients bombard you with endless transactions that just have to be closed before quarter end. If you deal with international transactions then make sure that your passport is in order. If it needs to be renewed, get that process started. If you have deals in countries that require visas such as India or China, make sure you have everything you need to obtain necessary visas....

For today’s lawyer, a strong social media presence is almost as much of a professional requirement as a website or working phone line. A majority of consumers now look to social media when deciding whether to hire an attorney, according to a new FindLaw survey. Fifty-four percent of consumers say that they would be likely to hire lawyers who are active on social media, while 40 percent said that they would be more likely to hire an attorney who can be found on social media....

Did you ever have that moment when someone soundly beat you at an intellectual task? Maybe it was in law school when a student finished the test 20 minutes before everyone else and aced it. Or maybe another candidate got the law job you wanted. Even if you were that guy, all that is about to change. Robots are better than lawyers now at the threshold of legal analysis. Issue-Spotting In an issue-spotting contest between lawyers and legal bots, AI smashed the competition....