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In the most recent wave of federal court nominations handed down from the White House, the state of Mississippi was dealt an unexpected bit of bad news: a Mississippian wasn’t nominated in the place of Judge Grady Jolly, the Mississippian that’s retiring from the bench. Dropping the number of seats held by Mississippians to two. The 17 judge judicial circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. For the four Fifth Circuit nominations made by President Trump, none have been Mississippians....

The Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 may soon give web users an easier path to not being monitored by Internet and wireless companies. The bill comes amid increased attention by lawmakers on creating privacy rules for the Internet. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) introduced the legislation prohibiting online tracking, both on the Internet and on mobile phones, reports Reuters. The White House has called for such rules but has not supported a specific mandate that would block companies from tracking users....

Litigation costs are a major part of most in-house legal department budgets. After all, outside counsel aren’t cheap and corporate legal disputes can drag on for years and years. But you can help reduce those costs, and help increase your department’s cost-effectiveness, in several ways. Here are three tips on how to bring down your litigation spend, without compromising your legal position. Bringing in an outside attorney in the early stages of a dispute can help save you money in the long run....

Apple Inc. is known for manufacturing some of the sleekest and highest quality consumer technology available. However, according to a recent review of legal filings by Ars Technica, the most creative people on the Apple team might in fact be the lawyers. The In Re Apple IPhone Antitrust Litigation case has found its way to SCOTUS review. Now the tech goliath will have a chance to test out their novel arguments before the High Court in a bid to get the case tossed once again....

Things aren’t what they used to be. Today’s lawyers face a constantly shifting legal landscape. Technology has made it possible to run a paperless law firm, to outsource tasks across the globe, or to find yourself swamped in endless eDiscovery. The internet has made it easier for people to find (and review) lawyers online, but it has also empowered clients to demand more for less. Meanwhile, growing corporate legal departments are handling more tasks in house, while smaller clients are increasingly seeking out DIY solutions....

Attorneys for BP, the multinational energy company, were called out this week for sneakily reducing the line spacing in a court filing. What can lawyers learn from this incident? As if it weren’t enough for BP to recklessly operate the Deepwater Horizon, sending millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing millions in economic damage to the Gulf Coast, killing some people, and incurring billions in fines, they had to go and pull a junior high trick....

State and federal laws protect a person’s ability to live in a housing unit with a service animal even if the landlord or homeowners association has a no pets policy. This is because a service animal isn’t a “pet,” it’s a service animal. A Florida homeowners association didn’t seem to think so. It was skeptical of one tenant’s claim that he needed a service animal that exceeded the HOA’s weight limit....

“To mix a metaphor, while half a loaf is better than none, plaintiffs’ argument here just doesn’t cut the mustard.” The Hearst Magazine unpaid interns, led by plaintiff Xuedan Wang, who were seeking minimum wage back-pay for more than 3,000 students were brought on to work at the magazine, without pay, in the name of “valuable experience.” The plaintiffs were seeking partial summary judgment on the issue of whether they were employees under Fair Labor Standards Act....

Does your company compensate workers for time spent going through a security screening? The Court’s ruling could set a de facto national standard on post-work security screening compensation. Does your company require workers to go through a extensive daily security search process – perhaps involving metal detectors and a manual search of employees’ bags or personal items – after a shift is over, without pay? If so, your screening practice might be inviting legal trouble....

Security, smechurity, right? If you use an iPhone that has updated to iOS 6, your passcode-protected phone might not be so secure after all. According to Gizmodo, a relatively simple series of button presses will allow anyone with the phone in hand to bypass the lock screen and enter the phone app, allowing them to make calls, send messages, and view and edit contacts. We haven’t gotten this to work yet because we are too afraid of accidently calling 911 and having the five-oh knock down the door....

In plaintiff’s breach of contract action against defendants involving a town’s exercise of its statutory right of first refusal (ROFR) to purchase plaintiff’s forest land and subsequent assignment of its right to a nonprofit conservation organization, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where: 1) the liquidated damages provision applies to defendants, as the holder of an ROFR must meet all of the terms and conditions of the offer, including subsidiary terms such as the liquidated damages clause at issue; 2) the liquidated damages provision is enforceable; 3) district court’s summary judgment with respect to a Chapter 93A claim, the business-to-business provisions of the consumer protection statute, was properly granted to defendants as Chapter 93A is not applicable where a nonprofit defendant is acting in furtherance of its core mission; 4) plaintiff’s challenge to the district court’s conclusion that she did not plead a violation of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing in her complaint is rejected; and 5) plaintiff’s remaining claims are rejected as meritless....

When MGM Resorts hired law firm Weil, Gotshal & Magnes, investors at Caesars Entertainment were ready to gamble. Caesars had rejected a merger offer from Golden Nugget Casinos last year, and then announced its chief executive officer was stepping down this February. Now the lawyers are in the house. It means that either the casinos are in trouble, or they are going to double down on a new deal. Investors are betting on a merger....

Microsoft recently announced that it will seek to purchase GitHub, the open source code repository, a popular tool that developers use. The move has caused a bit of a stir as many of Microsoft’s own competitors use the code repository, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and more, not to mention millions of developers do too. Reportedly, the deal will cost Microsoft $7.5 billion. For its investment, Microsoft doesn’t plan on changing GitHub’s philosophy, but does seem poised to promote their cloud product Azure to the massive GitHub community of 26 million developers....

“The law is now settled that Bivens suits are never permitted for constitutional violations arising from military service, no matter how severe the injury or how egregious the rights infringement.” That statement, from Erwin Chemerinsky’s Federal Jurisdiction treatise sums up the opinion quite well. Twenty-eight current and former members of the armed forces attempted to sue two former Secretaries of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, for their “acts and omissions” that enabled a “military culture of tolerance for sexual crimes perpetrated against them....

The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on Tuesday which rejected an “I-violated-regulations-but-not-statutes” defense, and clarified that ignorance of the law really isn’t an excuse when a defendant clearly knew better. And the court quoted Moby Dick throughout the opinion. What whale of a crime could produce these judicial gems? Trafficking in sperm whale teeth and narwhal tusks, in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES)....

But everybody knew this day was coming, at least since everybody got a smartphone. Sears CEO Eddie Lampert, maybe not so much. Retail Apocalypse The billionaire investor is trying to keep the department store chain alive, even as Sears Holding Corp filed for Chapter 11 with a plan to close 142 of its 700 stores by the end of the year. He has pledged $500 million to $600 million to finance the company during the bankruptcy proceedings....

Will the justices of the Supreme Court need to get ready for their close-up? Cameras may soon be allowed in the nation’s highest court, if a bill gains approval. Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-7 in favor of a bill that would televise Supreme Court proceedings. The bill has now been sent to the full Senate for approval. It has been a contentious issue from the start. Some justices are strongly against the presence of cameras in the courtroom....

When Joshua Browder kept getting hit with parking tickets in London, he decided to stop paying the fines and start beating the tickets. He soon became an expert at fighting traffic tickets and has since helped people overturn 160,000 tickets, thanks to a chatbot he programed. You can chat with Browder’s bot online, for free, and it will guide you through contesting your ticket, just like you were talking to a human being....

The case of Stanley Penley v. McDowell County Board of Education may not be that remarkable when it comes to fact patterns. A teacher made an insensitive comment in one of his classes directed at a student. The student’s parent complained. The teacher was investigated. The investigation resulted in the teacher’s termination. The teacher lost on summary judgment, and now he lost his appeal. And, sadly for that teacher, the appellate decision isn’t even remarkable for the legal principles one could learn from it....

Not so long ago, cybersecurity was not even a word in the dictionary. Type the word into a Google search now and you will see more than 25 million results in less than a second. Punctuated by the occasional 1.5 billion email hacks at Yahoo or other internet service provider, cybersecurity is probably the main concern in information technology today. It is the word in IT. For attorneys, whose profession is built on tenets such as attorney-client confidentiality, cybersecurity is more important than ever....