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A graphical representation of each firm’s relative position in today’s market, Gartner’s report places each company in one of four categories: leaders, challengers, visionaries and niche players. If you or your firm is in the process of purchasing and evaluating new software, the e-Discovery Magic Quadrant might be for you. Gartner’s e-Discovery Magic Quadrant evaluates each vendor on its software’s ability to execute desired tasks and the company’s completeness of vision....

American businesses are undergoing a major consolidation period as mergers and acquisitions continue to fuel business growth. 2015 was the biggest year ever for mergers and acquisitions, with $4.7 trillion in mergers and acquisitions, according to Thomson Reuters. And the trend doesn’t show signs of reversing anytime soon. Mergers and acquisitions put in-house attorneys in a unique position. They’re deal makers, negotiators, and compliance experts – yet they might also need to polish up their resumes, should legal departments be consolidated....

Once upon a time, there was an Internet powerhouse known as Lycos. The search engine-turned portal competed with Yahoo in the pre-Google days. The site, with its familiar black dog logo, remains online, but it is now, for all practical purposes, an online ghost town. And patent relics salvaged from that ghost town, sold to a patent assertion entity, just came back to haunt the company that pretty much wiped Lycos off the map....

The British are not necessarily coming, but they may be closer than you think. According to reports, British spy agencies are collecting social media information on potentially millions of people. That likely includes people with Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s not clear if the information only pertains to subjects of the United Kingdom, but we all know James Bond has no boundaries. Privacy International Privacy International, a global privacy organization, broke the case open last year when it obtained “a cache of 46 documents” from UK security agencies, TechCrunch reported at the time....

First Circuit Judge Ojetta Thompson pulled no punches in rejecting an appeal from a criminal defendant who plead guilty to leading a conspiracy to import cocaine into Puerto Rico. Miguelito Arroyo-Blas had appealed his sentence, which he argued was based on improper categorization of his criminal history. Those objections don’t matter, Thompson held – and she wasn’t nice about it. Arroyo-Blas waived his right to appeal in the plea agreement and couldn’t simply ignore that now....

According to Canada’s Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and Counsel Network, female in-house lawyers are earning about 15 percent less than their average randomly selected male colleagues. The results of the survey were reported by Canadian Lawyer magazine. But the numbers can hardly qualify as news. The fifteen percent number was apparently evident about four years ago. According to the breakdown of the numbers, women consistently earned less (we should not be surprised by now) than their male counterparts: criminal law, non-profits, and corporate....

Wow. Just wow. Yes folks, as my fellow writer Gabriella noted yesterday, I am the bad law advertisement guy. If someone creates a nonsensical, racist, or otherwise terrible ad, I will be there to mock them. Or to congratulate them, if their “XOXO, [Shameless Attorney]” letters get them on Piers Morgan. Or perhaps give you tips on how to market your firm while avoiding these pitfalls. But nothing, not a single law advertisement, could have prepared me for the majesty of Jamie Casino’s Super Bowl Halftime commercial, which was shown in Georgia, then went viral on the Internet....

Nine states have thrown their support behind the AT&T/Time Warner deal, which a federal judge approved in June. It was supposed to be a done deal when Judge Richard Leon ruled that AT&T could proceed in its acquisition of Time Warner. The judge even warned the federal government, which tried to block it, to back off. But the Justice Department appealed, and now the attorneys generals are weighing in. They didn’t start the fight, but they want to finish it....

Lawyers often assume that clients know how things work, and when clients say, “You bet I understand!,” the lawyer takes the client as his word. But the client doesn’t always understand why, for example, you haven’t called in three days to update him on his case. A lot of client frustration comes from not understanding what’s going on or why something is the way it is, which can lead to unnecessary state bar complaints....

Depending on where you’d like your legal career to go, writing for the public or professional audience can really help quite a bit. And depending on the exact audience you’re writing to, you may even consider not publishing your content on your firm website, but rather through a site like Medium, or even LinkedIn. If you’re scratching your head as to why you’d not post your own (and undoubtedly amazing) content on your own website, below are a few reasons to consider....

Chad Ochocinco Johnson, the man with many names and a pending probation violation, just went from a three-month extension of his probation to thirty-day jail sentence, with one swift, and overly-friendly, move, reports the Kansas City Star. Yep. He (arguably) didn’t assault anyone. He didn’t get caught with drugs. He didn’t do any of the myriad of things that one could do to violate their probation. In fact, what he did to irritate the judge may be a first....

One vote can change an election, but three can put one in disarray. At least, that’s how it looks in North Carolina. With little more than two months before November elections, a federal appeals court said congressional voting districts there must be redrawn. In Common Cause v. Rucho, the appellate judges said the state’s congressional map is an unconstitutional gerrymander. It’s bigger than the Tar Heel State, however, because the results could change the balance of power in Congress....

Much like the stupid local Pizza Hut TV commercial I mentioned earlier this week, there was always a second commercial that played during afternoon cartoons that I could recite by memory: Rubins, Kase, Rubins, Cambiano, & Bryant, “Because There’s Strength in Our Numbers.” So cheesy – yet so memorable, especially when it plays on television 87 times per day. But they’ve got nothing on the Internet champ: the legend Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. You probably know already that Facebook is a huge social networking phenomenon here in the United States, not only for teenagers, but also for adults. However, you might not know that the Facebook rage is sweeping the globe. And Facebook now is the fourth most visited site by Australians, only trailing Google, Ninemsn and Microsoft....

Can attorneys advise their clients to remove, before litigation commences, social media pages and accounts which may contain potential evidence in a dispute? The Florida Bar’s Ethics Committee took up this and similar questions in a recent proposed advisory opinion. The state bar, like others, advises that lawyers must not advise clients to obstruct access to evidence the lawyer reasonably should know is relevant to pending or foreseeable proceedings. Of course, like many ethical questions, there’s a fair amount of wiggle room in the answer....

Action Alleging Wrongful Demotion of Professor In Gentilello v. Rege, No. 09-11216, an action by a tenured professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center against his supervisors under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, alleging that he was wrongfully demoted without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the court affirmed judgment on the pleadings for defendants where the due process clause does not protect plaintiff’s specific job duties or responsibilities absent a statute, rule, or express agreement reflecting an understanding that he had a unique property interest in those duties or responsibilities....

Some lawyers do wrong and act as if they’ve done no wrong. And it’s annoying to see manifestations of “fake-it-till-you-make-it” or “opposite world” where bad is good and good is bad. But it’s really annoying when you try to do the right thing and it ends up hurting you. So here are some ways to correct your mistakes without making more. There is no moral to this story, just redemption....

Okay, so Instagram’s proposed changes to the app’s terms of service weren’t well-received. We can all agree that the photo-sharing service could have done a better job explaining what the new terms meant, and that it was not trying to sell users’ photos to advertisers. If you don’t like the new terms — and a lot of people don’t — you can argue that Instagram never should have made the changes in the first place....

Trial judges and appeals courts have disagreements all the time. Of course, the appellate court almost always wins. On occasion, a trial court will be vindicated by a superseding opinion from a court of last resort. Once in a Texas moon, however, trial judges and appellate judges will feud till the cows come home. That’s what’s happening in a federal circuit right now in Whole Woman’s Health v. Smith. This time, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals started it....

It all started with an inappropriate tweet by Kansas University Professor David Guth. Understandably upset over the shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, Guth tweeted: Yeah. A bit of a nightmare, PR-wise, for the board. The professor’s tweet appeared to wish death upon the children of NRA members. Guth clarified that he had no such wish, but he was put on leave anyway (and has since returned)....