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They weren’t paid by the clubs. Instead, they relied upon tips from customers. They rented stage time, lockers, and facilities from the Orleans Club in Topeka, Kansas. The rental rates varied during peak hours and use of the VIP and Champagne rooms required an extra fee. They even paid fees for the DJs and bouncers, according to the Kansas City Star. Ladies, sometimes it ain’t easy being independent. Yet, somehow, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the nude dancers at the Orleans Club were not independent contractors....

District court judgment denying petition for habeas corpus is affirmed where: 1) a state court’s conclusion that the nondisclosure of a nonprosecution agreement with a key witness could not have influenced the jury was not contrary to or involve an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law; and 2) its conclusion that defendant failed to establish that the Commonwealth had a duty to investigate or disclose additional details about an informant was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent....

10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, S-1. Nope, not some new fad of alpha-numeric soup. They are SEC forms typically involved in securities filings. And if you are iffy on these forms or on recent developments in disclosure obligations and new SEC rules, then it may be just the time to seek a little CLE support in these areas. And if you or other members of your legal department find yourself ready to sign up for a tutorial on SEC filings, you are in luck....

New Jersey Social Networking Bill (A 3757). It requires social networking websites to promptly review user allegations of harassment and abusive language, and to provide a report of the result of any review “upon request” from the user.California Social Networking Bill (AB 632). This bill was recently amended to require social networking websites to disclose to its users that uploaded photos can be copied without consent by persons who view the image....

Robocalls restrictions are constitutional because, seriously, who likes robocalls? Okay, that isn’t exactly the court’s holding, but it is pretty close. This open-and-shut case was originally disposed of with a per curiam unpublished opinion, which is probably where it belongs. But when the intervenor-United States asks to publish, you publish. As for the case itself, a couple of political consultants, working for 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate (and former governor) Robert L....

In American Int’l. Specialty Lines Ins. Co. v. Rentech Steel LLC, No. 08-11052, an action by an insurer seeking a declaration that plaintiff had no duty to either defend defendant in an underlying state-court personal injury lawsuit or to indemnify defendant for the judgment, the court affirmed summary judgment for defendant where the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act imposed no obligation on a nonsubscriber to compensate an employee for injuries sustained due to the employer’s own negligence, and thus the exclusion was not applicable....

When Jarrod Magan writes about the future of worker’s compensation, he sounds more like a science-fiction writer: Software robots will respond to claimant’s calls. Virtual assistants will process paperwork. Doctors, advocates, and patients will meet using personal avatars. It’s not like Magan is inventing the future; it’s more like he’s already been there. He says that current technologies are evolving and completely changing the administration of worker’s compensation. “Once thought to be cold and impersonal, technology is re-defining our expectations and how we view a quality customer experience,” he says....

District court’s grant of defendant’s motion to suppress majority of the evidence on grounds of Fourth Amendment violation is reversed as the officer’s original request for defendant’s identification and the first few follow-up questions did not unreasonably extend the duration of the stop and were justified based on officer safety concerns. Read US v. Chaney, No. 08-2089 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire...

A few years ago, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the City of Redondo Beach in a dispute over a city ordinance prohibiting standing in the street to solicit anything in exchange for money. The ordinance was really directed toward day laborers; Redondo Beach wanted a way to stop them from soliciting work on certain streets and tried to use a safety ordinance to do it. Now, from the Fourth Circuit, comes a similar statute prohibiting “standing” in a county roadway to solicit funds or sell merchandise....

If you are unhappy practicing the law, join the club. Statistics say that lawyers in general are a depressed group of people. Suicide rates, substance abuse, and job pressure tell half the story; the other half are just unhappy people. It’s enough to make you give up law practice, but this blog post is not about career change. If you can’t be happy practicing law, try changing your perspective instead....

Being a lawyer is not what it used to be. A generation ago, lawyers typically researched the law in a library and met clients in private offices. They drafted contracts or went to court. But all of that has changed. Today, algorithms research the law and smart programs draft contracts. Attorneys meet clients in shared suites, virtual offices, coffee houses, and even over the internet. They still go to court, if that includes telephonic appearances....

A London law firm is in hot water after an Indeed.com job ad that was purportedly posted by the firm offered a junior associate salary of just $12,885.00 per year. The salary is more than a few dollars below the minimum wage. This translates to roughly $7 per hour, assuming a 40 hour work week (which we all know, only working 40 hours a week for a junior associate is the pipe-iest of pipe dreams)....

Last month, we brought you news out of Delaware, the first state to pass into law the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA), which allows estate administrators access to testators’ email, social media accounts, and the like. The problem this law resolved was social media companies’ refusal to grant anyone access to a dead person’s accounts unless they got served with a court order. Last week, Yahoo came out on its Global Public Policy Tumblr against the law....

Ricardo Lenin Osorio-Moreno is not a nice person. Troubling childhood aside, his criminal history began at the age of 15 with crimes of grand theft, burglary, armed robbery, and possession; he was a fast learner in the art of being a career criminal. In fact, his rap sheet is so long, it’s one of those things you have to see to believe. The Eleventh Circuit Court opinion is approximately 11 pages long: Osorio’s detailed convictions take at least half of the opinion text....

Since things are looking up for Obama’s court nominees, his focus has turned to fill three vacancies in the Fifth Circuit. A trio of Texans is being vetted for the empty seats, comprised of U.S. District Court Judges Xavier Rodriguez, Marina Garcia Marmolejo, and Gregg Costa, reports Texas Lawyer. Let’s take a gander at these three potential nominees. Currently sitting on the U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of Texas, Rodriguez was nominated to the federal bench by President George W....

I must admit: I initially didn’t understand the tablet craze. When Apple announced the iPad, I was like, “Uh, it’s like a half-functional computer. And I have a smartphone. Why?” Eventually, I got an iPad 2 as a gift and it was like crack during bar review – I never put the damn thing down. And then the novelty wore off, I sold it, and then got a smaller Android tablet, one which quickly began to collect dust....

There are a lot of things you have to worry about as an attorney at a small firm that go beyond the practice of law. If you have employees not only are you the attorney but also the manager and director of human resources as well. Why would you want to add payroll to that? Luckily there are companies that will take care of that part for you and while it’s not always necessary to outsource, this is one area where it might be a good choice....

As an attorney, your friends and acquaintances may approach you with their legal problems. While friends may be a great source of business, there are also some special considerations that an attorney should be aware of when representing a friend. For example, you might have to think about how representation will affect your friendship. You may also have to think about confidentiality matters for information shared between you and your friend....

A federal appeals court upheld a controversial voter ID law in Texas, concluding that the state legislature remedied discriminatory elements that were at issue in a previous version of the law. The prior law – SB14 – had required residents to present government identification when they voted, resulting in a judicial ruling that the law discriminated against certain minorities. Then the legislature incorporated changes proposed by the federal court into SB5....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) generally affords immunity for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with respect to content posted by users on their websites. There have been various efforts by plaintiffs in lawsuits to chip away at this immunity, most of which have failed. Now along comes Doe v. Internet Brands, in which the plaintiff sought to convince the Ninth Circuit to circumvent CDA Section 230 immunity under a “duty to warn” theory....