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Writer’s block can hit anyone at anytime, and it can have consequences that range from annoying to downright devastating. For us lawyers, when we’re drafting a motion, we’re not trying to write the next great American novel, but strict deadlines can lead to high pressure, high stress writing situations which are naturally conducive to writer’s block. Fortunately, legal writing is professional writing. It serves a purpose, and as such, there’s no need to stress over the actual craft of writing, meaning that the anxiety can be saved for the merits of the actual argument....

DRM has reached the farm, according to an article published last month in Wired magazine. John Deere, long-time manufacturer of indispensable farm equipment, argued against a proposed exemption to copyright law made on behalf of John Deere equipment owners – excuse me, licensees. Put Down That Tractor! The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it unlawful to circumvent a copy-protection system. As originally envisioned, the DMCA anti-circumvention measure would have protected artistic property from copying....

In a lengthy, 75-page decision, judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York just ruled that the President’s blocking of Twitter users from the @realdonaldtrump account violates those users’ First Amendment rights. The decision goes into painstaking detail about not just the legal merits, but also into the technical details of how the platform works. In short, the court found that a government official’s Twitter page is in fact a public forum when used by the government official, officially for official purposes....

Everybody loves Taylor Swift songs, right? The Grammy academy just waits for her next song to nominate for an award. Even random people break records singing and dancing to her tunes, like “Shake It Off.” So why did two songwriters sue her for copyright infringement over the song? Well, as Taylor’s own lyrics suggest: haters gonna hate, hate, hate. ‘Shake it Off’ Sean Hall and Nathan Butler wrote “Playas Gon’ Play,” which was a hit in 2001; Swift’s “Shake It Off” came out 2014....

Eric Michael Gamble, a lawyer in Kansas City, Kansas, made one big mistake. While representing a biological father who wished to contest the adoption of his daughter, he sent a Facebook message to the unrepresented 18-year-old biological mother urging her to reconsider. He also attached a form that he’d prepared to revoke her consent to the adoption, the Legal Profession Blog reports. The message, which the Kansas Supreme Court called “emotional blackmail,” also contained inaccurate legal advice and inaccurate factual assertions....

We’re big fans of DropBox around here. It auto-syncs files to the cloud, which allows us, and our coworkers, to access our files from anywhere, on nearly any device. However, unless you want to pay a monthly fee, storage space is limited. There have been security breaches in the past, which would give us pause to store clients’ files on their servers long-term. Being the geeks that we are, we’re always curious when a new (free!...

While marketing is important for law firms, the line between legal marketing and improper solicitation can often be a little bit fuzzy. When a law firm wades into the fuzzy areas, it’s probably a smart move to take a step back and reassess the whole firm’s marketing strategy. In addition to a potential bar complaint, firms that employ questionable tactics to recruit clients could wind up the subject of a New York Times national news piece....

For lawmakers in the state of Idaho, the recent debacle over the so-called “ag gag” law has just gone from bad to worse. That’s because on top of being slaughtered at the Ninth Circuit, the state is now faced with the unfortunate position of having to pay the legal fees for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which challenged the state’s ag gag law as unconstitutional and won. Luckily for the state, it has the chance to stop the fees from reaching astronomical levels, as currently the amount sits at about a quarter million dollars....

A petition for review a BIA’s denial of a Belarusian citizen’s application for asylum and related relief is granted and the decision vacated and remanded as, the IJ committed substantial legal error in rejecting certain of petitioner’s corroborating evidence. Read Marynenka v. Holder, No. 07-1792 Appellate Information Argued: October 27, 2009 Decided: January 25, 2010 Judges Opinion by Chief Judge Michael Counsel For Appellant: Joshua Adam Berman, Blaine L. Gilbert & Associates, PA...

This week, President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Georgia Supreme Court Justice Britt Grant. If confirmed, Grant will fill the soon to be vacated seat by Justice Julie Carnes, who will be stepping down to senior status this June. Interestingly, Grant only recently took the bench in Georgia in 2017. From 2015 to 2017, she served as the Solicitor General for the state of Georgia. After earning her J.D. from Stanford, she served as a law clerk to Justice Kavanaugh on the U....

Moments after the seventeen-year-old girl returned to the vehicle, MacDonald made an indecent request - oral sodomy. She refused, and returned him to the Home Depot parking from whence he came. One of his convictions was for solicitation, which itself requires a predicate felony. That felony was sodomy. The statute reads: The path for MacDonald was arduous. It was also soon revealed that he had been convicted on a prior occasion for four similar acts with a sixteen and seventeen year-old....

Law libraries may be going the way of the dinosaur, but what about law librarians? A recent article in the ABA Journal raises the question of how you define a librarian or knowledge officer and whether it is time for the meaning of librarian to evolve. Traditionally a librarian is somebody who oversees a library. So, the article asks, if there is no need for a library, why would you need a law librarian?...

In an action against prison administrators under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) for forcibly shaving plaintiff’s head in violation of his religious beliefs, summary judgment for defendants is reversed in part where they failed to meet their burden to show that their policy of forcible grooming was the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest. Read Smith v. Ozmint, No. 07-6558 Appellate Information Argued: May 14, 2009...

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Once upon a time, we received news in traditional formats from finite media sources by way of newspapers, television, and radio. And the news we received from those sources did not vary tremendously one from another. The news just seemed to be the news. As Walter Cronkite closed on his CBS nightly newscast, “And that’s the way it is” – in essence meaning, “Those are the facts....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. With Christmas coming, many of us are thinking about smartphones and tablet computers as gifts for our loved ones and even ourselves. But we do not tend to think about the airwaves needed for those devices to receive signals and download data. Not to worry, though: Your technology companies are making the case to Congress that additional airwaves need to be opened up....

Two Texas same-sex couples may potentially make history by challenging the state’s ban on gay marriage in federal court on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Orlando L. Garcia of Texas’ Western District will hear oral arguments from both state officials and the lawyers representing the plaintiffs over granting a preliminary injunction to block Texas’ enforcement of its gay marriage ban. What can we expect from this federal challenge to Texas’ same-sex marriage ban?...

Remember all those Internet privacy class action lawsuits that once made headlines? You don’t hear much about them these days. The privacy class action first took off 15 years ago, booming in the late aughts. Many were often filed in the Northern District of California, home to Silicon Valley and tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google. But a review by The Recorder shows that privacy litigation in N.D. Cal....

White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler plans to leave by the end of the year to return to private practice in New York. Ruemmler served in the administration from day one of Obama’s presidency – first as principal associate deputy attorney general, the third-ranking official at the Justice Department, and later in the White House, as deputy counsel and later counsel, reports The Associated Press. With the coveted spot up for grabs, who are the fortunate few contenders?...

If you were one of the lucky few who earned a passing score on this last July 2015 bar exam, you might be “the law guy” to your family and friends. Just be careful about using that term in or around New York … The origins of “law guy” are both fascinating and a nice break from typical monotony of appellate work. It’s almost like our profession’s version of the cryptid....

We’ve talked before about the ongoing “Engle-progeny” cases in Florida: The state supreme court decertified the Engle class but gave res judicata effect to a jury’s determinations on causation, negligence, breach of warranty, concealment, and conspiracy findings. The individual members of the class would then have to file their own claims to determine “individual issues such as legal causation, comparative fault, and damages.” The Eleventh Circuit upheld this “novel” approach last year....