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Thomson Reuters has acquired Serengeti Law, the most widely used and highest-rated matter management system for corporate legal departments. Serengeti specializes in management tools and electronic billing for corporate attorneys. Serengeti is currently used at over 21,000 law firms. The business will be aligned with Corporate, Government & Academic bsuiness unit within Thomson Reuters Legal. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. “Corporate legal departments around the world are rapidly adopting software and services that solve legal workflow needs more simply and more efficiently,” said Mike Suchsland, president....

On the streets of Bangalore, in the dance halls of Rio, and among the windmills of the Low Countries, they are celebrating. Why? Because it’s World Backup Day, a global holiday nonpareil. What? This is the first you’ve heard about World Backup Day? Don’t worry, celebrating is easy. You’ve just got to take some time to backup your files. Here’s how to do it. What would happen if your computer system went down right now and couldn’t be recovered?...

You can find as many reasons as you want to leave your law firm: the boss is a jerk; advancement is unlikely; the hours are killing you, etc. But you better think it through because in the law business, it is easy to go from the frying pan into the fire. That’s because there are a lot of lousy bosses, under-valued workers and killer hours out there. Here are the top five reasons to bolt the law firm, no matter what:...

Are you a lawyer that knows the difference between a motherboard and a mother goose? Can you write a page of simple HTML while chewing gum at the same time? Can you effortlessly pilot a drone through flaming hoops of fire? If so, you might be one of those “tech-savvy” lawyers. And if you are, you might be wondering if there are any niche practice areas to which you might be particularly well suited....

It’s official! Well, Judge Robin Rosenbaum’s Eleventh Circuit nomination is, at least. If past nominations are any indication, confirmation is no sure thing. That being said, Rosenbaum certainly seems like a savvy nomination by President Barack Obama. And in unsurprising news, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in an unpublished case that we covered earlier, which means unpaid interns will have to wait a little longer for their day in front of the nation’s high court....

District court’s imposition of a 96 months’ imprisonment on a defendant convicted of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base is vacated and remanded for resentencing as, the district court misapprehended the scope of its discretion at the resentencing as a sentencing court may use any reasonable method in calculating a downward departure during resentencing and is not limited by any specific method previously used....

In a slightly less ludicrous move than returning illegal drugs which aren’t strong enough, the Fifth Circuit denied a federal convict who complained that the government shouldn’t consider his weak cocaine by weight for sentencing purposes since it is so impure. David Villarreal argued before Court that it was unreasonable for the district court to use the 5.9 kilograms of 3.2% pure cocaine found in his car because it was “substantially diluted,” even though it substantially enhanced his sentence....

A recent article in The Atlantic asks the question, “do lawyers need offices anymore?” No. No they do not. The article features several firms that have made a successful go of it as virtual practice, forgoing the wood paneling and real-estate fees for practices operated largely over the Internet. We at FindLaw, of course, have long been proponents of the virtual office. You don’t need to be a tech genius or a cutting-edge innovator to give up on commercial leases....

Today, after input from Reddit and the Internet-at-large, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, along with Sen. Ron Wyden, will finally introduce Aaron’s Law to Congress, reports Wired. The law, if passed, would clarify the scope of CFAA crimes to exclude violations of terms of service and instead would require a breach of security, either virtual (such as passwords or encryption cracking) or physical. It would also reduce potential penalties by removing redundant provisions....

Coventry First, LLC v. McCarty, No. 09-11682, concerned an action to enjoin the enforcement of a records request to plaintiff by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. The court of appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, on the grounds that 1) plaintiff had no plausible right to relief under either the Florida Viatical Settlement Act or the dormant Commerce Clause; 2) under Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the district court had the discretion to deny plaintiff’s motion to amend as futile, given that Coventry could have filed an amended complaint as a matter of course....

Travelers Lloyds Ins. Co. v. Pacific Employers Ins. Co., No. 07-20157, involved an action by an insurer seeking a declaration that defendant-insurer was required to defend and indemnify a shopping mall against claims in an underlying personal injury action. The Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment for plaintiff, holding that 1) the district court properly concluded that the contractual provision requiring defendant-store to include the mall as an additional insured under the policy procured from defendant was enforceable, but 2) the mall had coverage under both plaintiff’s and defendant’s insurance policies, and because the “other insurance” provisions conflicted, each insurer needed to share in the costs of underlying litigation against the mall....

Can being a Luddite expose a lawyer to discipline? Maybe, said ABA members at a program during the group’s annual meeting in Boston, pointing to a recent revision to the ABA’s Model Rules as the culprit. Andrew Perlman, the Ethics 20/20 Commission’s reporter (and a professor at Suffolk University Law School) emphasized reasonableness as the standard: “You don’t have to be paranoid. No one is expecting you to be perfect.” But what is reasonable when it comes to lawyers understanding technology?...

In a class action for failing to pay hourly employees for all time worked, an order denying class certification is affirmed where the employees’ punch clock records did not provide common proof of any uncompensated work during gap periods, particularly in light of employee testimony regarding the various non-work-related activities that took place during the gap periods and the various personal reasons that employees listed for coming in early and staying late....

Sometimes a client’s story will be so interesting you’ll think to yourself that it would make a great book or movie. However, before you go penning your client’s story, you might want to consult a lawyer. Good thing you know one. While your own life story might be now intertwined with your more interesting client’s life story, before you publish anything, you better get permission from your client(s) and consult your state bar’s ethics rules....

Associated Gas & Oil Company, Limited bought two self-elevating liftboats – Nicole and Kaitlyn – from Offshore Marine Inc. (OMI) pursuant to an asset purchase agreement. Under the agreement, OMI agreed to install additional living quarters and accessories on the two vessels. OMI used its sister corporation, Tram Shipyards, Inc. to purchase the materials and complete the additional work. In the course of installing the additional living quarters on the Nicole, Tram cut, extended, and re-welded the crane boom cradle stanchion of the hydraulic pedestal crane....

Stewart Enters., Inc. v. RSUI Indemn. Co., No. 09-30722, concerned an action by an owner of cemeteries, funeral homes and other commercial properties throughout New Orleans against its excess insurer to recover for wind and flood damage sustained during a storm. The court reversed partial summary judgment for defendant, on the grounds that 1) under Louisiana law, ambiguities in the policy are to be interpreted in favor of the insured and thus the policy provided flood coverage; and 2) the policies’ anti-concurrent causation clause did not operate within the $25 million dollar limit....

You can add UK telecom group BT to the list of corporations suing Google. The company, which owns about 5,600 patents, has filed a federal lawsuit against the search behemoth for allegedly infringing on six of its patents. The BT lawsuit accuses Google of stealing the technology at the center of its Android system, search engine, Google+ social network, eBooks, Docs, Maps and Gmail. The suit implicates almost every Google product out there....

MySpace came, then went. So did Friendster. Tumblr was cool once, but then Yahoo bought it and it may or may not be still cool. Facebook and Twitter, for now, have staying power. But Facebook is evil, man. It’s like gathering all of your data to push ads down your throat, and it handed so many things over to the government. It’s basically big brother, bro, and nobody likes a surveillance state (or private industry – whatever)....

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has settled with Twitter with respect to charges that during the first half of 2009 a hacker used an automated password-guessing tool to gain administrative control of Twitter, enabling the sending of phony tweets. Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter is barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about its efforts to protect the security, privacy and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, and Twitter must maintain a comprehensive information security program that will be assessed by an independent auditor over the course of ten years....

Law firms big and small face a similar difficulty with legal technology–estimating its costs. At early stages of a case it often proves to be a challenge to consider the scope of discovery as a whole–especially when trying to account for the looming variable of eDiscovery costs. Mining discoverable evidence including email, web-based documents, audio files, photographs, software, and other tech-related evidence is only the beginning of eDiscovery expenditure. There is also the sorting and analyzing the data and metadata into information that can be used in preparing the case, and finally, finding ways to present the collected and sorted materials in coherent form....