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If you were worried the cops were following you, don’t look over your shoulder. Look up. The Los Angeles Police Department has approved a new program for drones. It’s not the only police agency to use the flying copters, but it will be the largest. If there is a silver-lining for potential law-breakers, at least the drones won’t be weaponized. No More Drones! The American Civil Liberties Union urged people to protest the drone program....

Think that data stored in overseas data centers are outside the reach of U.S. law? Think again. A U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan has affirmed a magistrate’s ruling ordering Microsoft to give overseas-stored data to federal prosecutors. Microsoft’s argument, wrote Judge James C. Francis, the magistrate whose ruling was affirmed, “is simple, perhaps deceptively so.” Because the jurisdiction of federal courts extends only to the geographical United States, Microsoft reasoned that it should not be required to deliver emails stored abroad to a federal prosecutor as part of a criminal subpoena....

Do you want to easily look up cases on PACER using your smartphone? The iPhone PACER app FedCtRecords is free for a limited time during the holidays. The app usually sells for $19.99. The application was developed by Newton Oldfather, a recent graduate of UCLA Law. He coded the app with the assistance of his father and a friend. The app helps remove some of the frustrations of working with PACER, including dealing with its clunky interface....

Rarely do you read a court opinion that explicitly says that the court is reaching the wrong decision. But that is in fact what happened in the Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in the Frudden v. Pilling First Amendment school uniform case which has ping-ponged through the courts since 2011. In the section aptly titled “Our Disagreement with the Result We Are Required to Reach” the court, not surprisingly, goes into detail as to why it disagrees with the very decision it is bound to render by its own precedent....

It’s already started. The 2016 presidential election is more than a year and a half away, but we’re already being asked if we’re ready for Hillary or willing to pass the hat for Ted Cruz. The election season is upon us and it’s not going away anytime soon. For many people, politicking isn’t an after-hours only hobby, but something that pervades their whole life. So what’s a GC to do when campaigning leaks into the office?...

The Fifth Circuit will expedite a case to decide whether overtime wages will potentially double for millions of Americans. In a one-page order, the circuit court said it will fast-track the appeal of a preliminary injunction blocking overtime rules that would have taken effect on Dec. 1, 2016. A district court judge had enjoined the U.S. Department of Labor from implementing its new overtime rules, which could have raised the minimum salary level from $455 per week to $913 per week for white-collar workers....

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari in Arizona v. U.S., the immigration law case challenging Arizona S.B. 1070. That means that by the end of 2012, we’ll know whether federal immigration laws preclude Arizona’s attempt at cooperative law enforcement and facially preempt four provisions of S.B. 1070. What will this case mean for the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering actions to enjoin two of the six controversial state immigration laws currently in place?...

Tom DeLay may avoid prison for money laundering after all, especially after a ruling late last week by a Texas appellate court to overturn his conviction. According to The Washington Post, the disgraced former U.S. House Majority Leader was “on [his] knees praying” at the National Prayer Center in D.C. when he received the news. The saga of DeLay’s criminal charges has lasted almost a decade since his indictment. Will this be its final chapter?...

False Claims Act Action In US ex rel. Steury v. Cardinal Health, Inc., No. 09-20718, an action claiming that defendants sold the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs defective medical equipment in violation of the False Claims Act, the court affirmed the dismissal of the action where the factual allegations in the amended complaint provided no basis for implying a false certification. However, the court reversed final judgment for defendant where the district court granted leave to amend but nonetheless entered a final judgment before the time to amend expired....

Defendant’s conviction for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin resulting in serious bodily injury is affirmed over a claim that certain evidence was improperly admitted where: 1) defendant’s prior conviction was relevant to show intent because both the extrinsic offense and the charged offense involved an intent to distribute; and 2) a prior arrest for heroin possession was relevant to show that defendant had the requisite intent for the crime charged....

New numbers paint a bleak picture of life at the bar for female attorneys in Utah. If there is one thing attorneys of any gender listen to, it is evidence, and the statistics from a survey by the Women Lawyers of Utah say the evidence points to a “startling amount” of sexual harassment and sex discrimination in Utah law firms. The ABA Journal breaks down the executive summary from The Utah Report: The Initiative on the Advancement and Retention of Women in Law Firms....

Sure, legal writing isn’t poetry. Those rare “Law as Literature” texts have some moving pieces, but so would a “Best Automotive Technical Manuals” anthology. But for all its faults, legal composition is Shakespeare compared to the formless, meaningless muck that often passes as writing in the corporate world. Thankfully, that J.D. or Esq. behind your name can help you stave off the pressure to shift paradigms, buy-in to corporate writing core competencies, and synergize your base touching....

Registered nurses employed by West Virginia’s Greenbrier Valley Medical Center and Bluefield Regional Medical Center will be allowed to unionize after suit against their employers, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. The decision will allow the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) to move forward on the nurses behalf. Last year, the National Labor Relations Board found that the two hospitals were, for various reasons, in violation of the NRLA and joined up with the NNOC to challenge the Greenbrier and Bluefield regional on behalf of the nurses....

With tech complexity shooting skyward, even pretty well educated folk like lawyers have to watch their steps carefully when it comes to security slip-ups. Any one of the scenarios we list below could completely ruin your practice and your business for a long time – yet lawyers still do them every day. Just accept that tech problems will take place. However, you can and should take steps to mitigate how often they take place....

There are many ways to mess up a closing statement in a criminal case with an improper argument, and as you might imagine, we’ve seen plenty of ’em in our coverage of appellate decisions in state and federal appeals courts. Arguments on race, sexual orientation, emotion, or improper credibility arguments all surface repeatedly, though they are easily avoided. Will they cost you a conviction? Maybe, maybe not. In each of these cases, the defendant was tasked with showing prejudice after the fact – a task that is easier said than done....

Sometimes the line between the legal court and the court of public opinion is pretty thin. Like the lawsuit by conservative talk show host, columnist, and vlogger Dennis Prager. His “Prager University” is suing YouTube for censorship even though his YouTube Channel has more than one million subscribers. Is the lawsuit legit or a media grab? A real judge will decide, but you be the judge for now. “Restricted” Videos In Prager University v....

Immigration deportation appeals aren’t easy. Here’s a case out of the First Circuit Court of Appeals that overturns the opinion of the Board of Immigration Appeals in an asylum case. The petitioner is a Cambodian citizen who has been in the U.S. for several years. Eventually, after his non-immigrant visitor visa ran out, he applied for asylum under the Convention Against Torture. In his application for asylum, he told the story of his time in Cambodia....

Maybe this is the year of the rookie. San Francisco Giant Buster Posey notwithstanding, there is a one more rookie that may be making a name for himself this year. With stats that sound akin to major league baseball, the number of attorneys who will argue a case before the Supreme Court is less than 1 in 10,000; a number which now includes Cleveland attorney David Eduard Mills. Mills, 33, isn’t technically a rookie....

Rumors about the death of the mandatory arbitration agreement at law firms are not really exaggerated. It is a slow death to be sure, but the restrictive employment agreements are dying. It started about a year ago, when social media piled on a BigLaw firm that required new hires to arbitrate discrimination claims. Now the American Bar Association is beating the drum against the mandatory arbitration agreements. The ABA wants legal employers to kill them off....

Before Wi-Fi, iPhones, and energy drinks, back in the 90s, along with the rise of compact discs and the “digital revolution,” movies and music began to get “digitally remastered.” Especially early on, digital remastering was perhaps the most frivolous use of the most modern tech available, and criticism of the practice exploded after Steven Spielberg, while remastering E.T. in 2002, replaced the guns in police officers’ hands with walkie talkies. If you’re having trouble remembering, that’s probably because in 2012, when the film was remastered again, the guns were put back into the scene....