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In a case brought by dismissed employees of a government agency in Puerto Rico claiming political discrimination, district court’s order of reinstatement against defendant-intervenor is affirmed where: 1) it was proper for the district court to revisit the earlier order where, under the law of the case doctrine, courts may reopen a matter previously decided on a showing of exceptional circumstances such as the serious injustice to the plaintiffs in this case; 2) the reinstatement order was proper as defendants could be substituted for the original party under Rule 25(c) and they are not protected by sovereign immunity....

The Fourth Circuit’s Court of Appeals drew a line in the sand for the Fourth Amendment unreasonable search by declaring that a “good-faith” motivation to protect a witness does not pass the good faith search warrant exceptions under the Exclusionary Rule Doctrine. Let this be the case that stands for the rule of thumb: “white lies” can taint searches. The Officer’s Lie In May of 2012, Marquita Wills contacted the Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Network Team because she suspected the defendant, Kenneth Rush, of dealing drugs out of her apartment....

It all started with a simple, yet common problem. A 237 page document from WestLaw (a Thomson Reuters company) would not open in any mobile office suites. Lawyers often have to read through long documents, whether it be caselaw, documents pertaining to ongoing litigation, lengthy contracts, or treatises. Being able to read those documents on one’s tablet, therefore, is pretty much a dealbreaker. Beyond reading big files, simple edits are a breeze....

The Eleventh Circuit issued a reminder this week that a plaintiff must actually win a judgment from the court in order to win attorney’s fees. The court ruled on Thursday that an employer who denies liability for nonpayment for overtime work is not required to pay the employee’s attorney’s fees and costs if he tenders the full amount claimed by the employee and subsequently wins a motion to dismiss the employee’s complaint on mootness grounds....

Jeff Foxworthy may know nothing about paralegal pay, but he knows more than a fifth grader. He also knows signs that you might be a redneck. So what does that have to do with paying paralegals? Only this: there are signs when you are being cheap and you should know better than that. So with apologies to Foxworthy, here are signs you are not paying your paralegals enough: 1. Your Boss Flies to Work Actually, you can credit Tim Sackett (no, not Bob Saget) for these ideas....

Legal departments look to un-divide divisions of labor with outside firms. Economic indicators may be looking up these days, but that doesn’t make the idea of corporate counsel convergence any more appetizing to law firms. Convergence is the consolidation of the number of outside firms an in-house legal department utilizes. Instead of approaching various different firms specializing in different practice areas to meet a company’s multi-faceted legal needs, the economic slowdown has led to the corporate legal department trend of retaining a few firms to handle it all....

If politics and religion have anything to do with President Trump’s travel ban, then his lawyers were facing a hostile crowd at the en banc panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nine of the 12 justices hearing the case are Democrats. Two Republican appointees recused themselves. That left only three from the president’s party in the courtroom, not including his lawyers. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall did not get far in the argument before U....

A recent sua sponte striking of a motion is making headlines over the rationale provided from the bench: excessive footnoting. Although footnotes aren’t really a good persuasive writing technique (why are you trying to distract your readers?), pleadings all too often contain them, and courts, not trying to be the arbiters of style, allow them. But now you maybe asking: What exactly constitutes excessive footnoting? The motion to dismiss the Federal District Court for Washington, D....

A lawyerly disengagement letter is a bit like a ‘Dear John’ letter. Attorneys write them at the end of legal engagements, ideally with kindly advice and well wishes. When the relationship ends badly, however, the disengagement letter becomes more of a “CYA letter.” Here are some keys to making sure your disengagement letters protect your client’s interests and your interests, too. Deadlines The first thing to write, after “Dear Client,” should be to inform the client of any important deadlines....

Facebook had some good news and some bad news about WhatsApp, but the bad news was disgusting. WhatsApp, a messaging app that works on Facebook, is being used to spread child pornography. According to reports, the app includes links to users trading images of children being sexually exploited. Before the report, there was some good news for the Facebook app. But really? Now? Child Exploitation Third-party researchers said the disturbing content is “slipping by WhatsApp’s automated systems....

If you heard a big sucking sound out of Alabama, it was not just Roy Moore’s loss in his bid for the U.S. Senate. As President Trump was backing away from his controversial pick, the White House announced it would “not be moving forward” with Trump’s nomination of an Alabama lawyer for a federal judgeship. It had not looked good for attorney Brett J. Talley for a while. The American Bar Association had called him “unanimously” unqualified....

It looks like we’re on the threshold … of Threshold. The next version of Microsoft Windows, code-named Threshold, is set for a “technology preview” in late September or early October, reports ZDnet. That’s fancy geek speak for a beta or pre-release testing version, and like Apple did last month, Microsoft will make the beta public. That’s right. You. Me. Anyone who hates Windows 8. We can all test Windows 9 – though putting testing software on your primary PC is not the brightest idea....

This is one of those knock-down, drag-out, war-of-attrition fights. Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana have all recently passed restrictive laws on abortions. Abortion providers pushed back, arguing against the laws before conservative Southern courts. And it’s not just one issue; there are facial and as-applied challenges to every variation on an abortion restriction one can imagine: admitting privileges, surgical clinic standards, 20-week bans, limits on non-surgical abortions, and more. The results, somewhat surprisingly, have been mixed....

Evaluating the performance of an in-house legal department can be difficult. There’s no billable hour game to be won. Showing how much litigation exposure has been reduced is a difficult art. Hence, many companies adopt sometimes frustrating performance metrics that look at legal department spending, staff workload, and cycle time to evaluate in-house lawyers. But one insightful metric that is often overlooked is outside counsel. Evaluating outside counsel not only helps you justify performance and cost, but can identify the most valuable outside counsel to work with in the future....

“Bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money,” Florida state court judge Teresa Mary Pooler said in a recent money-laundering decision. The conclusion should be clear to anyone, her court said, with even “limited knowledge in the area.” The decision is an interesting one that will probably end up only having limited geographical import legally. Still, it does deal a blow to the PR campaign that Bitcoin has been trying to mount ever since the crypto-currency got associated with Silk Road’s illicit criminal activity....

A reasonable person might think, “If I intentionally set my trucks on fire, my insurance policy won’t cover it. Because, yeah. Arson.” That reasonable person might be wrong. In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that State Farm was required to pay Wells Fargo for two torched trucks because the insurance policy’s conversion exclusion did not unambiguously bar coverage. It probably helped that Wells Fargo didn’t set the fires....

Lawyers threw a political football into a federal appeals court, arguing whether Maine’s governor wrongfully tried to keep his Democratic opponent from getting a job. Gov. Paul LePage allegedly blackmailed a charter school, threatening to withhold funding if it gave a job to former House Speaker Mark Eves. A trial judge dismissed the case, but an appeal put the controversy back in the news. At oral arguments before the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges seemed to show little interest in a political game....

You work late nights for your clients, take their calls on the weekend, lose your hair over their divorces and labor disputes and contract negotiations. You fight hard, obtain favorable outcomes, and even reduce their bills every once in a while. Certainly, you have a client-centered practice, right? Maybe not. Here’s why. Creating a client-centered practice requires more than just being good at lawyering. You have to be good at working with clients as well, and the two are not one and the same....

Approval of the CVS-Aetna merger should have been good news for the companies; then CVS abruptly lost $6 billion in market capital. Investors were apparently concerned about potential earnings and efficiency in the merged companies, but there was a bigger problem. The stock market itself crashed, falling to its lowest start for an October in ten years. They say timing is everything, and these are rough times for the CVS-Aetna merger....

District court’s denial of a petition for habeas relief of a defendant convicted of first degree murder is affirmed where: 1) defendant’s jury instruction claim was procedurally defaulted; and 2) defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel rejected as futile. Read Glacken v. Dickhaut, No. 09-1491 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Decided November 3, 2009 Judges Before: Lipez, Stahl, and Howard, Circuit Judges...