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If you have the next big thing but not the big thing budget, a BigLaw firm has just what you’ve been waiting for: a startup package of financing documents. Cooley, exclusively through its microsite “Go,” has released a free repository of documents for investors and business owners. The documents are for companies in the United States and designed for those incorporated in Delaware. “It’s a way for entrepreneurs and early-stage investors and business owners to access what the firm considers to be best practices for early-stage investment and to streamline the process for committing capital at the seed stage,” according to TechCrunch....

Military leaders have long used games for battlefield strategy, and now a law firm is using games as a hiring strategy. O’Melveny & Myers is evaluating potential associates through games that measure effort, attention, planning, memory, and flexibility. The firm says the artificially intelligent games will help assess candidates “based on potential, not pedigree.” Pymetrics, a New York company, is designing the games to remove potential gender, racial or ethnic bias in employment....

If you’re looking for the definition of demurrer or argle-bargle, pretty much any reputable dictionary published in the last hundred years will do. But if you’re looking to find the meaning of “botnet,” you might have to rely on less-established sources, even Wikipedia. While language and technology evolve quickly, giving us an endless list of neologisms ranging from “fax machine” to “defriend,” the dictionary makers of the world, those modern-day Samuel Johnsons and Henry Campbell Blacks, take a bit more time to separate the wheat from the “chillax....

Whistleblowers are all the rage this season, unless you count the increasingly unpopular Edward Snowden, but unfortunately for overseas employees, this whistleblowing craze is only available if you inform the SEC. In Asadi v. G.E. Energy (USA), L.L.C., the appellant Khaled Asadi learned this lesson the hard way, having the Fifth Circuit teach him a lengthy lesson about statutory interpretation and knock loose his dreams of being a rock star whistleblower....

Guatemalan national’s petition for review of the BIA’s order denying petitioner’s request for withholding of removal is denied as the BIA adequately articulated a reasoned basis for its decision. Read Perez v. Holder, No. 09-1022 Appellate Information Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Decided November 20, 2009 Judges Before: Howard, Ripple, and Seyla, Circuit Judges Opinion by Seyla, Circuit Judge Counsel For Appellant: Lidia M....

Black Friday shoppers in San Francisco were able to hop on the city’s light rail system for free last week, after the city’s Muni transit system fell victim to a ransomware attack. Ransomware infected about a quarter of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s computers, encrypting their files on Friday. The hack shut down many ticketing kiosks for days, giving San Francisco straphangers a free ride for the weekend, as hackers demanded a bitcoin ransom worth $73,000....

The District Court of South Carolina can’t avoid hearing a dispute over who is the proper leader of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, the Fourth Circuit held on Tuesday. The unusual case pitted two rival Bishops, the Reverend Mark J. Lawrence and the Reverend Charles G. vonRosenberg, against each other, with each claiming that they were the rightful leader of the church and thus entitled to use its trademarks....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, reportedly made some recent comments about the death of anonymity on the Internet at the recent Techonomy conference. Should full identity transparency be the universal Internet norm? No! Mr. Schmidt reportedly pointed out that there were five billion gigabytes of information created from the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that an equal amount of information now is created every two days; with the pace increasing....

The Fourth Circuit decided a immigration matter and a criminal case involving a defendant’s challenge to his sentence under the armed career criminal enhancement. In Cervantes v. Holder, No. 09-1519, the court faced a challenge to the BIA’s decision affirming the IJ’s denial of an application for temporary protected status by two brothers from Honduras, whose parents had already been residing in the U.S. As stated in the decision: “On January 5, 1999 - while the petitioners were yet in Honduras - the Attorney General designated that country for the TPS program due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch....

Wonder if opposing counsel has read your scheduling email yet? Want to know if your new associates actually followed the link you sent them? Outlook or Gmail can’t help, but Sidekick can. Sidekick is an email tracking tool that allows you to see when emails are opened, when recipients follow links, and a whole lot more. It can be a helpful addition to email, but suffice it to say, there are plenty of privacy and ethics implications as well....

How many times have you left your office only to realize a couple of miles down the road that you forgot to sign that motion? If you were sans a laptop, than your only options were to either turn around or do it tomorrow. Sign-N-Send puts this problem to rest. Developed by Tipirneni Software LLC, this iOS app allows users to sign PDF and Microsoft Office documents on their iPhones or iPads....

As T-Mobile fought cell plan wars on television, the company quietly waged another battle with its employees. The National Labor Relations Board had sided with the workers, saying the cellular company was trying to keep them from unionizing. The battle plan was right in the employee handbook, the board said. In T-Mobile USA v. National Relations Labor Board, however, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the company was just urging workers to get along....

There is no happy ending to this story, but someday Trey Sims may find closure to his disturbing case. In 2014, police forced the then-teenager to masturbate in front of them ostensibly as part of an alleged sex crime investigation. The boy had texted sexually explicit photos and video of himself to his 15-year-old girlfriend, and they wanted to see if his penis matched the photos. Sims served probation, then sued the police for violating his privacy....

These darn youngins with all their fancy new lingo. What in tarnation are they talkin’ about? We get it. It seems every day there is some new amorphous concept bandied about as the future of technology and the future of law firms. If you took the time to learn every one, you’d be a tech blogger instead of a real lawyer. Who would want that, right? We’re going to do the work for you....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. It seems like only yesterday, in the 1990s, when I “upgraded” to a 56k “screaming” modem to gain faster Internet access. The modem would make that funky sound as my computer tried to log on, and then at times it literally would take more than a minute to simply load one static page....

Citizens have a Second Amendment right to bear arms in a visceral sense. According to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Second Amendment does not extend to a right to bear a specific arm, reports The Wall Street Journal. This week, the New Orleans-based court ruled that the Crescent City’s police did not violate a man’s Second Amendment rights by keeping his lawfully-seized gun after the district attorney refused charges against him....

Global companies have global headaches. From analyzing performance across geographic boundaries to managing finances in emerging markets, it takes way more than a village. But one thing is clear for law departments: the biggest challenge is ensuring compliance. Here’s why: Navigating Compliance In globe trotting and compliance, it’s hard to know where to go if you don’t know where you are. Tax compliance, anti-laundering laws, payroll, and accounting are “big operational headaches for global companies....

In US v. Luna-Encinas, No. 08-12574, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s conviction for being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, because the district court correctly denied defendant’s motion to suppress pre-Miranda statements he made to a police officer that led to the discovery of the firearm, because defendant was not in “custody” when he made the relevant inculpatory statements to the police. As the court wrote: “After holding an evidentiary hearing, the district court denied the motion to suppress....

U.S. Marshals must perform a number of interesting and sometimes dangerous activities. In performing these activities, their physical health might come into issue. In such cases, however it’s not unheard of that employment disputes can arise, particularly in the case of employment discrimination lawsuits and disability discrimination lawsuits. In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the summary judgment granted by the district court on a case involving a U....

What should your law firm’s website disclaimer say? As we’ve pointed out recently, your website is most likely an attorney communication (unless, of course, it’s your personal blog about your favorite jazz musicians). Consequently, it’s governed by all the same rules that regulate attorney advertising and communications. That means disclaimers letting people know that it’s attorney advertising. But are there any mandatory magic words you have to use? Sometimes; it depends on your state, of course....