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Think about all the damaging, embarrassing, and ultimately private information you post onto your Facebook account. It’s not that surprising that for some attorneys, social media is akin to an appetizing treasure trove of discovery just waiting to be harvested. With technology advancing and more users going online, courts are starting to catch up. But the way that courts treat social media seems to be in flux. In one New York case, a judge ruled that a defendant can’t have access to a private Facebook account during the discovery process....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. When it comes to privacy, a lyric from a Joni Mitchell song seems apt: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Indeed, as technology has moved forward, it seems that practically every semblance of privacy has disappeared. Let’s recount just a few of the ways that privacy has gone by the wayside....

Capping your hourly fees is like going on a Jenny Craig diet. For most people, any diet is hard to do. But Jenny also costs money. The best-case scenario is that you will get skinny. Same thing with capping fees. It’s a difficult discipline. It will definitely cost you money. And if you don’t make enough money to put bread on the table, well, you get the point. Sure, capping fees is great for clients; they like their lawyers lean....

While the case of Bosley v. Mineral County Commission presents a series of unfortunate events, the actual case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is not nearly as dramatic. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that the settlement offer in a case involving several state law and federal constitution claims did not include the attorneys fees and costs. Quick Facts: In 2005, the Appellee, Brenda Bosley, filed a mental hygiene complaint against her husband, Dr....

Like it or not, businesses live and die by Google’s search engine algorithms. If you don’t show up online, you’re dead. By now, you should be familiar with the basics of SEO. If you’re not, read about it. There used to be a time, long ago, when people would simply festoon their sites with terminology that were quite obviously targeted for the kinds of terms they assumed people would search when looking for an attorney....

While there is quite a bit of serious discussion that happens on #LawTwitter and #AppellateTwitter, there’s also quite a bit of joking around. And for lawyers, getting a good laugh a few times a day can really help keep moral high. If you’re on Twitter, you probably already follow some of the biggest names in #LawTwitter, like the Florida Bar Association or Popehat. We’ve already covered our favorite seven funny #LawyerTwitter accounts to follow, but there are many, many more wonderful accounts....

Hacker HD Moore is a chief security officer at Rapid7, a company that looks into security holes. As part of his work, Moore “explored” the realm of videoconferencing systems. What he found was surprising. Moore discovered that there are thousands of boardrooms across the nation that are vulnerable to hacks. Moore easily found he could access meetings for top companies, business, banks, and even law firms. The frightening part? Videoconferencing systems make it difficult to detect errant listeners if the right security settings aren’t initiated....

The Bostic same-sex marriage decision was huge, and not just for Virginians. All across the Fourth Circuit, cases were on hold pending the resolution of that case. And now, with a decision in, states are reacting differently, with some promising to fight on and others declining to fight what they see as a losing battle. And even in Virginia itself, the decision isn’t completely final. Local county clerks, who are defending the state’s ban, are pressing forward with their defense of the ban, adding another gay marriage case to the U....

In US v. Hughes, No. 08-60870, the Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant’s firearm possession conviction and sentence, holding that 1) faced with contradictory testimony regarding what officers saw in defendants’ car, the district court was entitled to decide whom to believe when both presented “reasonable views of the evidence”; 2) there was not enough in this record to rule on whether defendant’s counsel was ineffective, so he was required to follow the usual route of collateral attack; and 3) defendant’s third prior conviction for violating the federal escape statute, 18 U....

Randall and Francis Kubosh are our heroes. While some people just whine about red-light cameras, the Kuboshes used $200,000 of their own money to fund a grassroots campaign to end Houston red-light cameras. Their efforts, however, led to a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals tiff with the City of Houston and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the company that had a contract to operate the Houston red-light cameras. On the day that the Houston City Council enacted an ordinance reflecting the red-light camera ban election results, Houston terminated ATS’s contract and sued for a declaratory judgment in federal court, seeking a declaration of rights between ATS and the City over the contract’s status....

One of the biggest annoyances on the Internet are those anti-spam, anti-bot CAPTCHAs – the little scrambled text puzzles you have to fill out on forms to verify that you are a human. Maybe you’re registering to leave a comment on a blog, or trying to buy a ticket to a sporting event, or even logging in to your email. Instead, you see this: “Type the text”… But we can’t read the text because it is horribly disfigured to make life harder for robots....

The question of how many attorneys is the right number is not only age-old in corporate counsel circles but has proven to be a hot topic of debate. Too few and in-house counsel becomes heavily dependent on outside counsel for big and small matters. Too many attorneys on a legal team and it may compromise efficiencies for the company’s bottom line and create the issue of too many cooks in the kitchen....

According to a report composed of data compiled by Major, Lindsey & Africa Consultants, in-house lawyers enjoyed relatively stable incomes from 2014 to 2015. But Miriam Frank, Vice President of MLA, cautioned that the numbers may mislead because some compensation is classified as an equity, not compensation. Those were the words that Frank used to describe the in-house compensation market when speaking to Inside Counsel. “It’s not different from what I expected to see a couple of years ago....

Twitter has a bit of a P.R. conundrum on its hands this week after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Indiana law banning sex offenders from social networks. The problem: Should the micro-blogging platform amend its terms of service (TOS) to keep known sex offenders away? The now-overturned law, Ind. Code § 35-42-4-12, prohibited certain registered sex offenders from “knowingly or intentionally” using a social networking web site or an instant messaging or chat room program that the offender knows allows users who are under 18....

Claude Kicklighter is a Georgia attorney with no particular expertise in representing animal cases. Yet the lawyer has been appointed to represent a pit bull facing the death sentence (euthanasia) for mauling a five-year-old boy. Georgia judge William Woodrum said he was appointing Kicklighter to the case “in the interest of justice,” reports the ABA Journal. It doesn’t appear that Kicklighter requested the appointment, nor does it appear that Kicklighter specializes in animal law matters....

Stephanie Thacker was sworn in as the first female judge from West Virginia to serve on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, reports the West Virginia Record. West Virginia’s senators, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, joined Chief District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, Thacker’s family, friends and some former co-workers at her investiture. Judge Thacker was confirmed by the Senate for the appellate bench in April by a vote of 91-3....

As you probably have heard, on Monday, Target fired then-CEO Gregg Steinhafel because of the massive data breach that compromised 70 million addresses and 40 million credit card accounts, resulting in a 2.5% decrease in fourth-quarter sales, reports The Boston Globe. As general or in-house counsel, the last thing you should do is stick your head in the sand. You may think this has nothing to do with you – but you are wrong – this has everything to do with you....

One day, a journalist opened a Twitter message that emitted a flashing strobe and sent him into an epileptic seizure. The message came from an irate reader, who knew the journalist was epileptic. The flashing GIF said, “You deserve a seizure for your posts.” Kurt Eichenwald sued the reader for battery, and a judge said the man deserved it. No, John Rivello, you can’t cyberzap people. “A Physical Tool” Rivello asked Texas Judge James Bredar to dismiss the lawsuit, but the judge declined....

You may love the outdoors – until you get caught in a hailstorm. Being an environmental lawyer can be like that, too. You may love it, but then there are those bad days. Here are some pros and cons to consider if you are thinking about an environmental law practice. You can do it as long as you are prepared for the conditions. Pro 1: Passion Practicing environmental law takes passion, like save-the-planet passion....

If you’ve never heard of ransomware, you’re really behind the times. Beginning with 2015 and into 2016, the number of malware attacks on all devices – desktops, laptops and phones – skyrocketed to its highest percentage of cyber-shenanigans ever. And it looks like this highly profitable criminal business model is here to stay. At the risk of sounding like a doomsayer, this writer cautions legal professionals to watch themselves and to drop the “it only happens to somebody else” mentality....