A “Baby on Board” sign outside a law firm does not mean rookie lawyers are inside. That would be the “Children at Play” sign. Just kidding, new lawyers don’t have time to play anyway. Seriously, there are attorneys who have lowered the age for take-your-kid-to-work day. They call it the “Infant-at-Work” program. Infant at Work Freedom Law, a small, woman-owned firm, says employees may take their babies to work until they are six months old....
Being in the right place at the right time does not usually describe a judicial nominee’s position before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But it might apply for two nominees to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. and Jay Richardson “breezed” through their Senate hearings. If not the right place at the right time, it was good place for a short time. The nominees might make it to the bench before the summer break....
Perhaps it was a simple case of ennui? The French National Assembly, the country’s lower house of parliament, has rejected a “three strikes” law that would have cut off the internet connections of those found to have repeatedly downloaded illegal copies of music or movies. The law would also have created the world’s first government agency charged with monitoring and punishing those who consume and make pirated content available online....
Everybody, including Google, knows lawyers have something to say about everything. But Google is making it easier for them to comment on Office files, PDFs, and images. In Google Drive, users can now comment in the preview pane without having to use other tools or convert files. Reviewers say it’s not quite the same as G Suite or Office 365, but it works. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it’s free....
At a time when digital assistants can talk, it’s still a good idea to have a real-live person talk to clients. Unfortunately, too many lawyers do not communicate enough with their clients. The “too much work, not enough time” excuse only goes so far – especially with the State Bar. Try this instead: Say “hello” to your paralegals and let them do the talking. Training them to communicate with clients could start here....
Apparently, in house attorneys and law firm representatives spent a lot of time at a recent meeting pointing their fingers at each other over the issue of support for flex-time and part-time policies designed to retain and advance women at law firms, according to the National Law Journal. What’s worse, the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), who organized the event, invited the attendees because it considered them leaders in the field....
Meg Whitman is HP’s new CEO. Hewlett-Packard dismissed former CEO Leo Apotheker on Thursday after 11 months on the job. Will appointing Whitman, former CEO of eBay, help turn HP around? And what kind of impact will her appointment as chief executive have on the company’s workforce - including its legal staff? General counsels everywhere know that a company’s legal strategy is vital. This is why Apple’s lawyers are busy filing patent suits, and why companies hire attorneys in the first place....
Peer v. Lewis, No. 09-10882, concerned a case arising from a contentious Florida election, a district court’s order denying defendant’s request for sanctions against three attorneys who represented plaintiff in the underlying matter. The court of appeals affirmed in part, on the grounds that 1) defendant’s motion for Rule 11 sanctions was untimely because the district court had already rejected the offensive pleading at the time defendant moved for sanctions; and 2) counsel did not delay the judicial proceedings after he filed the offending complaint....
Comfortable with sex? And the sex lives of your clients? Then litigating sex torts may be for you. Shaun Murphy, an attorney with the small firm of Slovak Baron & Empey in Palm Springs, California just won a $6.7-million jury verdict. His client had accused her ex-boyfriend of intentionally and negligently infecting her with herpes. This was Murphy’s second sex tort case–an area of law that has proven to be financially rewarding....
We haven’t done one of these in awhile: a big list of every tech-related item that would come in handy if you were to start a law firm in 2015. Today, we cover hardware – laptops, monitors, printers, and more. Later this week, we’ll tackle software and miscellaneous gadgets (including landline or VOIP phones!). Think of this series as a wish list, for those of you on a budget. Or a checklist, if you’re loaded....
Medtronic Will Pay Abbott Laboratories $400 Million in Heart Stent Settlement After ten years of debate and legal jousting for patent rights on heart stents, medical device maker, Medtronic, will pay its rival Abbott Labs $400 million to settle all existing claims as well as to block off any future claims—at least for the next decade. The bare metal and drug-eluting stents were created to prevent cardiac arrest by scaffolding arteries to keep them open for blood flow....
A Texas District Court Judge has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the City of Houston from extending marriage benefits and protections to gay couples. This injunctive action was prompted by open lesbian and recently re-elected three-time Houston Mayor Annise Parker declaring that Houston would provide its legally married employees and their same-sex spouses with health and life insurance benefits, reports Think Progress. Does this new resistance to offering LGBT persons benefits flirt with disaster?...
It’s easy to see why Hilarie Bass is a world-class leader. She had a stellar career at Greenberg Traurig, where she chaired the international firm’s 600-member litigation department for eight years. As immediate past-president of the American Bar Association, she made it her business to work on equality in the legal profession. Now, after 37 years, she is leaving her position as co-president of her firm to start a non-profit on law firm diversity....
A woman in Manhattan is suing Google, Bing, and Yahoo in an attempt to get her name permanently removed from their search results, according to the New York Post. The 30-year-old Harlem woman was a victim of revenge porn after an ex-boyfriend unloaded secretly recorded X-rated videos of the two to the internet, using the woman’s unique four-word West African name. “If you Google her name, everything is right there,” her attorney, Ryanne Konan, told the Post....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. You have to be on another planet not to know that YouTube is the dominant site for accessing video streaming media. You also have to be on an inaccessible island not to be aware that Facebook has become an Internet social networking beast. But did you know that Facebook is coming on strong in the video streaming space?...
When an employee quits, it’s not just a worker walking out the door, its years of training and investment. Hiring replacement employees is expensive and time consuming, requiring you to invest resources in job search and training – resources that could be better spent on the firms’ practice. Retention is key. With that in mind, here are some of the top reasons law firms suffer from high employee turnover and how you can prevent them....
This case just went from interesting to fascinating Last month, we reported on widespread concerns about Yelp’s business practices, specifically their spam review filters, which some say, are nothing more than extortion. Many small business owners claim that after they turned down Yelp’s advertising overtures, their positive reviews were filtered out, and negative reviews were given more prominent placement. One of those disgruntled small business owners was a San Diego law firm, which filed suit and won, with the small claims judge comparing Yelp’s practices to the mafia....
Someday, anybody will be able to be part of the process at the highest court in America. Oh wait, that’s today. At least there is a website that lets anybody join in forecasting decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time you read this blog, there will also be a discussion at Stanford about how such crowdsourcing predicts Supreme Court decisions. So are we there yet? SCOTUS Challenge The SCOTUS Challenge, an annual program, allows participants to predict how the Supreme Court will decide certain petitions....
In habeas proceedings of a defendant convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, district court’s conclusion that the state trial judge had impermissibly (though unintentionally) coerced a guilty verdict as a result of a series of voir dire examinations of individual jurors is reversed as the AEDPA’s deferential standard of review controls in this case, and the district court employed an insufficiently deferential standard of review. Read Clements v....
A lobby group for small television and broadband companies has asked the federal government to investigate whether Comcast is using its television programming to muscle out competition. The American Cable Association, which represents more than 700 companies, says the media giant is so dominant that others cannot compete. They have asked the Department of Justice to investigate claims that Comcast is using its position to leverage them out of markets and raise prices for consumers....
