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The Fifth Circuit has just ruled that a Texas law requiring persons to produce a government-issued ID before casting their ballots is discriminatory and is in violation of the Voting Rights Act, according to Reuters. What is most surprising is that this circuit court is generally known to be one of the most conservative in the nation. The decision was lauded by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “This decision affirms our position that Texas’s highly restrictive voter ID law abridges the right to vote on account of race or color and orders appropriate relief before yet another election passes,” she said....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Thumb drives, keyboards, and mice, oh my! That’s right, these USB devices now may be the latest “lions, tigers, and bears” to fear in our high-tech world. According to a recent Reuters article, such USB devices possibly can be compromised to hack into personal computers in a previously unknown form of attack that supposedly can side-step current security precautions....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. The days of reading a daily newspaper appear to be part of the past, and newspapers are trying to come up with solutions to remain viable. With online content available on the internet, less people are reading printed newspapers. Free online content is available, but will charging readers for online content save the newspaper industry?...

If virtual reality cameras would have been permitted in the courtroom, Mark Zuckerberg might have appeared to be spinning on the witness stand. The Facebook CEO testified in a Texas courtroom for the defense against a $2 billion lawsuit filed against Oculus, a company Facebook acquired for $3 billion dollars in 2014. ZeniMax Media alleges that Oculus stole code used in its virtual reality headset, but Zuckerberg said he knew little about the company....

It’s the week after Labor Day. Summer vacation is officially over; it’s time to go back to work, desperately trying to concentrate while thinking about all the fun you had at Disneyland, snorkeling, or watching that “Simpsons” marathon. Your return is, of course, accompanied by a mountain of email that you’ve been ignoring while you were busy petting dolphins in Hawaii. How can you sift through 1,000 messages in a human amount of time?...

In US v. Purdue Pharma L.P., No. 09-1202, the Fourth Circuit decided a plaintiff’s qui tam action involving claims tha this former employer defrauded the government by marketing its pain-relief drug, OxyContin as a cheaper alternative to another drug made by the employer. As stated in the decision: “When the government is unaware of potential FCA claims the public interest favoring the use of qui tam suits to supplement federal enforcement weighs against enforcing prefiling releases....

Corporate Responsibility (CR) Magazine recently released the results of its annual corporate bad reputation survey, done in conjunction with Allegis Group Services, polling over 1,000 people (employed and unemployed) about hiring and corporate reputation. The survey found that 69% of people polled “would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed,” reports PRNewswire. If your company is one of the unfortunate ones with a bad reputation, it could be spending millions in extra costs for recruiting, according to the survey....

OK, so you have a blog. You have a Twitter account. You have a Pinterest, a Tumblr, an Ello, and even a lawyer Tinder (but we should talk about deleting that soon). What tools are left for solos and small firms to use to market themselves? Podcasts! You’ve probably heard about them, you may have listened to them, but did you know it’s dead simple to make your own? All you need is a laptop, a USB condenser microphone, and an hour a week to record a show about a topic of your choice....

If you’ve turned on a TV lately, you may have seen the new advertising campaign for Apartments.com. In the ads, comedian Jeff Goldblum plays a Steve Jobs-like, Silicon Valley guru. Advertisers know that sex sells; so does a touch of wit and humor. But the legal profession has rarely been considered sexy – at least not in the lite beer or Victoria’s Secret way. Things like estate planning, malpractice, and criminal prosecution can be funny, but often not for the people who need a lawyer to deal with them....

In an action by dentists claiming that defendant health insurer employed a number of practices, such as “improper downcoding” and “improper bundling,” as a means of underpaying participating dentists for services they performed, denial of plaintiffs’ motion to remand the action is affirmed in part where plaintiffs’ allegations implicated not only the “rate of payment” under their provider agreements, but also the “right of payment.” However, the order is reversed in part where a trade association did not have standing to sue under ERISA and thus ERISA did not completely preempt plaintiff-association’s claims....

A woman can be paid less than a man for the same work based on salary histories, a federal appeals court said. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that pay disparities between men and women are lawful if the difference is based on salary history and not gender. It is equally true whether a man or a woman is paid more than the other. In Rizo v. Yovino, the appeals court turned back arguments by the plaintiff and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that unequal pay perpetuates gender discrimination....

Internet advertising is great because, unlike traditional methods of advertising, you know exactly how many people are coming to your website. Not only that, but you can know hundreds of other things, like which website they came from, where they live, and even what Web browser they’re using. These metrics aren’t the bread and butter of legal marketing; they’re more like the restaurant critics. They let you know what you’re doing right and wrong....

Penguin? What’s that? Don’t worry if those are the first three words out of your mouth. Unless you – like those of us at FindLaw – spend all of your day worrying about search engine optimization and other online marketing buzzwords, don’t feel bad that you don’t know about Penguin. In the wacky world of online marketing, it’s important to know not only how to market, but how the marketing system itself works....

Wikipedia, the online user-edited encyclopedia, is often maligned for getting things wrong. Yet federal appeals courts are increasingly citing Wikipedia in their rulings – some much more often than others, The Wall Street Journal reports. Seventh Circuit judges led the pack with 36 Wikipedia citations over the last five years, the Journal’s Law Blog found. The Ninth Circuit was next, with 17 cites to Wikipedia since 2007; the Tenth Circuit cited the site eight times, while the Sixth Circuit cited it six times....

So you got your Andy Warhol minutes of fame from a news story, but now what? Start a reality TV show? Hire a crowd? Hang on, we’re not going there. That’s for politicians. We’re lawyers, and we use social media, websites, and blogs. Here’s how to make your Warhol minutes last a lifetime: Social Media If you haven’t heard, President Trump just nominated a Twitter-famous judge to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal....

Remember when attorney Gloria Allred sent out her entire press contact list? What about the partner at Quinn Emanuel who sexually harassed a secretary through email and sent it to the entire office? Talk about embarrassing. Like most people, you’re probably waiting for the day something similar happens to you. It doesn’t have to. With a little practice and a few program settings, it’s not that difficult to delay emails and ensure that you send them to the right place....

Lawyers like rules. They are, after all, our bread and butter. And good firms establish some basic rules that govern their operation: intake policies, conflict checks, accounting procedures, and the like. They’re essential to making sure the firm runs efficiently – and stays on the right side of its ethical requirements. But too many rules and procedures are also stifling, driving away talent, slowing down the firm’s ability to function, and limiting firm success....

It’s May Day, Communism Day, Law Day! Law Day, you say? We do. President Ike Eisenhower, in 1958, declared May 1 to be Law Day, U.S.A. (Codified on April 7, 1961.) Does this mean you can go home early? Well, it’s your office, your firm, your rules, but according to the infallible Wikipedia, Law Day has come to be more of an opportunity to educate the masses on legal concepts, particularly for students....

Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle took on a pair of brothers as clients in early September. Knowing that she had a six-week maternity leave coming up, she immediately filed a request to postpone the hearing. After a month, and with only a week until the hearing, Judge J. Dan Pelletier Sr. denied her request, stating: “No good cause. Hearing date set prior to counsel accepting representation,” reports The Associated Press. On October 7, 2014, with her husband out of town on work, no friends or family in the area, and no daycare willing to take a 4-week-old baby, Ehrisman-Mickle showed up to court with her baby strapped to her chest – after clearing it with her pediatrician....

We hope you’ve ported your client contact information to a proper email marketing software program by now. If you haven’t, shop around – there are a lot of good choices out there. But email what? Below we’ve included a few helpful email types you should keep in mind when contacting your former clients and contacts. Guidance in the Dark First things first: even the most basic of email marketing software provides you with basic metrics for email....