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With soaring litigation costs, more and more companies are considering bringing e-Discovery in-house to cut the expense of document collection and review. If such a move is in your future, this means that, instead of relying on outside service providers and consulting firms, you’re going to have to form a plan that necessitates close working relationships with people throughout your company. If you’re not sure where to start, FindLaw’s Interactive Guide to Electronic Discovery can help....

Where to begin the story of Luke Brugnara, the former real estate mogul turned art con… His criminal spiral downward began sometime in 2014. His sentence will not be over until about 2022. Perhaps the best place to start is in the middle of his case, when the judge granted him a furlough to meet with his attorneys at the courthouse. Brugnara ran – literally. He fled on foot and evaded capture for several days....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Google has stated its intention to roll out its Street View mapping service for 20 cities in Germany by the end of 2010. Copacetic? Not necessarily, according to German data privacy officials. As part of the Google’s Street View regime in Germany, property owners in the included cities have one month to register their buildings online as unrecognizable....

There is much confusion out there when it comes to ethically handling fees between lawyers. One of the most common scenarios involves a primary attorney (from the client’s point of view) working with another attorney. But the arrangement has its ethical hazards and every practitioner should be aware of potential ethical pitfalls when splitting fees. We’ll go over one scenario here that gets people tripped up: the solo who splits fees with another on a contingency basis....

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of five former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) directors this week for contributing funds to Hamas, a designated terrorist group. After a mistrial in 2007, the appellants were convicted in 2008 on money laundering, tax fraud and conspiracy charges. On Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit rejected the appellants’ contention that testimony in the 2008 trial violated the Confrontation Clause....

Clients who come into a law office generally aren’t in the best of moods. Either they’ve just been sued – in which case, they’re stressed out – or they’re contemplating suing someone, which means something stressful has just happened to them. This means that to best support your clients, your office should set a somber, relaxing tone that’s free of the stress that you might normally find in an office. Here are some tips on how you can set the mood....

A closing argument should be like opening a door, not closing one. After writing a brief to persuade your audience, you want to finish it by inviting your reader to step through that door to reach your conclusion. It should be more than compelling; it should be impossibly irresistible. This post is about how to do it. If you have read this far, then you are ready for that next step:...

In a capital habeas matter, the denial of Petitioner’s petition is affirmed, where: 1) a law enforcement officer did not hear Petitioner make an unequivocal request for counsel prior to making his confession; and 2) the state court did not err in holding that Petitioner waived his right to counsel during a custodial interrogation. Read Hyatt v. Branker, 08-15 Appellate Information Argued: May 14, 2009 Decided: June 23, 2009 Judges...

The Justice Department has shut down the largest criminal marketplace on the internet. AlphaBay, which operated for more than two years on the dark web, was trafficking in illegal drugs, stolen and fraudulent identification, counterfeit goods, hacking tools, firearms, and toxic chemicals throughout the world. “This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions....

Robert Caulley, an aeronautical engineer, spent the last fourteen years in prison. He’s getting his second chance now, and his former attorney, James D. Owen is seeking the same, after sleeping with his client’s wife, before, during, and after the trial. True Crime Report tells Caulley’s side of the story: he arrived at his parents’ house, where a burglary was in progress. Inside, he found his parents bludgeoned to death. Three years later, he became the focus of the investigation, and after a twelve-hour interrogation, where he was allegedly denied an attorney, he finally gave a coerced confession....

Confession time: I am a bit of a nerd. One of my pastimes includes skimming Search Engine Optimization blogs. Part of the motive is work-related (I do blog, after all), but it’s mostly curiosity about the interaction between behavioral psychology and Google’s content filtering through search engine results. What makes people click on one link, rather than another? And why does Google boost that website consistently in the results, and not the other, more well-written site?...

What happens when you learn about a potential whistleblower – someone who’s gone through an internal process to report wrongdoing? Do you tense up a little bit? Feel tempted to release the hounds? Want to circle the wagons? Of course, you know that retaliating against a whistleblower can subject your company to penalties. Everybody does it, though. Ross Brooks, a partner with Sanford Heisler’s whistleblower protection practice, told Inside Counsel that companies retaliate about nine times out of 10....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. We all have heard about how privacy can be compromised in the new high-tech world. But the level to which people can be “undressed” continues to cause amazement. As recently reported in FindLaw’s Legally Weird, for instance, a computer repairman in California was arrested recently on suspicion of installing spyware on laptops that gave him the ability to take and download photographs of women taking off their clothes, showering and other highly private home activities....

When you’re just getting started with your own firm, you’ll need to decide on what practice areas you’ll specialize in. This is true for fresh attorneys out of law school as well as experienced attorneys. Because unless you already have a steady book of business, you’ll need to reach outside of your comfort zone and take on unfamiliar cases in unfamiliar areas. When choosing which practice areas to handle, you can make life easier for yourself by knowing that certain areas go hand-in-hand, and certain areas will naturally lend itself to more business in a separate area....

Companies that rely on highly skilled foreign workers to replace domestic counterparts may be facing increased scrutiny in the near future. Ten senators recently called for an investigation into the government’s H-1B visa program. That program allows employers to hire specialized foreign workers in order to fill slots that can’t be filled by domestic labor. Many companies, particularly in the tech industry, have been arguing for an expansion to the program....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Companies naturally want to protect their internal, sensitive company information. Indeed, intellectual property and trade secrets often constitute the crown jewels of a given operation. Companies also have practical and legal obligations to protect confidential information of their customers. Accordingly, prudent companies develop policies that are designed to ensure the security of such highly valuable, proprietary and sensitive data....

Is electing judges a good idea? Our gut reaction is “no,” but for the sake of argument, let’s take a look at the current state of the courts to see just what’s happening with elected versus appointed judges. In Pennsylvania, a former Supreme Court judge just dropped her appeal of her sentence for campaign-related crimes. In Illinois, a record-breaking 2004 campaign, for which $9.3 million was spent by or on behalf of the candidates, has been followed up with a 10-years-in-the-making retention election sequel, raising questions of why lawyers and businesses are dumping millions into that election – to “buy” an outcome for their upcoming Illinois Supreme Court case perhaps?...

Trolling is the ultimate business model – until it finally comes to a grinding halt. This appears to be how things are rolling out for the now defunct Chicago outfit Prenda Law that made a name for itself in recent years by buying up porn copyrights via shell companies and extracting settlement monies out of lonely downloaders. In the words of Alison Frankel of Reuters, misusing copyright law and deceiving the courts are good tactics to enrage judges and turn sentiment against you....

Successfully running a firm doesn’t just mean mastering the law and pleasing clients. You’ve also got to be able to manage an office. And office management is just one of the many things they don’t teach you in law school. Luckily, FindLaw’s got your back, with plenty of tips on how to manage an efficient, well-functioning, and cost-effective firm. Here are our top seven tips for law firm office management....

What can we learn from John Cioffi, co-author of “6 Habits of Highly Successful Managers,” as it applies to running a successful law practice? Cioffi put together the Six Habits of Highly Successful Managers which is designed to compel you to do the Right Things (good leadership) as well as to do Things Right (good management). Habit 1 - Set goals all the time Law firms could certainly benefit from goal setting....