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In perhaps the largest drug settlement to date, GlaxoSmithKline PLC has announced that it will pay the federal government $3 billion. The Glaxo settlement will cover a number of ongoing federal civil and criminal investigations. These include allegations that the company engaged in the off-label marketing of Wellbutrin; downplayed the risks of Paxil and diabetes drug Avandia; and defrauded Medicaid. This deal doesn’t end Glaxo’s woes, as it is still facing a number of civil lawsuits brought by users of Avandia....

Starting on Dec. 31, 2010, the enforcement of the Federal Trade Commission’s “red flags rule” is in effect. The FTC “red flags” rule mandates that specific businesses or organizations that are considered “creditors” must have a written identity theft program in place that is designed to detect “red flags” or possible warning signs of identity theft that may occur in the course of business, reports NHBR.com. According to the FTC, the red flags rule dictates that there must be four elements in a business’ program:...

Tom Martin, a lawyer and chatbot creator, is practically a chatbot himself. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, but manages a probate practice virtually in California. How does he do it? Chatbots, which mimic human conversations to interact with people, help. Is your firm ready for one? Reception Chatbot, Anyone? Legal chatbots are not answering machines. They are artificially intelligent programs that can carry on conversations, typically via text but also through voice-enabled software....

Neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump gets much sleep. Obama stayed up late into the night, working on speeches and reading briefing papers, before turning down for just about five hours. Our current president has him beat, sleeping just four hours every night, leaving plenty of time for early morning tweeting. And they’re not alone. Plenty of highly successful people get by on just a few hours of sleep a night, from Martha Stewart to tech CEOs....

The DeKalb County Bar Association has officially sued LegalZoom, asking a judge to bar the Los Angeles-based legal form company from serving clients in Alabama. Accusing LegalZoom of engaging in the unauthorized practice of law, the association’s president believes that offering customized standard legal forms is strictly forbidden under current rules, particularly when done by a person who is not licensed in Alabama. For those who have never encountered LegalZoom, it is an internet-based company that provides standard legal forms....

Skype is good for many things, but, apparently as shown by the Zimmerman trial, it’s not so ideal for examining witnesses, reports the Daily Mail. For those of us not living under a huge rock (though, with the holiday rapidly approaching, you can soon), the George Zimmerman murder trial for the shooting of Trayvon Martin is well underway. Today, however, it was thrown into a bit of a mess when the defense was cross- examining Zimmerman’s former professor, Gordon Pleasants, via Skype....

If your practice requires you to scan documents in court or on the go, there is a device that you should definitely check out. It’s called the VuPoint Magic Wand Portable Scanner. The Magic Wand is a hand-held cordless scanner that runs on batteries. You can scan at high (600 dpi) or standard (300 dpi) resolution. According to VuPoint, you can get up to 180 scans from two AA batteries. It works with both Mac and Windows operating systems....

If you’re starting your own law practice, one of the most common pieces of advice you’ll receive is to get a mentor. Good mentors are invaluable as you can bounce ideas off them and they can give you tips on how to overcome some common pitfalls a young attorney is sure to face. But if you’re just starting out, you may be wondering just how you’re supposed to find a legal mentor....

A digital recorder is an essential tool for most lawyers. You’ll often find yourself in a situation where you wished you could turn back time and remember a detail in a client meeting or an important note at a deposition. Or you could find yourself struggling to remember a client’s voice and intonation as you evaluate the strength of your case. That’s where a digital voice recorder comes into play. Most modern digital recorders allow you to record hours of speech....

One of our lawyer friends was laid off from a law firm in 2009. His dismissal included an awkward it’s-not-you-it’s-the-economy conversation. Then his former boss asked, “So where do you think you’ll work?” The friend responded, “I haven’t thought about it. Until five minutes ago, I thought I worked here.” He ended up starting a law firm. With his public relations-guru wife tirelessly promoting the practice, he has been one of the small firm success stories to emerge from the global financial meltdown....

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in EEOC v. Abercrombie and Fitch Stores, the case about a Muslim teenager, Samantha Elauf, who interviewed for a job at an Abercrombie store while wearing a headscarf. Abercrombie chose not to hire her explicitly because of the headscarf, assuming that she would need a religious accommodation, which it didn’t want to grant, because Abercrombie’s dress code policy prohibits head wear. The EEOC claimed that the employer discriminated based on its assumption that she would need an accommodation without ever asking Elauf....

Taxpayers are rushing to claim deductions before the new tax bill goes into effect, and few know what their final bill will be. According to reports, the tax legislation will be approved before Christmas and bring an end to certain deductions in the New Year. It will cap the amount of state, local, and property taxes individuals can deduct from their federal tax bills at $10,000. But the new law may also cut into charitable deductions at this time of the year, according to one law professor....

You had to know this was coming eventually – Walmart selling legal services. Fortunately for us, the company’s first forays into firms in supermarkets is happening north of the border, in Ontario, Canada. (H/T to Solo Practice University.) But expansion into the United States can’t be too far behind. Why? Take a legal system that prices services out of the reach of middle and low income individuals, add in favorable rulings for legal services providers (like LegalZoom) that aren’t exactly law firms, toss in tens of thousands of unemployed lawyers, and you have an unserved market, a tempting business model, a cheap labor supply, and a distribution network already in place....

You can rent everything from a yurt, to a fold-out couch, to a castle on Airbnb, the online marketplace for peer-to-peer short-term rentals. But you might have a harder time renting if a host thinks you’re African-American. A new paper by three Harvard researchers shows that discrimination against black Airbnb renters is widespread on Airbnb – often in violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Airbnb lets pretty much anyone post lodging on the Airbnb site and just about anyone can request a short-term rental....

Here’s a fact that’s sure to leave some partners smiling: tougher interviews lead to overall happier employees, according to job site Glassdoor. Although this may not be the most welcome news for grads, studies seem to support this tough approach. Interview Harshness = Employee Happiness The thrust of the equation is true if the findings of Economists Andrew Chamberlain and Ayal Chen-Zion are correct. They analyzed 3,000 companies and 3,000 employees in 6 countries and consistently found a common theme: overall employee satisfaction was higher in those jobs where harsher interviews were conducted to get the job....

Conflicts and recusals. We’ve given the High Court’s justices a hard time over botched recusals, excessive recusals, and even for un-recusals, but what about judges in the lower courts? Federal judges are required to recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest, often due to stock ownership in a company that is a party to the case, and they’re even granted a tax break if they sell the stock to remove the conflict....

Warrantless stops can often be close cases to affirm or deny under Fourth Amendment scrutiny, and the Fifth Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Garza was no exception. The Garza court considered the 2012 stop and arrest of Jose Eleazar Garza, who was stopped by a Border Patrol agent on the basis of a confidential informant’s (CI) tip as well as suspicious elements around his truck. How did the court come to uphold the stop?...

Following Yahoo’s announcement on Wednesday that more than 1 billion user accounts had been hacked, the company is facing more external and internal challenges. Yahoo stocks dropped about 6% on the stock exchange Thursday, adding to the potential effect of the latest email hack on a pending offer to buy the company. Verizon had offered $4.83 billion to buy Yahoo’s core business in July, but the company has revealed two historic security breaches since then....

Petition for a review of an order affirming both an order of removal and the concomitant denial of a cross-application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture is denied where plaintiff failed to prove that she had a well-founded fear of future persecution, and the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision to deny the application for asylum was supported by substantial evidence. Read Zheng v. Holder, No....

The Eleventh Circuit is one of the busiest and quickest federal appeals courts in the nation, according to a recently released “Judicial Caseload Profile” of the court released by the judiciary. The report presents statistics on the work of the Federal Judiciary for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, comparing data for this year to data for prior years. Overall, filings in the 12 federal courts of appeals, which had risen 4 percent in 2012, dropped 2 percent to 56,475 in 2013....