Posts

“The majority opinion runs counter to Supreme Court precedent, Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 130 S. Ct. 27 (2010), and effectively guts our Circuit precedent, United States v. Simmons, 649 F.3d 237 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc). It violates principles of comity and federalism by directing federal district courts to ignore the careful sentencing decisions of their state counterparts. And it goes to such lengths all to affirm a twenty-two-year sentence imposed on a fifty-one-year old mentally ill veteran who had previously never served more than ten months in prison, tagging him with the moniker “armed career criminal....

In a rare bit of good fortune for the family of Anthony Jones, who, in 2010, was tased to death by law enforcement officers, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in their favor, reviving the case. Mr. Jones’s case is rather tragic as he was tased for nearly two minutes straight while being allegedly subdued, after fleeing a traffic stop. At one point, he was being tased by more than one officer concurrently....

They are: Square, Intuit GoPayment and Verifone’s PAYware Mobile. Each has different strengths, weaknesses and prices, but all of them will make it easier for you to swipe credit cards. The applications come with a card reader that you attach to your phone which thereby turns your phone into a card-reader. For example, with Square, you plug a small card reader into the headphone jack of an iPhone and you’re good to go....

A photojournalist has recovered digital video of his legally questionable arrest at an Occupy Miami protest. Police illegally tried to delete the video, Carlos Miller claims, and it’s set the scene for possible legal action. Miami-Dade police arrested Miller, a member of the National Press Photographers Association, as they evicted Occupy Miami protesters from their campsite Jan. 31, the website Ars Technica reports. Miller was charged with one count of resisting arrest....

Circuit cases don’t often involve terribly outlandish scenarios. Here’s an exception. In this qualified immunity case, a police officer arrested the real estate agents for the new owners of his home after they foreclosed on his house. Based on that brief set of facts, how do you think the court ruled? You’re probable right. Timonthy Filbeck was a police officer in Butts County, Georgia. In 2005, he and his wife bought a home rather unfortunately timed before the Great Recession that began in 2007-08....

Feeling swamped with extra work, but not enough to justify hiring full time assistance? Part-time employees can be a great way to spread out your workload, whether you’re hiring contract attorneys, interns, or support staff. Part-time employees, like any new hire, require that you pay close attention to the rules and regulations governing part-time work and law practices. Here’s seven tips that will help you take advantage of part-time work without the legal pitfalls:...

Executive research firm and events organizer Consero, together with Applied Discovery, Inc., released a report last week of their findings from 52 GCs from Fortune 1000 companies, who gathered to share best practices and learn from one another. The research conducted covered areas ranging from cyber security, social media and succession planning. But, the big take away had to do with outside counsel. Don’t just blindly submit legal bills to be paid by your finance department....

Like it or not, the cloud is coming and it looks like its here to stay. According to a survey-slash-white-paper by AriKaplan Advisors, law firms and in-house legal departments are slowly but surely adopting more cloud based computing into their business models. Now at least 84 percent of respondents are open to the cloud. This seems to be a significant jump from previous numbers that generally placed firm openness to the cloud at around 68 percent....

Wow, we weren’t even three days into the new year before we got the latest in “The machines are taking our jobs!” And I don’t just mean in general, I mean specifically lawyers. Every year, we’re reminded that our judgment can be mimicked by a computer. Emphasis on can be. Well, more like could be. Well, more like “it’s theoretically possible, but it’s expensive and still not as good as a lawyer....

A man cannot have two masters. But a legal matter can, at least when those two masters are co-counsel. You’ve probably heard horror stories about co-counsel situations; anecdotes about overbearing, intolerable co-counsel, about attorneys who steal all the work, or lawyers who are inept, sabotaging your chance for a big payout. (We could go on.) But working with co-counsel doesn’t have to be difficult, if you do it right. Working with co-counsel is like entering into a strange, temporary work marriage....

Last year, the Supreme Court all but destroyed Aereo, a company that made its money by streaming over-the-air broadcasting to people’s computers and mobile devices. Because Aereo, unlike cable TV companies, didn’t pay broadcasters and content providers for Aereo’s “performance” of their work, the Court found copyright infringement. At worst, the decision could have doomed all streaming services. For now, that worry seems to be unfounded. Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U....

In condemnation proceedings involving a 34 acre parcel used by the Federal Aviation Administration for aircraft navigation, the district court’s judgment is affirmed where the district court: 1) did not abuse its discretion in excluding defendant’s own testimony when the court had excluded similar testimony by defendant’s expert; 2) did not err in holding that the “before and after” method was appropriate in valuing the property, assuming a partial taking; and 3) did not err in submitting to the jury unity of use....

In an IRS enforcement action against defendant-Textron corporation, a ruling denying the petition for enforcement is vacated and remanded where, contrary to the ruling below, the attorney work product doctrine does not shield from an IRS summons “tax accrual work papers” prepared by lawyers and others in Textron’s Tax Department to support Textron’s calculation of tax reserves for its audited corporate financial statements. Read the full decision in US v. Textron Inc....

It won’t be long before you – personally – will be connected to the internet. It will happen with an earpiece or contact lenses or some wearable. Oh wait, we’re already there. If you haven’t noticed, lawyers are literally talking to the air, if not their hand, because they are wirelessly connected to someone, or something, somewhere. Here are some of the smart devices they are using on the Internet of Things....

Avoiding Big Law? Running from Big Law? Not so fast. Just because you’re tired of working long hours for partners who don’t appreciate your brilliance, doesn’t mean a job as in house counsel won’t make you plain old tired. Going in-house can offer a lot of benefits (read: normal hours), but it may not offer the kind of legal work you’re looking for. An overwhelming amount of the practice involves the two C’s: contracts and compliance....

The practice of law is rarely ever about originality or novelty. Instead, the bulk of your work may be retreading your old work (or someone else’s work). But while it is oh-so-easy to cut and paste, lawyers should obviously be very careful when doing so. A solo practitioner in New York was recently sued by a client for copyright infringement after the lawyer allegedly lifted parts of the client’s complaint in an amended complaint that did not involve that client....

Court opinions are like pipelines – sometimes it takes a while for them to get through. At least that’s what’s happening with the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The appeals court finally got its message through to the contractors building the 600-mile pipeline. Stop, the judges said in Sierra Club v. United States Department of the Interior. It wasn’t the first time. Permit Problems In another blow to the pipeline project, the Fourth Circuit threw out a permit granted by the National Park Service....

All mistakes are not created equal. For lawyers, one faux pas may cause trouble with a co-worker. A different misstep may upset a client. And you don’t want to think about stepping on a judge’s toes. But in the cyberworld, mistakes can reach global proportions with the speed of a mouse-click. The essence of any error may be the same, but the potential is magnified by the medium. Here are five tech errors that are so common, you probably have made a few of them:...

The Internet is full of annoying things: annoying people, annoying design tweaks, annoying error messages… Not all of them are ill-intentioned, however. Some of them are actually meant to be helpful – especially the design errors. But if you do any of these five things, odds are that I (or more importantly, your potential clients) will run in the other direction. Quickly. 5. Pop-Up Animated Humans That Offer to Help. “Hi, I’m Susan and I want to help you find a lawyer!...

Two iPhone owners have filed a putative class action lawsuit against Apple to have their phones unlocked. The lawsuit was filed in Northern California and the plaintiffs charge the iPhone maker with violating antitrust laws by locking the iPhones to voice and data contracts with AT&T Mobility only, reports CNET. When the iPhone first came out, Apple had signed a five-year exclusivity agreement with AT&T. So iPhone owners could only use the phones on AT&T networks and could not move to a different carrier....