Posts

The First Circuit decided a case last week that may result in a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court. The case deals with the intersection of the First Amendment and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (“AETA”), and whether the plaintiffs actually have standing to challenge the Act. AETA and the First Amendment A group of individual animal rights activists are challenging the AETA arguing the Act violates the First Amendment on three grounds: (1) the Act is overbroad on its face and as applied; (2) the Act discriminates based on viewpoint and content; and (3) the Act is void for vagueness on its face and as applied....

AOL, a Verizon-owned company, has agreed to pay a fine of $4.95 million for helping advertisers track children online. It sounds like a lot of money, but it also sounds criminal. Isn’t “tracking children” the same as “stalking children”? Technically, they are different but in the court of public opinion it is all bad. And for Verizon, it’s all the same: more bad news. Children’s Privacy Verizon is paying for the largest-ever fine under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act....

No one likes to wake up to a full inbox. Scratch that. No one likes to wake up to a full inbox of useless information hiding their important e-mails. It wastes time and there’s always the risk of deleting something essential. Think about this the next time you send a client alert. At a recent marketing forum, in-house lawyers made it very clear that nobody reads client alerts. While some said that they have no time to read them, others resent the number that end up in their mailbox....

Are you thinking about hiring your first (or next) contract attorney? How can you be sure that he or she is actually an independent contractor and not an employee? The IRS has compiled a list that can help. Misclassifying your worker as an independent contractor can lead to some dire consequences. In one case, a law firm had to pay $160,000 when it failed to prove that its so-called “contract” attorneys were truly independent contractors, according to the Oregon State Bar....

Are in house lawyers wearing too many hats? Are you? Take a second to evaluate just what you do for your current company. Do you provide legal advice? What about business advice? And to whom? Are you advising the Board of Directors and the Chief Executive Officer as an individual? This may seem like an unnecessary barrage of questions, but they’re incredibly important. Regulators and investors are out for blood, and you may just be exposing yourself to potential liability....

Quick analogy: Windows is to your computer like Open SSL, Open SSH, Bind, and other open-source packages are to the Internet as a whole. Your computer runs on Windows, while web apps, servers, e-commerce sites, and pretty much the entire Internet, runs on these collections of open-source code. But while Microsoft, as the owner and vendor of Windows, is responsible for patching up security bugs in the consumer operating system, who is responsible for finding and fixing security bugs in these widely-used, free, open-source packages?...

Eighteen months ago, a bundle of joy arrived on my doorstep. At the time, I couldn’t have anticipated how much such a tiny thing would change my life. I didn’t know that it would make me healthier and happier. And more competitive. So much more competitive. Of course, I’m talking about my FitBit. We mainly talk about apps and gadget for your legal practice on this blog, but you also (hopefully) have a life outside of your office....

While the swarms of Pokemon Go players aren’t as plentiful anymore, Augmented Reality, or AR, isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the newest iteration of Apple’s iPad Pro and newest OS, iOS 11, will feature a whole host of tools for app developers to make AR apps. However, whether AR will prove to be useful in the courtroom is yet to be seen. Technically, it is rather complex, but in essence, AR overlays images onto the video that your phone captures....

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seems hung up on the “reasonable” aspect of “unreasonable search and seizure.” Case in point: Last week, the Fourth Circuit ruled that it is unreasonable to cut a bag of drugs off of a suspect’s penis with a knife at night, and suppressed the evidence under the exclusionary rule. When you finish cringing at the thought of this scenario, we’ll move on to the facts....

Am. Dental Assn. v. Cigna Corp., No. 09-12033, involved an action by dentists against managed care plans alleging that defendants engaged in a fraudulent scheme to reduce payments to plaintiffs. The court of appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, on the grounds that 1) plaintiffs did not point to a single specific misrepresentation by defendants regarding how plaintiffs would be compensated in any of the challenged communications, nor did they allege the manner in which they were misled by the documents; and 2) the allegations in plaintiffs’ complaint did not support an inference of an agreement to the overall objective of the conspiracy or an agreement to commit the predicate acts....

Looking to fill job vacancies at your in-house department? Look no further than promoting your current employees, who will likely outperform external hires and can save you money, a new study suggests. “My research documents some quite substantial costs to external hires and some substantial benefits to internal mobility,” the study’s author, Matthew Bidwell of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, said in a statement. External hires may seem more attractive because they bring new skills or a new perspective to your in-house operation....

In an action challenging Maine’s free care laws and the MaineCare program as uncompensated takings of property, district court judgment is affirmed where: 1) the court properly rejected plaintiff’s takings challenge to Maine’s free care laws as the laws do not effect a per se taking since the hospital is not required to serve low income patients and there is no allegation that the regulations remove all economically beneficial uses of the property, and do not effect an ad hoc taking under the Penn Central analysis; and 2) the court properly dismissed plaintiff’s argument that the reimbursement rate it receives under the MaineCare program is an unconstitutional taking as there is no coercive financial incentive to participate in MaineCare and thus plaintiff’s participation in the program is voluntary....

The Federal Trade Commission already has fairly strict regulations for children on the Internet, and it looks like they may do the same with mobile apps for kids. Back in February the FTC reported that apps made for kids weren’t meeting expectations when it comes to disclosures. The agency wanted greater information for parents about data privacy prior to download and on the app itself. It’s been almost year now, but the FTC’s new report isn’t any more positive....

Outten & Golden – it brought you November’s Black Swan intern suit, and now it’s bringing you a little something more. The firm is representing a former unpaid intern at Hearst Corporation’s Harper’s Bazaar. That intern, Xuedan Wang, accuses the company of violating wage and labor laws by not paying her to work full time. She is also seeking class action status with hopes of adding unpaid interns at other Hearst publications, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Seventeen....

As reported by Bloomberg, billionaire Wall Street investor George Soros has found a way to make a good return on low-level, low-risk personal injury lawsuits. Unfortunately, what Soros is doing isn’t likely to be something that attorneys will be able to get in on, but there could be some benefits down the road. Soros Fund Management has backed Mighty Group, which works at the level directly above the small litigation finance operations advancing money to plaintiffs in personal injury actions....

Kevin O’Keefe, a 20-year veteran of legal marketing, recently had an epiphany about artificial intelligence. Emerging from an annual Legal Marketing Association meeting, he realized it was the first year anyone had mentioned AI. “AI and machine learning may have been discussed in relation to e-discovery, but this year there were multiple sessions with legal technology and software presenting on AI,” he said. What does that mean? It means lawyers haven’t really been using AI to market their law firms....

Two months plus $200 million equals one sea change. That’s the math for a notable shift in legal tech. In the past two months, investors have poured in almost $200 million to legal tech startups. It hasn’t always been that way. In fact, last year startups were at a 30-year low. So what happened? Game Not Over? But now come big bucks for firms like Exterro, Seal Software, and Everlaw. They raked in more than $155 million in funding them in May and June....

It was a dark and stormy night for attorney Ilya Liviz. Frustrated with courts turning down his appeals, he decided to file a complaint written in the form of a screenplay. In the end, the court was not entertained. Liviz faces sanctions for the “novel” complaint and potentially filing frivolous complaints. He said he just wanted an audience. Frustrated Screenwriters Like many frustrated screenwriters, Liviz thought he had a winner. He filed his suit on behalf of a client he called “Grandma” in the complaint....

For all the talk about lawyers lagging in technology, it’s nice to see that many law firms are leading in at least one area: remote work. According to reports, more than half of the attorneys at the best law firms work remotely. That includes partners, associates, and of counsel logging in from desktops and laptops at home. “Remote work is the most popular flex option among both male and female lawyers at every level, and it is offered by all of our top firms,” says Working Mother’s 2017 Best Law Firms for Women....

Though there are signs of an improving economy, layoffs continue to persist at an alarming rate. The pharmaceutical industry saw thousands of layoffs in 2011, and a number of companies have kept up the layoff trend in 2012. If your company hasn’t instituted layoffs, it might be time to prepare. With the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cracking down and employee lawsuits on the rise, it’s important that you review and make any of the following policy changes before laying off employees....