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Facebook now has half a billion (with a “b”) users worldwide. New lawsuits and evidence are born on the website every time someone posts to a Wall online. Here’s another example of how Facebook litigation is fast becoming the wave of the future. After Lucinda Williams outfitted her 7-year-old daughter with Jolly Rancher hair, she sent her off to Chicago’s Overton Elementary for its scheduled picture day. Unfortunately, the girl’s computer teacher was amused by the look, taking a photo to share with her Facebook friends....

Working Mother has declared the third Tuesday of National Work and Family Month, National Flex Day. As the first year noting this momentous occasion, tomorrow is National Flex Day, a day to promote the “power of flexible work arrangements.” Earlier this year, Working Mother and Flex Time Lawyers released their annual survey 50 Best Law Firms for Women. One of the overwhelming factors that set the firms on the list apart was the availability of flex time and reduced hours....

When crypto investors are looking for some advice, the SEC has made it abundantly clear, Floyd “Crypto” Mayweather shouldn’t be on anyone’s list of trusted crypto advisers. Despite the boxing great giving himself that ridiculous nickname, his endorsement deal with Centra turned out to be a really bad move, as did the other deals he made to endorse other cryptos. Centra was recently charged by the SEC with fraud and non-compliance in connection with its ICO, and Mayweather and DJ Khaled (who were likely hyped on becoming a Bitcoin billionaire) both got swept up and heavily fined for their endorsements....

A number of Silicon Valley heavyweights joined forces on Tuesday to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), a new bill introduced late last month. Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, AOL, Zynga and LinkedIn are urging members of the House Judiciary Committee to reconsider the bill, which they say will curb innovation and job-creation. Known as the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate (S. 968), the bill is an attempt to give intellectual property holders a better way to fight foreign websites that infringe on American intellectual property....

Email can be a time-killer, so why not fight back? When junk mail starts to outnumber legit mail, it’s time to put them to sleep with the fishes. And what about those old emails that keep hanging around like cheap friends? You don’t have time for this! But you don’t wanna whack the good guys, so whatta you gonna do? Well, say hello to my little friends: Options Before you start an email massacre, look at your options for junk mail on your email program....

Clients who don’t get everything they wanted. Clients who think they shouldn’t have to pay everything you asked them to. Clients whose friends – armchair lawyers, all – tell them to. What do all of those people have in common? They’re in the class of “people who are most likely to file a bar complaint against you.” The bar complaint is a Sword of Damocles that clients think they can hang above attorneys to get what they want, including out of a fee agreement....

Most lawyers communicate primarily through email. At the same time, lawyers need to take reasonable efforts to prevent disclosure of client communications and information. Are these two things in conflict? Potentially. It’s fair to say that email isn’t the world’s most secure communication system. For one, the NSA regularly intercepts attorney-client emails, by its own admission. Then there’s the risks posed by hackers, by snooping email tracking software, by your firm’s noisy IT intern....

It’s been 25 years since a University of Michigan Ph.D. student named Thomas Knoll and his brother John, then a visual effects supervisor at ILM, created a program for displaying images on a black-and-white display. That little program for Mac OS 6 was Adobe Photoshop, and after 15 versions, it’s going well beyond just displaying images. Photoshop is the industry standard for photo manipulation, and indeed, is now a verb for the act of digitally altering a photo....

When it comes to the administration of, and access to, justice, the City of San Francisco and Code for America are leading the way, at least for those individuals convicted of marijuana possession from 1975 to present. The city and tech NPO have teamed up to test Code for America’s algorithm that promises to evaluate these marijuana convictions to check each one’s eligibility for expungement due to the 2016 change in the state’s marijuana laws permitting recreational use for those over the age of 21....

Ask not whether legal research can be done your smartphone. Ask only how to choose the right app. Let’s narrow it down. Smartphone users can already do generic word processing, email, GPS, and file storage. Lawyers share these tasks with others. But focusing just on legal research, three applications for smart phones stand out. LawBox: Available through iTunes, this library provides free iPhone access to current statutes of California, New York, Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Florida and Delaware....

Humanity (and humanity’s spambots) send out over 196 billion emails ever day. Your share is probably a few dozen – maybe 100 or so if you’re unlucky. Email has fast become one of the primary ways we communicate, whether it’s about mundane lunch plans or sensitive legal topics. But for all its ubiquity, email sometimes falls short on security, so short that some professional organizations tell their members to stick to the post when dealing with sensitive or confidential information....

Way back in 2014, Segway filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, alleging that imported Chinese “hoverboards” violated its patents. Now, that complaint has started to bear fruit. Yesterday, the ITC issued a general exclusion order banning most self-balancing hoverboards from being imported into American borders. The exclusion order could have far reaching and substantial effects, not least of which is making people look less stupid getting from point A to point B....

Defendant’s bank robbery conviction and sentence are affirmed where 1) the district court properly concluded that there was sufficient information to establish probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant; 2) there was no evidence that the district court made an erroneous ruling regarding the prosecution’s peremptory challenges that required immediate correction; and 3) there was substantial evidence from which a reasonable fact finder could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt....

When it comes to unplugging, most people think off-the-grid vacationing in the mountains, or on some remote beach. After all, unplugging from work on vacation is really important. But, unplugging while at work can be good for business in a lot of different scenarios that don’t involve getting lost in the woods with your co-workers when you only have enough provisions for the next two hours. Some companies value the benefit from employees taking time off so much that taking vacation is mandatory, but not many companies encourage unplugging while on company time....

Flying cars are so lit. In the immortal words of Will Smith, “I’ve got to get me one of these!” In that sci-fi movie, the good guys take an alien craft and save the world. In real life, however, flying cars could be a legal nightmare. For example, Uber is leading the way with plans for a flying taxi. But didn’t we see this movie already, and wasn’t it a disaster?...

If you attended college at least after the late 1990s, you probably remember that one or more of your professors made excerpts from books available in “electronic reserve” by scanning the relevant pages and turning them into PDFs that only students enrolled in the course could access. At the time, you might not have wondered whether the practice was lawful. Well, even if you didn’t wonder that, the Eleventh Circuit has your answer in a 129-page opinion: “Maybe....

The Pipeline Parity Project has scored another big victory in the fight to eradicate the scourge that is arbitration for law firm employees. This week, Kirkland and Ellis announced that it would no longer require arbitration for staff, adding on to their announcement last month that it would no longer require arbitration for summer and regular associates. Curiously, there’s still no word about whether the arbitration clauses at Kirkland will apply to partners with gender discrimination or sexual harassment claims....

A guy wants a pistol. His nephew gets a law enforcement discount, so he gives the nephew the money to purchase the gun. The pistol is then legally transferred to the uncle, saving that uncle money. The nephew is later charged with multiple federal crimes. The Fourth Circuit upheld his punishment earlier this week. So what was the false statement? Question 11.a. on ATF Form 4473 asks: So, how did the Feds find out about this familial transfer?...

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Generally, when responding to discovery production demands, including the production of electronic information, the responding party in US litigation must pay the freight of its own production, even though requested by the other side. As parties to litigation are finding out, this can be tremendously expensive. But, a federal court has held recently that electronic discovery expenses can be recovered by the prevailing party, just like standard copying costs....

Borges v. Serano-Isern, No.09-1699, concerned a plaintiffs’ medical malpractice suit against a doctor and a hospital, claiming that the doctor’s negligence in his delay in calling for and performing the C-section resulted in numerous physical and neurological injuries to their daughter. However, because plaintiffs have failed to present any developed argumentation with respect to the Hospital’s liability, they have waived their claim that the district court erred in granting the Hospital’s motion for summary judgment....