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Here’s what we know: Forrest “Jerry” Harris, Jr. was murdered. John Barfield hired either the defendant, Ernest Downs, or his former friend, Larry Johnson, to do the killing. Johnson took a deal for immunity and fingered Downs. Barfield told his cellmate that Johnson did it, but the snitching cellmate’s claims seem to have been ignored until after trial. Downs’s attorney, Richard Brown, took an unethical contingency fee for the case, and presented no defense because he thought his client, and two alibi witnesses, were going to commit perjury (or because he was motivated by that contingency fee)....

In Appleby v. Warden, N. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility, No. 07-7613, the Fourth Circuit was faced with a criminal defendant’s challenge to his sentence of life imprisonment arguing that the recidivist proceeding against him was the consequence of his guilty plea (which he later argued rendered his plea not knowing and involuntary) to drunk-driving related offenses. In denying defendant’s relief, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (WVSCA) held that because “the imposition of a life sentence is not ‘definite, immediate and largely automatic,’” the recidivist proceedings are a collateral consequence of a guilty plea and that the sentencing court did not need to advise a defendant about habitual offender law before accepting a guilty plea to a predicate offense under that law....

Sharon Osbourne, in her memoirs, said that “Ashlie Beringer has got balls of steel,” after Beringer defended Sharon’s husband Ozzy in a lawsuit. Facebook stated, “We have always been impressed with her toughness and commitment to innovation.” They also just hired her to be their Deputy Counsel, and it’s not hard to see why. The BigLaw partner and litigator leaves Gibson Dunn, where she was co-chair of the firm’s Information Technology and Data Privacy practice group, reports TechCrunch....

A First World Problem: my YouTube app took fifteen seconds to buffer before playing cat videos. It seems like a silly thing to whine about. Mobile broadband speeds will vary, not just by carrier, but by reception, network load, and your device itself (LTE, HSPA+, 3G are all commonly in use, and provide less and less speed, respectively). Still, the FCC wants to make sure that customers are getting what they pay for....

If you are interested in learning more about marketing your law firm online, or are seeking better results from the web marketing program you already have, you will want to make time to view a free upcoming webcast. On September 23, 2010, FindLaw will present a one hour webcast: The Keys to Effective Online Legal Marketing. Co-hosted by Florida criminal law attorney Peter Aiken and FindLaw Senior Client Development Consultant Erica Butcher, this webcast will present the basics of online marketing and give you the key insights and strategies for connecting with new clients on the internet....

One high-profile N.Y. lawyer is changing teams – and he is likely to find the new clubhouse a bit cushier than the old one. David Markowitz, a key player on New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s team is headed to Goldman Sachs where he will become associate GC and a senior member of the litigation and regulatory proceedings group. Goldman Sachs is the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, but that doesn’t mean they won’t need to draw heavily on Markowitz’s experience with the AG’s office as well as the SEC....

In case you didn’t know, Hawaiian Kettle Style Potato Chips are made in Washington State. And that’s why there is a new case against the chip maker. The company doesn’t hide the fact that the chips are made in the mainland, but the plaintiffs say it is false advertising to call them “Hawaiian” chips. By motion or settlement, the case could be over before too long. But it’s still a wake-up call for businesses that advertise products using a state name....

The Wall Street Journal calls Mark Hayes a lobbyist for Humana, an insurance company that makes much of it’s revenue off of Medicare. Bloomberg calls him a lobbyist for Greenberg Traurig. He’s also a consultant for an investment research firm, Height Securities. The parties’ intertwined relationships are starting to sound like a Mississippi family tree. That’s a lot of relationships, a lot of emails (stop using email, people! Remember, e-discovery!), and a lot of suspicious happenings....

Lawyer v. Lawyer. Nothing makes for more interesting and relevant case-reading for attorneys. It should have been a required subject in law school. In Selendy v. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, it sounds a little like David v. Goliath. But there is an unlikely cast of characters in this story, and you’re not going to believe who they are. Clawback Fees Of course, it’s a dispute over fees. That’s what lawyers do....

You spend your days dealing with divorces, or insurance claims, or digging through millions of pages of discovery. Then, when it comes time to head to an industry mixer, you’re expected to make small talk with strangers about – what? Sports? The weather? You’d rather not. But if small talk is a big obstacle to you, your business could hurt. After all, networking can be key to bringing in clients and building your name....

Looking for an interesting legal niche? Daniel Balsam found his long before he went to law school. In 2002, Balsam was working as a marketer and became frustrated with the spam emails he constantly received. So did he complain to his friends? Write letters to his senator? Switch to Gmail? No, instead, Balsam started a website called Danhatesspam.com, went to law school, got his law degree and now sues spammers for a living....

Note-taking apps are a matter of personal taste. Some only want simple “Post-it” style notes and are ardent Google fans. For that, Keep is perfect. Others want to incorporate snippets of web pages, audio clips, photos, and robustly-formatted text and charts. Those users, for the longest time, have been attached to Microsoft OneNote, though the bare mobile apps made many flee to upstart Evernote. With this week’s massive updates across the OneNote line, that gap in mobile features has shrunk and the question of which app to use has become even more murky....

PACER: Public Access to Court Electronic Records (if you have money to pay). What is there to say about PACER? It’s horridly inefficient, with each court maintaining its own servers. It has an ancient user interface, straight out of the 1980s. And it costs $0.10 per page, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, at least until you run a docket search on a big class action case and accidently run up $3....

Elite has released ProLaw XII, the newest version of the top One Office software solution for legal professionals. Based entirely on the Microsoft .NET platform, ProLaw XII offers a high level of integration and seamlessness with applications such as Word, Outlook and Excel. The .NET platform is the legal industry standard. A big plus: ProLaw XII can integrate well with Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications. A significant change is that this ProLaw XII version has enhancements to real-time reporting capabilities....

While cyberthreats may be on the rise, you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that you don’t need to buy an RFID blocking backpack, wallet, or anything. Despite the fact that makers of RFID cases will tell you that RFID hacking is happening, nonbiased experts tend to disagree. Most notably, in addition to the fact that this type of hacking is beyond unlikely to actually happen to you, plain old tin-foil can apparently be more effective than some RFID blocking offerings sold on the market....

The way Bookings works is not so different from how you might schedule a haircut, doctor’s appointment, or dinner reservation these days — online and fairly seamlessly. Could it work for a law firm? How Bookings Works The idea behind Bookings is somewhat simple: it gives you a single place where clients can go to book an appointment, along with tools for you to manage that process. And, since it’s Microsoft, it integrates into the Office 365 platform....

Just when you were getting a handle on Windows 7, Microsoft decides to update its popular operating system. Windows 8 is going to mark some stark changes for the OS. Chief among them is the new “Metro” user interface. Microsoft is really pushing their new touched-based UI as the next big thing in home and office computing. But the changes might not all be for the better for attorneys and consumers alike....

Not every lateral hire will turn out to be a Jeffrey Wertkin. Akin Gump hired Wertkin away from the U.S. Justice Department because of his trial experience and knowledge about whistleblower cases. He was supposed to be a partner that would boost firm business, especially in the health care industry. It turned out to be more than a Wertkin process when a year later he was arrested for trying to sell confidential court records for $310,000....

Attaining a cost-effective legal department doesn’t have to be a corporate pipe-dream, according to a new analysis by the Corporate Executive Board. CEB surveyed 180 in-house departments around the globe and examined the corporate practices of departments with the highest and lowest expenses. What they discovered were efficiency trends every legal department should watch for. Perform more legal work in-house. A reliable tool to trim the financial fat is to have in-house staff roll up their shirt sleeves a little further up and do the work outside counsel currently manage....

Hey, world: Clean out your inbox! I subscribe to, and routinely evangelize about, Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” technique of email filing. It’s a simple way of organizing your email that results in fewer headaches. Basically, if you can’t get something done in two minutes, file it for later. Once you read an email and there’s no further action to be taken, delete it or archive it. Then use the time you save to look smugly down at all those people who use their Inbox to store all their emails....