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The merger between Comcast and Time Warner may have hit some rocky shoals, The New York Times and other outlets have been reporting all weekend. Sources inside the Justice Department, which has the final say over whether merger would go through, are skeptical of the deal because it would give the new company “just under 30 percent of the country’s pay television subscribers” and “an estimated 35 to 50 percent of the nation’s broadband Internet service,” according to the Times....

A team of tech-savvy lawmakers is requesting a Carrier IQ Congressional hearing about potential privacy risks facing millions of U.S. smartphone users. The call for a Carrier IQ hearing follows weeks of online and offline debate about Carrier IQ and its software’s effects. The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee now gets to decide whether to hold a Congressional hearing, PCWorld reports. It’s not clear when he’ll announce a decision....

Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. Maybe your client is insisting on taking an unethical route in pressing or defending against a claim. Or perhaps, she simply hasn’t paid you. Unfortunately, ending representation isn’t as easy as walking out, or saying, “I quit.” There are, obviously, quite a few ethical considerations involved. Plus, if litigation has already commenced, you’ll likely have to get permission from the court to withdraw from the case....

Scott v. Roberts, No. 10-13211, concerned an emergency appeal from the denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction by Richard Scott, a candidate for the Republican Party for Governor of the State of Florida, against the Florida Election Campaign Financing Act. The court of appeals reversed on the ground that Davis required Florida to justify its excess spending subsidy by reference to an anticorruption interest, but Florida could not satisfy its burden of establishing that its subsidy furthered that interest in the least restrictive manner possible....

Cybersecurity experts say you can’t totally, 100 percent protect your electronic information. Considering Yahoo, Google, and Facebook have famously failed at it, the experts seem to know what they’re talking about. Not even the U.S. government – with all its military intelligence – can guarantee complete cybersecurity. So, time to throw out the smart device and go live in a forest. Really. No, really. Internet of Things If we learned anything from the Terminator movies, it’s that technology can be really scary....

So what did the superior court judge, company president, and general counsel say when they walked into a room together? While this might look like the start of an amusing lawyer joke, The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel’s recent interview with the three sheds invaluable light on the role of in-house counsel in ADR and litigation. The three were asked to give their perspectives on whether in-house counsel should establish expertise in arbitration and mediation, or rather, look to outside counsel for ADR services....

District court’s refusal to quash a grand jury subpoena duces tecum seeking documents from a sitting Congressman’s Chief of Staff is affirmed as, even if the congressional office is deemed to be a sole proprietorship, the Congressman is not entitled to bar his Chief of Staff from producing the documents to a grand jury by invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege, because as a sole proprietor, he could not assert Fifth Amendment privilege to quash a subpoena served on the Chief of Staff who had actual possession of the documents and was responsible for preparing and maintaining them....

This is something you don’t see every day. Last week, we told you about the impending Apple antitrust trial over claims that the company used anticompetitive tactics, including DRM-protected songs sold via iTunes, to keep iPod prices high in the mid-2000s. The trial began as scheduled, but the parties and the court ran into a little problem: The class representative plaintiffs turned out to not be plaintiffs at all – they were all ineligible....

When it comes to a mother’s rights, it’s fair to say that necessity is the mother of invention. It’s not like every law school teaches it – maternity, delivery, or reproductive rights. If lawyers want to practice in the area, it’s because they feel the need. The good news is that reproductive law is an emerging practice. That’s because justice required it. “Grave Need” for Lawyers According to reports, a “shocking number of women” are dying in childbirth....

That Hawaiian judge stopped President Trump – again. Judge Derrick Watson, slighted by Trump’s legal general as that “judge sitting on an island in the Pacific,” blocked the president’s controversial travel ban in March. The Trump administration appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily allowed a modified ban, but one issue came back to Watson: What about relatives of U.S. citizens who travel from those Muslim-majority nations? Watson struck the administration’s ban on certain relatives, and the U....

If you want to find the cutting edge of law and technology, don’t only look to BigLaw Bitcoin practices, AI innovators, or even lawyers turned techies. Look to corporate legal departments, as well. A shift in corporate culture is driving in-house legal departments to “invest more than ever before in refining their operations to deliver more efficient and predictable legal services,” according to Inside Counsel. And, in doing so, many of those legal departments are forging the legal tech frontier....

Judge James D. Gibbons, a popular Manhattan criminal court judge, has resigned from his judicial post amid a porn scandal. The 47 year-old judge sent in his letter of resignation after court officials discovered a large amount pornography on his work computer. He was off on paternity leave during the discovery. Gibbons recently fathered a child with Legal Aid lawyer Jeanne Emhoff, 31, in what has been described by the press as an “ethics-skirting romance....

A Netflix settlement in a class-action lawsuit includes changes to the streaming movie company’s privacy policy and a $9 million payout, the website Ars Technica reports. Most of Netflix’s 27 million U.S. subscribers, however, won’t see a penny. About $2.25 million of the Netflix settlement will pay for attorney’s fees, while the two named plaintiffs in the class-action suit will split $30,000, according to Ars Technica. So where will the rest of the money go?...

Bartending isn’t exactly a path to fame and fortune, but it can pay the bills. In our college days, the bartenders at our favorite bar – which, admittedly, fell on the swankier end of the college-bar spectrum – took in $500 in tips each night on home football game weekends. That’s $500 on top of their 50-cent minimum wage, (or whatever the minimum wage was then). No matter how lucrative the tips are, an employer must still pay a tipped employee a minimum wage, which is currently $2....

Rene Valeriano Diaz Sanchez has been removed from the U.S. three times. He thinks that he should get a break on his unlawful reentry sentence for the most recent infraction due to the extenuating circumstances surrounding his return. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagrees. Diaz Sanchez was removed from the U.S. in 2006. He alleged that, upon returning to his native El Salvador, he opened a restaurant and became the target of a Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gang extortion attempt....

If you have Windows 7 on your computer, your operating system will soon die. Microsoft will send you a formal invitation to the funeral next month. Technically speaking, it means the company will no longer offer security updates. So your operating system won’t exactly crash and burn, but you will get courtesy reminders that technical support is ending. You should probably click “do not notify me again,” or you may want to kill the computer yourself....

In a case that is somewhat reminiscent of Citizens United, which revolves around the amorphous notion what constitutes valid speech, the 11th Circuit just ruled that a lower court abused its discretion when it did not quash subpoena’s against state officials and granted them the benefit of doubt of privilege. The subpoenas were directed at lawmakers; they alleged that the Act violated the First Amendment rights of the Alabama Education Association (AEA) because of alleged bad faith....

Investors poured more than $5.4 billion into fintech startups – in the first three months of 2018. That’s not just a lot of money; it’s a trend. Fintech investment jumped nearly five times higher in the past seven years, topping out at $27.5 billion in 2017. At the current pace, it could surpass that number this year. The $64,000 question for startups is: May we have more, please? $64,000 Question Of course, no one knows where all the investor money will go....

Data Breaches. Nearly every state has some form of a data breach law that requires companies to notify consumers if data is lost or someone gains access to the company’s databases.Protection of Social Security Numbers. Some states have passed laws requiring companies to protect the social security numbers of their customers and employees.Adherence to Privacy Policies. If you publish a privacy policy for your website, you’d better abide by...

There are two major components to practicing law: handling the case so the client doesn’t have to, and communicating with the client just what it is you’re doing. Both can be overwhelming. Now add the fact that you have to keep track of what you told the client just to make sure you’re following best practices. This underscores something that every lawyer should know – but not all lawyers do: documentation of client communications....