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By now, many of you have heard of Prenda Law. The porn-trolling “law firm” spent years sending demand letters to (and filing boilerplate lawsuits against) those who illegally downloaded porn. Many of the letters contained shades of blackmail, with hints that their investigation of the matter would reveal that person’s pornographic proclivities to neighbors and relatives if a settlement wasn’t reached quickly. The legal basis of the scheme was simple: The lawyers acquired the copyrights to pornographic films and assigned the rights to a number of newly-formed shell companies, such as Ingenuity 13....

Thomas Robbins filed a class action lawsuit against Spokeo back in 2011, but his case has not made it very far due to being held up on appeals. Robbins v. Spokeo even made it all the way up to the Supreme Court last year, before being sent back to the Ninth Circuit again for further analysis. Now, the Ninth Circuit has finished that further analysis and issued their opinion, sending the case back to the lower district court to proceed on the merits....

Companies stand to benefit tremendously from proper utilization of social media. This was a key inference from a study that McKinsey and Company, a sector consulting firm, conducted a few years ago. In-house counsel would do well by their client to arm themselves with tools such as social media dashboards. A dashboard can help to quickly gather information about clients and potential new hires. These days, in-house attorneys are using LinkedIn and law blogs to find new staff....

Right now, and for the past week, Austin has been the place to be. With SXSW going on, the annual conference on all things interactive (and musical), the gathering has had its share of legal news. Here are some of the legal highlights of SXSW. Silk Road Founder’s Mom Appeals to Attendees Last October, Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder of Silk Road was indicted on charges ranging from money laundering, conspiracy to distribute drugs, and hiring someone to commit murder....

A new year is upon us. Lawyers are analytical folk by nature, so at this time of the year we spend a lot of time thinking about what is past and what may be coming next. But what if what’s next is a blank slate? What if you have just had it with practicing law and your what next is more like “what the hell do I do now?” Not to fear, we have been there, done that....

Strippers may not be the only employees who get paid to take off their clothes. Depending on the outcome in a Supreme Court case next term, workers who are required to wear protective clothing for safety reasons could get paid for donning and doffing their clothes at the beginning and end of the workday. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that workers be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked, and time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40 hours in a week....

Mere months after denying habeas relief to a mentally retarded inmate facing death, and weeks after that inmate’s execution was put on hold for other reasons, the Eleventh Circuit faced another Atkins claim, this time from a man who was denied access to mental health experts. That strategy almost cost him his life. The evidence of Burgess’ retardation includes one I.Q. test, which measured 66, and the government expert’s estimate of somewhere between 70 and 80, as well as the mixed evidence of adaptive behavior (he progressed through 9th grade, though he failed most of his special education courses, he worked as a welder in prison, but had little other vocational success, etc....

What’s the biggest divorce you’ve ever handled? A million-dollar pie? A billion-dollar pie? Try $14 billion, the net worth of oil tycoon Harold Hamm. Hamm. The CEO and majority shareholder of Continental Resources is breathing a sign of relief after an Oklahoma court held that his now-ex-wife would only receive $1 billion in their divorce. Yes, only $1 billion – yeesh. Here are a few other fun facts about this massive, massive divorce case:...

Now that the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri has decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown, there were protests, and there will be more protests. As a lawyer, you might be representing one of any number of groups affected by the protests, whether they’re business owners in areas where people are gathering; crime victims; or the protestors themselves. Here’s some basic and practical advice you can give to each of these clients....

In Chicago, teachers are staying away from school. In Alabama, the governor wants students to stay away. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley announced this week that the state has filed petitions requesting en banc review of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decisions on the Alabama immigration law, WSFA reports. The state claims that court shouldn’t have nixed provisions that addressed contracting with illegal immigrants, harboring undocumented immigrants, and verifying school children’s immigration statuses....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. American universities are being bombarded by cyberattacks, according to a recent New York Times article. These universities are being hit with millions of hacking attempts per week, and some of those attempts have succeeded in obtaining personal and other data. Unfortunately, at times these data compromises are not discovered until long after the fact, if at all....

The Trump administration is without a doubt the most watched presidency in history. President Donald has already earned more prime time minutes, column inches, and radio coverage than any other public figure – $817 million worth of free coverage in January alone, according to mediaQuant. But it’s not just the fourth estate that’s tracking the Trump administration’s every move. There are a host of online apps available for monitoring the Twitterer-in-Chief, focused on the legal changes the new regime is making....

On Thursday, July 15 a New York judge sentenced attorney Lynne Stewart to a much harsher punishment than the one originally given her in 2006. Stewart was convicted of aiding her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, in contacting his organization, Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, and willingly and knowingly supporting the cleric’s “efforts to continue to lead the Islamic Group from his jail cell.” Judge John Koeltl sentenced Stewart to 10 years in prison, according to Reuters....

Super PACs are playing a huge role in the 2012 election, and some wealthy attorneys and law firms are helping to foot the bill. Super political action committees, created in part by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, reported their activities for the last quarter of 2011 to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, The New York Times reports. The filings list the super PACs’ major donors – many of whom are attorneys and law firms....

In Pleasures of San Patricio, Inc. v. Mendez-Torres, No. 08-2388, the First Circuit faced plaintiff’s constitutional challenge to the Puerto Rico’s cigarette excise tax recently imposed on “little cigars” imported from North Carolina. Under the Butler Act: “No suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax imposed by the laws of Puerto Rico shall be maintained in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico....

On Friday, PACER stopped. And the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ website stopped. And many of the Circuit Courts of Appeals’ sites crashed. It was a full-blown outage, first reported as a hack, then as a glitch, then again, as a hack. Either way, somebody broke it. Fortunately, it was Friday afternoon. Many of you probably didn’t even notice. We barely did, and that was because we are on the West Coast, and were still open for business....

Last year, a federal district court sentenced former state senator Dianne Wilkerson to 3 1/2 years in prison on charges of political corruption. On April 5, 2012, the First Circuit Court of Appeals revisited Wilkerson’s sentencing, and upheld the lower court’s decision. When the district court initially sentenced Wilkerson, it issued its reasoning in detail. On appeal, Wilkerson’s defense team questioned three of the district court’s comments. Wilkerson was a state Senator in Massachusetts when she was arrested by federal agents in 2008....

Two Types of Speech Human speech and robot speech? Where is that in the casebook? It may soon become part of First Amendment jurisprudence because the court will have to address the question. And it is more serious than a $200 desktop device. The defendant in the case, James Andrew Bates, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of a man who was found face down in Bates’ bathtub. Victor Parris Collins, an autopsy revealed, died of strangulation and drowning....

An ethics opinion out of Texas has drawn a lot of scrutiny over its ban on managerial titles for nonlawyers (e.g., Chief Technical Officer) in firms – indeed, we had a lot of fun coming up with alternative titles for CTOs – but the opinion also pointed out another area where firms can get into trouble with nonlawyer ownership and management prohibitions: bonus structures. Contingent bonuses are target of the opinion, and if your firm bases bonus on revenue, you might want to reconsider....

‘Keep your passwords to yourself’ is the moral of a ruling this week on whether an employer can be liable for taking over your LinkedIn account. Linda Eagle gave her LinkedIn password to a coworker while she still employed at Edcomm so that she could get some help managing the account. But Eagle was later fired from that job. After she was dismissed Eagle’s coworker changed the password on her LinkedIn account and the company changed the name and photo on the account to match the person replacing Eagle....