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Capital Habeas Petition In In re: Lambrix, No. 10-14476, a capital habeas matter, the court denied petitioner’s application to the Court of Appeals for leave to file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. section 2254 federal habeas petition, holding that 1) petitioner failed to allege what evidence was new, when it was discovered, or how it could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence; and 2) the evidence presented by petitioner was not sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable jury would have found petitioner guilty of the underlying murders....

By Jay Kozie and Stan Rabin Should an upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows 7 be on the list of New Year’s resolutions at your law firm? With the rollout of Microsoft’s new operating system, it’s time to think about whether your current version of Windows will meet your firm’s needs or if it is time to invest in an upgrade. For firms running either Microsoft’s previous system, Vista, or the older platform, Windows XP, the question will be when, not if, they upgrade to Windows 7....

With the legal job market looking more and more dismal for new graduates, some law schools are changing up their curriculum. Instead of preparing students for law firm life, some are offering in house counsel classes. Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law is one such institution. Last spring it invited Bruno Bich to teach a course on how to practice law for a corporation. Bich is chairman of Bic, as in the French company that makes pens and razors....

In honor of National Relaxation Day on Friday (August 15) – yes that is a thing – we thought we would cover a book that the ABA sent us to review: “Yoga for Lawyers: Mind-Body Techniques to Feel Better All the Time.”* What better way to unwind than to wind yourself up into a human pretzel? Jokes aside, I’ve been practicing yoga for more than 10 years, and the benefits are both physical and mental....

It’s not uncommon for lawyers to need a bit of legal advice from time to time, and, unless we’re lucky, when we turn to our colleagues we get a bit of short but painfully true advice, usually in five words or less. And when you’re on the other side of that call for some legal advice from a fellow practitioner, you might wish you knew more of those quick, simple, this-is-all-I’m-going-to-say-about-that, canned language you can use....

While you may have to set aside dreams of the corner office aside for now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t put a little effort into making your workspace look nice. Since you likely spend most of your waking hours in your office or cubicle, take some time to make it serene and comfortable. Here are a few tricks to making your law office or cubicle a place where you want to put in some time....

Petition for review of final order from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) is denied where: 1) asylum claims were time-barred; 2) a challenges to denial of withholding of removal failed; and 3) the BIA did not abuse its discretion in declining to remand in light of new country conditions evidence where it considered the evidence and concluded that it failed to establish a substantial likelihood of different result upon remand....

Lawyers know better than to call a judge a … succubus? If you didn’t know, a succubus is a mythical female demon that has sex with men in their sleep. But even if you didn’t know that, you know you can’t say just anything about a judge. At least not in writing; that’s where Benjamin Pavone went wrong. He said it in a brief. Gender Bias? Pavone was upset with Carmen Luege, a temporary judge in Orange County, California....

A common problem for our nation’s servicemen and women is the issues that arise from international love. They fall for someone while stationed abroad but run into legal barriers with immigration, international family law, custody, and divorce if things progress through marriage and divorce. Sgt. Jeffrey Lee Chafin fell in love with Lynne Hales Chafin when he was stationed abroad. The couple married and had a child before he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2007....

What did the rumors say? $9 billion? Try $324 million, a cheap price for Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe, who probably would’ve spent that much on lawyers during the trial, which was only a few weeks away. It smells like a nuisance settlement, which is extremely curious considering the now-public smoking gun emails between the companies’ executives and the length of the conspiracy, which stretched on for years. The backroom agreements finally ended in 2010 when the Department of Justice intervened, but for years, the biggest employers in Silicon Valley conspired to depress wages....

If you didn’t get enough of Stand Your Ground debates over the last two years, after Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal, we have good news for you: it’s back in the headlines in two states. The word out of Georgia is that a state lawmaker plans to introduce a bill to repeal the state’s version of the law, while in Florida, the question is whether Curtis Reeves, the retired Tampa police officer who allegedly shot and killed a man for texting in a movie theater, would have a plausible claim under Florida’s version of the law....

When does a stupid patent become a really stupid patent? When a court orders the stupid patent-holder to pay an alleged infringer’s attorneys’ fees, that’s when. And so it is with the “Internet drink mixer,” also called a “Stupid Patent of the Month” by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A federal appeals court said Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations must pay $43,000 for attorneys’ fees as sanctions because the company willfully ignored pre-existing descriptions of its claimed invention....

Legal process outsourcing is a growing trend, according to Staff.com, as it “is emerging as a lower cost and fast growing alternative to the traditional model,” (they even have an snazzy infographic to prove it). Has your company used legal process outsourcing? Interested? Here are some basics on determining whether legal process outsourcing is right for your company. Why Use Legal Process Outsourcing? The main reason to use legal process outsourcing is cost....

In this post, Corporate Technology Counsel for Fios, Mary Mack, discusses the differences between electronic discovery and computer forensic services, and gives some tips for choosing which service to employ for different types of matters. While negotiating the scope of discovery in the early “meet and confer” stages, you may already have limited the potentially responsive data universe to a certain type of data. The following table outlines the four main types of data and their characteristics:...

Boy meets girl. Both are teens. He, however, is seventeen. She, like the Taylor Swift song, is only fifteen. Somebody in Prince William County, Virginia, however, is not a fan of teenage love (or lust). Now, because the young man did what lots of young people do with their smartphones, and responded to his former girlfriend’s photos with a video of his penis, he’s facing two felony child porn charges and the possibility of being a registered sex offender....

Viacom is bringing in a new general for reinforcements in its ongoing anti piracy fight. The company hired Daniel Mandil, who was the Motion Pictures Association of America’s top antipiracy executive. Mandil had played a major role in helping the MPAA fight movie piracy and counterfeiting worldwide, The Hollywood Reporter reports. According to a source with connections to the MPAA, Mandil was not pushed out and the “organization is sad to see him go,” Thewrap....

The federal minimum wage stands at a paltry $7.25 an hour. But while the federal government might be fine with you paying so little, some states recently have instituted drastic increases to their minimum wages. Just last week, California and New York both adopted new laws setting a $15 minimum wage. That’s a major change to the status quo – an almost livable minimum wage, set to roll out over the next few years....

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith does not like hearing that judicial review is “unprecedented.” Judge Smith was clearly irked when President Obama commented on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Like any diligent student, Attorney General Eric Holder submitted his assignment on time....

For most incoming law students, 1L starts in just a few weeks. At this point, you’re probably figuring out apartment leases, moving trucks, and tying up loose ends in your current living situation. But when 1L arrives, you’ll want to be prepared and ready to jump right in. A couple of weeks ago, we have you a list of supplies to get you started, but being the resident geek in the building, I figured a little tech talk was also in order....

As a lawyer, the obvious way to pick up more business is to get more clients, but another effective way to get more work is to earn an additional certification. There are several areas of law in which clients need the help of another professional to get things done. But in some of those situations, you can provide both services for your client so there’s no need for them to go somewhere else for help....