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In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, no lawyers emerged as heroes. It rarely happens when disasters strike anyway because most often attorneys arrive later to make a case. But there is no bleeding in the courtroom. Sometimes, however, lawyers can help victims when their wounds are still fresh. It’s time now, because many people need a hero in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting. Las Vegas Aid The Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada is offering free legal help to victims of the mass shootings....

Americans don’t really negotiate over things as much as people do in other countries. We’re accustomed to just paying the sticker price and moving on with our lives. But there are a plethora of things you can acquire for a cheaper price by putting your fancy lawyerly negotiatin’ skills to work. Everyone probably already knows this, but the sticker price on that house you want? Most likely not what you’re going to pay....

In a political discrimination case against a municipality in Puerto Rico, default judgment against defendants is affirmed where the district court did not abuse its discretion in entering the default judgment for repeated discovery violations, and the law of the case doctrine bars defendants’ attempt to re-argue the adequacy of plaintiffs’ complaint. Read Remexcel Managerial Consultants, Inc. v. Arlequin, No. 08-1753 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico...

Good2BSocial and Above the Law did a survey last year of the 50 biggest U.S. law firms, measuring their social media use. The predicable findings were that BigLaw moves slowly, and isn’t particularly socially adept, reports CMS Wire. What were some of the issues? Social media use is “inconsistent at best and often evidences only a token effort.” Only 34 percent have established a firm or practice group blog. Twitter and Facebook accounts are glorified press release listings....

Unfortunately for Jay Russell Shafer, a recent Ninth Circuit decision has turned his jury verdict awarding him six figures for enduring a constitutional violation into a loss. Shafer convinced a jury that when two city police officers knocked him to the ground, face first, for refusing to drop a water balloon, one of those officers violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure. While the appellate court found that his constitutional rights were violated due to the amount of force that was used, it also found that the officer whom the jury found liable was actually immune from liability....

Not all in-house counselors deal with employment law issues. Some deal with nothing but patents and commercial contract negotiations. However, the bigger your company grows, the more likely it will be that you’ll be looked to when employment discrimination issues arise. The Top Five Claims Retaliation (All Statutes) 38.1% Title VII Retaliation alone made up 31.4% of all claims. Unsurprisingly, retaliation claims are huge. An employee complains and their supervisor either outright retaliates, resents the employee subconsciously, or the employee becomes hypersensitive due to the prior alleged discrimination....

What’s the worst case scenario for an owner of an unsecured wireless network? It’s probably a mooching neighbor downloading child porn, leading the police to your doorstep. That’s what happened here, and after the police searched the homeowner’s computers, finding nothing, they used a tool called the “MoocherHunter” to track down the true offender, Richard Stanley. The question is: is tracking signal strength to a person’s doorstep a “search” under the Fourth Amendment?...

District court’s imposition of a sentence based on calculation of the guideline range to include, as relevant conduct, amounts of drugs and cash independently seized from defendant in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation is affirmed as the defendant waived any objection to the sentencing determination, and the determination was not clearly erroneous. Read US v. Eisom, No. 08-1893 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maine...

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna has a message for LegalZoom: do it yourself legal forms are not a substitute for an attorney. McKenna is concerned that consumers are mistakenly receiving the impression that they are receiving the services of a law firm. The company advertises that you can use LegalZoom to start a business, patent an invention and create wills. However, in the end, LegalZoom simply supplies forms or online do it yourself guides which can help customers create and file the documents themselves....

Making flextime work is really a matter of perspective. On one side, the employee wants flexibility to do things outside work. On the other side, the employer is all about getting the work done. So now, you want us to tell you something you didn’t know, right? Well, here are three ways to make flextime work better. Employee’s Side If you really want to hear people, you have to see things from their perspective....

The Obamacare lawsuits are before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals this month, after conflicting decisions from lower courts. Now the question before the three-judge panel is the same that many courts have addressed: Is Obamacare unconstitutional? According to CBS News, 31 lawsuits have been filed challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. Nine such cases have been appealed, but the two Virginia cases are the first to reach the argument stage in a federal appeals court....

It’s that time of the year again: the 25th ABA TECHSHOW will going on at the Hilton Chicago from April 11 to 13. The keynote address at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, April 11 will feature professor Larry Lessig, founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School, a founding board member of Creative Commons, and the author of several published works including: “Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2....

The agreement resolved a complaint by district attorneys from 23 California counties. They said it’s misleading to label products “biodegradable” or “compostable” unless scientifically proven. A $1 Trillion World According to MarketWatch, Bezos would have to spend $28 million a day to avoid getting richer. In other words, a minus-$1.5 million is not even enough to lower his tax bill. Of course, the California law doesn’t care about that. It bans the sales of plastics labeled biodegradable that don’t have disclaimers about how quickly they biodegrade....

You post a job online and are suddenly inundated with hundreds of applications, cover letters, resumes, letters of recommendation. Do you put a flesh and blood human in charge of separating the wheat from the chaff? To make the first phone calls and handle round-one interviews? For many companies, the answer is increasingly no. Instead, they’re turning to computer programs not just to sift through resumes, but to conduct actual interviews, and the “rise of the robo-interview” could have important legal implications....

Does a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule permit the admission of evidence obtained by a police officer who conducts a search in objectively reasonable reliance on precedent that is later overruled? Last month, the Supreme Court held in Davis v. United States that “searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule,” and this week the Fourth Circuit applied that reasoning to a case that been lingering on the docket while the circuit waited for Supreme Court clarification....

This week, President Trump released the “Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” And while this had the prospect of going horribly wrong, the E.O. seems to fall flat when it comes to actually doing anything according to several commentators. There’s no mandate to act, there’s nothing being prohibited, and the whole thing just seems to be a mere suggestion that government agencies redirect spending into AI programs, where possible....

Conservative political action committees (PACs) took a hit on the chin with the Fourth Circuit’s determination that the 1971 FECA rules did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment as to MPCs. In fact, if anything, the Act actually favors political committees. Summary Judgment against the PACs was affirmed by the circuit court and remanded back to the district. Mooted Out Counts I and Counts II in the appellate document were dismissed as moot by the district court on the grounds that it then lacked subject matter jurisdiction....

For those lawyers that work from home, and must share their home with a spouse, significant other, children, roommates, or even four-legged friends, laying down some house rules for when you’re lawyering from home is advisable. Consider rules like: Residents shall not scream during business hours. Or: All dogs must remain outside during telephonic court appearances. These just seem reasonable. Below, you can get a few tips on how to craft your own house rules to make sure your working from home doesn’t reflect poorly on you as a lawyer....

Snails live with their houses on their backs, and will withdraw into them in a moment’s notice. Of course, they are slower than turtles. And their shells are really delicate – not much protection against anything bigger than a shoe. Some in-house attorneys are like snails, and don’t get very far because they never stick their necks out. For them, it may be time for evolution. Introverted Lawyers We’re talking about talented attorneys who need to come out of their shells....

In the Chinese Zodiac, 2018 is the year of the dog. So what better time to go solo? Seriously, if you have been thinking about the solo route, why wait for some cosmic event? It’s about going for it. If you need more reasons, here are some thoughts from solo attorneys who did it their way. By the way, there are a lot of these lawyer stories because 62 percent of the lawyers in America work as solo practitioners or in small firms....