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In an interesting, but not shocking, corporate governance development, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced this week that he is stepping down as a director of Apple’s eight-member board. It is not merely coincidence that the news follows Google’s June announcement of the company’s development of ChromeOS–a laptop operating system–edging it closer to Apple’s core business of laptop and desktop technology. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already raised an eyebrow at the inter-corporate nature of the board and any potential consequences of limiting competition....

You’ve got your paralegal organizing case files. A contract attorney is drafting some pleadings. Your legal secretary is scheduling your meetings and going through your phone calls. But, thanks to the miracle of telecommuting, none of them are on site. So how do you know if a remote worker is actually working? How do you manage someone you can’t see? Remote working arrangements, be they occasional work from home days or jobs that are 100 percent telecommuting, are becoming increasingly common, now that many tasks can be done electronically....

Alyson, an ambitious attorney, had a stroke when she was 35. She was going to court that day, but suddenly her body went limp. She was paralyzed. It didn’t happen in a day, however. It happened over the course of a stressful career because a high-pressure job like lawyering can make you sick. Stress Kills Stress has been called The Killer Disease because it causes many life-threatening conditions, such as high blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks....

If you wanted to know how your Model T was working, you would open the hood. If you want to see what’s going on in your car today, you can still look under the hood – but you can’t look into the dozens of software programs that make you automobile go vroom. That private, encrypted software is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it illegal to circumvent measures meant to keep proprietary software private....

Dismissal of plaintiff’s suit against franchisee for lack of subject matter jurisdiction reversed JTH Tax, Inc. v. Frashier, 09-2262, concerned a challenge to the district court’s dismissal of plaintiff’s suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, in plaintiff’s suit against one of its franchisees, claiming that the franchisee breached his post-termination duties by using his former office to support a competing tax enterprise and by failing to return the requisite materials to plaintiff....

Whether they’re law firms or a banana stands, family businesses have a long and respectable history. Family businesses have been around since the first Neanderthal left his cave painting business to his kids. But, a family business isn’t exactly an normal business. It can be fraught with difficult family politics on the inside or viewed as nepotistic from the outside. Whether you’re considering bringing family into your practice or you are simply representing family businesses, these three tips can help you make sure you’re doing it right:...

You’re a lawyer. You’ve done moot court. You know your way around the podium. If you are not a litigator, maybe you are a transactional attorney who counsels clients or gives presentations. In any case, you should not be nervous about public speaking anymore. If you are, what were you thinking when you decided to become a lawyer? Like Joan Rivers used to say, “Can we talk?” Butterflies Are Free Many people dread public speaking....

Snapchat, the self-destructing-photo sharing and messaging app, is buying up the search startup Vurb, for a cool $110 million, according to the Information. The deal will be 75 percent stock and 25 percent cash, with Snapchat paying almost as much in retention payouts to Vurb’s current employees, bringing the total price to nearly $200. Devoting 50 percent of the deal’s cost to retention, Business Insider notes, is “an unusually high proportion....

Google’s new privacy policy takes effect in just a few days. But there’s still time for users to keep their web histories from being shared, and it takes only a few clicks. Under Google’s new policy beginning March 1, user data from all Google-owned sites and products – such as Gmail, Google+, YouTube, and Google’s search engine – will be shared across those sites. For example, a user’s search queries will help determine what ads appear on other Google sites like Gmail....

Psst. Have you heard? No? Well the word on the street is … We’ve all been there. A coworker has some juicy news he can’t wait to share and you are so tempted to hear about it, but you know better than to engage in office gossip. As a leader at a small firm, it’s up to you to manage damaging work place behavior. Here are four ways to stop office gossip....

You might think this year’s most shocking cybersex story would be the allegations that Anthony Weiner sent sexually suggestive messages to a teenager. The following investigation involved a search through Weiner’s computer, which he shared with his (now-estranged) wife Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisors. That search led FBI Director James Comey to make the unprecedented announcement that the government was looking again into Hillary’s missing emails, and then to take it all back just a few days later....

Until a couple of weeks ago, nine out of ten people would’ve stared at you blankly if you had said the name “Adam Silver.” The tenth was most assuredly a Lakers fan, and was glad that David “basketball reasons” Stern was finally gone. Silver has long been the anonymous sidekick of the former commissioner, and outside of those few celebrating Angelinos, remained anonymous even after he took the NBA’s seat of power on February 1, 2014....

If you’re looking for an attorney job, maybe you should stay away from the headhunters because you’ll need that head in the future. I speak from personal experience because my head was hunted once by a job recruiter and I barely got out alive. To be serious, job recruiters surely provide a valuable service to law firms and companies looking for specific lawyers. That’s why they get the big bucks, which headhunters apparently charge for finding those attorneys....

Protections against religious discrimination got a little stronger yesterday, after a Supreme Court against Abercrombie and Fitch, the retailer famous for its risque ads and expensive jeans. The Court ruled that an Abercrombie store had violated the Civil Rights Act when it refused to hire a Muslim woman because she wore a head scarf. That’s not exactly shocking. What’s new is that the woman, Samantha Elauf, had not said that her headscarf was religious garb and had not asked for religious accommodation....

This admittedly handy little tool will serve dual functions. Not only is it a helpful desktop reference for practitioners who want their writing to appear its best and to conform to accepted conventions, it also serves as a great nerding-out joke piece for lawyers who get inside jokes. Tweeters had something to say when they opened their guides and thumbed across the guide’s preference for the term “case law” over “caselaw” – no space....

Move over “Movember,” hello “Giving Tuesday.” The spirit of generosity is in full swing – just with less stubble. That’s right, the second annual #GivingTuesday is today. For those of you who can’t keep your hashtag events straight, #GT is a movement to create a national day of giving to kick off the season of charity. It falls on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The general idea is to balance your “getting” with “giving....

When it comes to technology and the law, the future might not be here yet, but it’s on its way. Despite the legal industry’s reputation as a cautious adopter of innovative technology, some lawyers are starting to take steps towards integrating cutting-edge tech into their practices. But you don’t have to be a BigLaw firm or a massive tech enthusiast to start testing out technology that could change the legal practice....

Are you flummoxed by the newfangled technology that your iPhone or your iPad brings to the table? Are you unsure about what apps to get that might actually be beneficial to your legal practice (no, Angry Birds does not count)? Maybe you should make a notation to attend the iPhone apps CLE, put on by ALI-ABA. What will the iPhone/iPad CLE entail? Apparently, the 60 minute CLE will go over various iPhone applications that might be of most use to attorneys....

The Ninth Circuit has upheld Yelp’s practice of manipulating ratings in order to extract advertising fees from businesses. Several different businesses sued Yelp, all alleging about the same thing: Yelp removed some positive reviews from their business’ Yelp pages, causing their ratings to go down. Yelp then appeared on a white horse, offering to “help” them with their negative reviews – for a price. The subtext (which isn’t so sub rosa as it is glaring rosa) is that Yelp intentionally removed positive reviews, then extorted money from the businesses in exchange for restoring the positive reviews (or, alternatively, threatening to remove positive reviews if businesses didn’t pay up in the form of buying advertising from Yelp)....

Up to 1.1 million customers may have had their data stolen when CareFirst, a Blue Cross Blue Shield health plan, was hacked on Wednesday. According to the company, the hackers gained access to information such as names, birthdays and emails, but not private medical or financial information. The incident makes CareFirst the third large health insurer this year to have lost customer data to hackers. Across the three, more than 90 million customers may have had their personal information compromised....