Tomorrow is “Bring Your Dog to Work Day.” What’s today? At the rate this fauxliday thing is going, it’s probably listen to Regina Spektor Day, or be a grumpy lawyer on a blog day. I’m going with both. So, should you bring the pooch to work? Are you kidding me? Here are five reasons not to: You Can’t Bill for Poop Scooping Yeah. You know what your job is? It’s to bill....
Is it time to get rid of your company’s paper records? Chances are you’ve already started to make the move towards electronic files. After all, an estimated 90% of records are received in electronic form. But what do you do with the boxes in the storage room? How do you integrate the paper with the electronic? Following these five steps will help you reach that goal. Step 1: Assess your goals....
If you’re having a productive day, being pulled out of your rhythm into a meeting can be a productivity killer. Many meetings consist of bored employees sitting around being bored by another employee talking at them. Many meetings are a waste of time because the person facilitating it doesn’t know how to host an effective meeting. So how do you do it? Here are five tips – by no means the top five and certainly not the only five – for having an effective meeting:...
A new battle has been waged in the all-out patent war between Samsung and Apple, and this time Samsung has requested that the Northern District of California disqualify Apple’s lawyers on the grounds that they are a former client. Apparently, five attorneys from Bridges & Mavrakakis, one of the many firms participating as Apple’s outside counsel, represented Samsung while previously working for Kirkland & Ellis, giving rise to a potential conflict of interest....
Blackberry phones are not around much anymore, but new Blackberry lawsuits are getting around. The company has sued Facebook, Instagram, and now Snap for allegedly infringing on its messaging patents. Back in the day, BBM messaging was the bomb. But lagging behind competition from Apple, Samsung, and other smartphone makers, Blackberry sold its cell phone rights two years ago and is pursuing other strategies – like litigation. “Opportunities for Partnership” In the latest lawsuit against Snap, the parent of Snapchat, Blackberry said it had been trying to work with the company for more than a year....
When you put something down the toilet, you expect that to be the end of it. But one action typically leads to another. In a case over flushable wipes, an allegation without damages led to a dismissal. Jennifer Davidson sued Kimberly-Clark over its wipes, but a federal court of appeals reversed the decision against her. That’s right, the trial court had flushed her case. “Flushable” In Davidson v. Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Davidson alleged that she went to a Safeway store in San Francisco and bought some “flushable” Scott Wipes....
It’s one thing to release a juror who has an admitted bias, but what to do about a juror with a subconscious bias? We’re not talking about the jurors who are actually biased. Let’s face it, most prospective jurors will let you know when they cannot be fair. We’re talking about jurors who don’t realize they harbor a prejudice. It is a troubling problem for the courts, but at least two federal courts in Washington are trying to deal with it with a new video....
Convention Against Torture Immigration Case In Hakim v. Holder, No. 09-60549, a petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order finding that petitioner’s money laundering conviction was for more than $10,000, and constituted a particularly serious crime under 8 U.S.C. section 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii), the court granted the petition where the BIA applied an incorrect legal standard in its Convention Against Torture consideration, and the case needed to be decided under an “actual knowledge” or “willful blindness” standard....
Based on what that one relative you wish never made a social media account posts, not to mention all that “fake news,” it’s clear that people are pretty much free to post whatever they want on the various social media platforms. And while most, if not all, of the major social platforms have instituted both policy and technical changes to ensure a repeat of the 2016 election doesn’t occur, the United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the DOJ is concerned that social media is “intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas....
You have enough to worry about when trying a case. You have to make sure that your arguments are in order, exhibits are ready, and that your client is prepped. But one thing you may not be able to control is jury bias against fat people. Let’s say that you represent an obese client. Whether it is a criminal or civil trial, you may be behind the eight ball even before opening arguments....
Most law firms, at this point, have a tech disaster plan outlined. Or, at least, they should. Due to the speed with which new tech gets released and adopted, any tech disaster plan should be reviewed regularly to ensure that it is both up to date and actionable. But this latter part is all too often ignored. Like a prenup, when a firm fails to comply with their own tech best practices that their disaster plan calls for or relies upon, a firm can’t expect the plan to work when a tech disaster strikes....
A Fifth Circuit panel on Tuesday upheld an injunction against the enforcement of a Mississippi statute requiring physicians providing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital as it applied to the state’s last remaining clinic. It did so despite binding authority from earlier this year – a different panel’s decision upholding a substantially similar law out of Texas. The majority justified the split from authority by pointing to a 1938 segregation-in-education case – an Equal Protection holding, even though this is a Due Process dispute....
Travis Kalanick took a back seat at Uber last year, but he was back in the hot seat this week. The former Uber CEO, who was forced out under pressure from investors, was the main attraction at the trial in Waymo v. Uber. Google’s self-driving car division claims Uber took its technology. Kalanick, testifying in the biggest case to hit Silicon Valley in years, admitted that he wanted Waymo’s self-driving engineer....
“There is a lawyer who is threatening a parent. We need someone here right away.” Whoops. And it was all downhill from there. Christopher Kirby may currently be employed by Minerva & D’agostino, but he may not be for much longer. The associate attorney directed a profanity-laced tirade against a group of parents in a parking lot, and nearly came to blows with another parent, all because of an alleged smirking incident during the preceding school board meeting....
The federal district court for the Southern District of Texas issued a ruling that could bring the state up to speed with many others. Judge Lee Rosenthal, while ruling against a transgender plaintiff, explained that LGBT employees are in fact protected under Title VII. Although the plaintiff’s attorney expressed disappointment at the ruling against his client, he believes the decision to be “earth-shattering” for the fact that a Texas federal court is recognizing LGBT protections under Title VII....
In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 and wrongful death action by the estate of a decedent against police deputies and the manufacturer of a Taser device used by police in apprehending decedent, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where: 1) plaintiffs’ statement of material facts accompanying their opposition to defendants’ motion for summary judgment was convoluted, argumentative and nonresponsive, and thus the district court properly excluded it; 2) plaintiffs provided no admissible evidence to support their claim that use of the Taser caused the decedent’s death; and 3) plaintiffs provided no evidence that defendants-deputies used excessive force or were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need....
In the pithy words of Monzy Merza at TechCrunch, the annual Black Hat briefings are an opportunity for the hoi-polloi “to drink from the firehose.” While the lions’ share of know-how and information will no doubt be devoured and processed by the brainiest of cybersecurity experts and hackers, the rest of us must play the part of vultures – eating the scraps. And that assumes we can digest what’s left. Blink, and some new threat is already out there on the internet threatening your data and network....
Attorney billing is often a controversial subject. And one of the biggest concerns when it comes to hourly billing is the rounding of those hours. For the most part, lawyers are rarely known for rounding their hours down. After all, once a billing increment has started, there’s no smaller increment, and there’s no turning back. For lawyers that bill on the quarter hour, rather than the tenth of the hour, rounding up can enable an attorney to squeeze in more hours than there are in a full day, let alone a workday....
I like people. Working as a solo has little to no appeal to me, as it means I’m locked in an office all day with little to no human contact, other than the occasional client meeting or angry opposing counsel. Plus, there are a lot of things I am not good at - such as staying organized and finding time for real-world networking. On the other hand, I am pretty damn great at anything tech-related, online marketing, and explaining things to clients in plain English....
Naming the top five law-breaking tweets is a risky business. It raises wrongdoers to the level of celebrity-hood, almost like an Academy Award for lawbreaking. And can you imagine the acceptance speeches?! But for the common good, somebody has to call out the best of the worst. It helps us recognize the evils of our times – plus it’s good for ratings. No. Five In a half-Letterman order, the fifth, top law-breaking tweet is Rosie O’Donnell’s....
