Google will tell you there’s no way around the commute. It’s a lie. There are at least seven ways to Sunday to get to work faster and better, but you’ll only need three. It’s about getting into a groove, using time wisely, and driving like a bat out of … Hello. Here are three top ways lawyers can beat the traffic and have fun while doing it: In the Groove You don’t have to be a child of the 60s to know what it means to get in a groove....
The Northern Trust Company, a 129-year-old financial institution managing over $10 trillion in assets, has dipped its big toe in cryptocurrency. With rabid speculation going on in the market, Northern Trust had to do something about it. But the trust is not taking cryptocurrency directly just yet; it will work through some hedge funds for now. That’s because digital coins are not real money, and most of the cryptocurrencies have crashed and burned already....
The U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, may lead to a long list of legal questions for corporations. Here are 5 things that corporate counsel need to know about the High Court’s Obamacare ruling: Most corporations must comply with the employer mandate, but not all. The Affordable Care Act’s mandate only applies to corporations with at least 50 “full-time” employees, according to the Health and Human Services Department....
Well, the state of campaign finance laws isn’t all bad. A month or so after the Tenth Circuit said that Citizens United didn’t have to disclose the contributors to its film “Rocky Mountain Heist,” the Fifth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Mississippi’s campaign disclosure requirements, reversing a district court order to the contrary. The case centers on a state law that requires disclosure when a political committee advocating for a voter-initiated amendment to the state constitution receives a donation of over $200 from a single person in a given month or when a single, unaffiliated individual spends over $200 “to influence voters....
There is a lesson in this police brutality case, and it’s not about the Constitution. It’s about having the same constitution as a suspect in a criminal case. Merritt L. Sharp, III, shared the same name with his son, Merritt L. Sharp, IV, as well as some naturally recurring physical traits. The big differences were their age and a record; Sharp IV was a felon. Those obvious differences escaped police officers, who arrested the dad, handcuffed him, twisted his arm and tore his rotator cuff, threw him in the back of a police car, searched him and his house – all on a warrant for his son....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. The Ashley Madison site declares on its home page that “Life is short. Have an affair.” The home page goes on to state that “Ashley Madison is the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters.” The site also boasts “over 38,050,000 anonymous members!” But how anonymous are those members, really? Let’s now talk about a potential big deal....
You might think that because you know the law and teach it to your children that they will stay on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. The recent case involving the Bellagio heist and the son of Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge George Assad illustrates the point. According to police, Anthony Carleo first bragged about how easy it would be to rob the Bellagio casino and steal high value Bellagio chips....
Black Friday is over. The Christmas sales will soon be over. Is there a snowball’s chance of getting a good deal on some tech? Well, of course! It’s not spring yet, and snowballs will be around for a while – someplace. The trick is knowing where to go. That’s where FindLaw is like finding gold. We don’t make money on steering people to a buy tech toy. We just tell them where to find it....
The Eleventh Circuit decided one appeal on a personal jurisdiction issue in a construction dispute, one criminal matter and one personal injury case. In PVC Windoors, Inc. v. Babbitbay Beach Constr., N.V., No. 08-10401, an action for fraud and breach of contract arising out of two contracts for the supply and installation of windows and doors for a hotel construction project on the island of Saint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, the court of appeals affirmed the dismissal of the action for lack of personal jurisdiction where defendants did not do business in Florida, were not otherwise subject to the reach of Florida’s long-arm statute, and lacked minimum contacts with Florida....
Edwards v. Prime Inc., No. 09-11699, involved an action under RICO and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claiming that defendant restaurant franchise knowingly provided illegal aliens with names and social security numbers of American citizens to use for illegal employment, unlawfully took employees’ tips, discriminated on the basis of race, and retaliated against employees who challenged those and other practices. The court of appeals affirmed in part the dismissal of certain counts of the complaint where 1) plaintiffs failed to plead that defendants had actual knowledge that the unauthorized aliens who they allegedly hired had been “brought into the United States” in violation of 18 U....
As it turns out, diversity is not only good for business, it’s good for businesses. According to a recent Harvard Business Review report, when the right kind of diverse talent can be assembled together in one team, creativity can flourish and that team’s success is more likely. Interestingly, the report’s author explains that, in practice, actual diversity may matter less than diversity of experience and the abilities of those employees with diverse experiences to effectively communicate and participate with the team....
Shortly after discovering that her now ex-husband had been using his FBI spy tools, such as GPS monitoring equipment and more, to spy on her during their marriage, Aida Gordo-Gonzalez, not only filed for divorce, she sued the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The lawsuit claims that the FBI was negligent in its supervision of her former husband, and should have realized he was misusing resources, and stopped it....
It’s not quite R2D2, but it’s not just a cute movie robot either. RPA, for Robotic Process Automation, is the real deal. They are software robots, and they are going to work at the international law firm Seyfarth Shaw. The firm will put the robots to work managing client information, reviewing contracts and other tasks as fast as they can get trained. That, by the way, is the key to machine learning....
In June, we discussed how Google Voice became available to everyone and the potential that it created for attorneys. For those of you who don’t know what it is, Google Voice is a free communications application that can save you time and money. It offers several features that a regular phone does not replicate. For example, you get to create a new local phone number, you can choose to have the calls forward to one or more additional numbers and you can receive transcribed voicemails by text and or e-mail....
Walk through your corporate halls today and you might see something new on your colleague’s computer screens. Next to Word, Excel, Facebook, and Slack, everyone is checking their March Madness bracket. Is March Madness a largely harmless time suck, an inappropriate (and possibly illegal) example of gambling at the office, or the perfect corporate bonding opportunity? It depends on how you handle it. As an in-house attorney, it’s not the March Madness bracket making (and constant checking) that you have to worry about....
In an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s partial refusal to compel arbitration of a personal injury action, the order is affirmed where: 1) it was not contradictory for plaintiff to receive workers’ compensation under a standard that allows recovery solely because her employment created the “zone of special danger” which led to her injuries, yet claim, in the context of arbitration, that the allegations the district court deemed non-arbitrable did not have a “significant relationship” to her employment contract; 2) simply living in employer-provided housing does not mean an injury occurring in that housing necessarily arises “out of and in the course of employment”; and 3) there was evidence that defendant did not consider the barracks in which the injury occurred to be a “workplace”....
It looks like a spot is about to open up on the Fourth Circuit, the first vacancy since Judge Thacker was confirmed for the court’s final vacancy last year. Judge Andre Davis, an appointee of President Obama in 2009, will take senior status in February 2014, reports the Maryland Appellate Blog. He is the youngest of three Maryland-based Fourth Circuit judges, and has only been on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for a few years, but is eligible for senior status at the age of 65, after serving nearly two decades on the federal bench....
When President Trump fired half of the U.S. Attorneys in the country, they had to go somewhere. So Andrew Luger, a former U.S. Attorney, joined Jones Day as a partner in its investigations and white collar defense practice. He supervised large-scale white collar investigations and prosecutions for the government. His transition back to the private sector comes at a time when government prosecutors are “increasingly” investigating companies and their officials, according to Jones Day....
In a class-action filed in California, Tesla owners allege the automaker is using faulty software for standard safety features and autopilot. One owner said he turned on the autopilot, and his car started veering out of lanes, lurching and slamming on the brakes for no reason. “The Enhanced Autopilot Features are simply too dangerous to be used,” the lawsuit says in Sheikh v. Tesla. “Vaporware” The plaintiffs say they paid a $5,000 premium for the upgrade package, but it turned out to be “vaporware....
If you come across a stack of legal reporters in a law firm today, you know they’re largely for show. The vast majority of our legal research takes place online, through services like Westlaw. And thank God! Searching through the Federal Reporter (600 volumes and counting in the current series) is hardly a joy. But, if you are relying exclusively on computer research, you may be missing out. There’s more to effective legal research and writing than simply finding the most relevant caselaw....
