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Every company knows holidays provide great marketing venues for businesses. Lawyers included. That’s why this Cinco de Mayo a number of attorneys are offering free cab rides to people. The promotion makes sense, at least insofar as the service matching the event. Alcohol and holidays go together like PB & J. Cinco de Mayo is no different. So giving out free rides home makes sense from that perspective. But is this a good way to market your law firm?...

The saga of disgraced former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell came to some kind of resolution today as he was sentenced to two years in prison, less than what prosecutors wanted. McDonnell and his wife Maureen were charged last year with public corruption for taking $177,000 in gifts while McDonnell was governor. The trial turned from a simple bribery case into a sideshow that placed the McDonnell’s allegedly troubled marriage in the spotlight....

Are you looking for a legal job in Boston? Here’s a job announcement from the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The First Circuit Court of Appeals is looking for a Temporary Administrative Attorney. This is a summer job, with the possibility of permanent employment. The position is open to Juris Doctorate graduates from an accredited law school (although the posting doesn’t specify whether this means ABA-accredited.) If you want to be considered for the position, you must have some familiarity with the appellate process and the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure....

Favoring fish over farmers, a federal appeals court upheld a water agency’s decision to divert water to the lower Klamath River in California The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the Bureau of Reclamation lawfully diverted the water to prevent a die-off of salmon in 2013, when water levels fell precariously low for the migrating fish. The last time the river dropped so low, more than 34,000 salmon died there....

President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act into law last week, giving powerful new tools to companies looking to protect their trade secrets from misappropriations. The act adds two major weapons to the corporate legal arsenal: a federal cause of action for trade secrets theft and a civil seizure mechanism that gives the act some serious bite. But it also places new requirements on employers. Here’s what in-house counsel should know....

Unsurprisingly, our elected officials are split over the NSA surveillance program. They’re split over everything, aren’t they? The only semi-surprise is that the splits cross party lines, with one prominent Democrat, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy calling for abolishment of NSA call-tracking, while Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein passionately advocates for keeping the program, with a few minor reforms. Add proposed legislation reforming the program, introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Udall (D-CO), and Rand Paul (R-KY), and a near-passage of a bill killing the program earlier this year, and it seems that change is coming....

In a survey of 1,600 lawyers by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, more than half of the respondents saw an increase in millennials requesting prenups. Instead of focusing on alimony and inherited cash, millennials want to protect intellectual property such as software, apps and technologies that are only ideas. “Millennials are getting older and richer,” Randall Kessler, a family lawyer, told Bloomberg BNA. “Prenups used to be for old money, but now prenups do different things, like safeguarding intangible property....

You want a business line, but there’s no way in Hades that you’re going to fork over wads of cash to the local phone company. And you shouldn’t. We’ve already covered how you can have a free landline using Google Voice and an ObiHai box, and that solution carried the added benefit of allowing you to access your Google Voice texts and voicemails from your computer. Google Voice is so vital to my everyday life that it was one of the reasons why I switched back to Android after a couple of years in Apple’s ecosystem....

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that Columbia Christians for Life had a First Amendment right to display graphic photographs of aborted fetuses as part of a 2005 protest, but the ruling wasn’t a total win for the pro-life group. The appellate court also affirmed a district court ruling that city officials who told protesters to ditch the signs were protected by qualified immunity. In November 2005, Greenwood County Sheriff’s Department employees asked Steven Lefemine and members of Columbia Christians for Life, a South Carolina anti-abortion organization, to remove large, graphic signs depicting aborted fetuses that they were using as part of a roadside demonstration following complaints from passersby....

Harvard, not content to be the world’s premier owner of books bound in human flesh, wants to unleash its giant law library on the world. The university announced this week that it will be digitizing its massive law library in order to create a complete, searchable database. Oh, and it will be free. Suck it, Lexis and Westlaw, says Harvard. (Westlaw, of course, is a valued legal resource and sister company to FindLaw....

These days, when someone is in need of immediate legal services, they don’t turn on the TV. They don’t even turn to the phonebook. No, they turn to the Internet and they search for “New York business lawyer” or “Philadelphia personal injury attorney.” There’s no doubt that you want to be one of the first, if not the first, attorney to show up in Google’s search results. You can make that happen....

In November of last year, we were shocked to hear that Roger Shuler, the blogger that broke the rumors of a conservative Eleventh Circuit judge’s full-frontal porn past, had been jailed for exercising his free speech rights. A court found him in contempt after he refused to comply with an injunction that required him to take down posts discussing salacious rumors about Robert Riley, Jr., the son of a former two-term governor, and a lobbyist, Liberty Duke....

A federal judge has approved a settlement between drivers and Lyft for $27 million, but the case leaves a significant question unanswered: are the drivers independent contractors or employees? The drivers sued the company in 2013, alleging they were employees entitled to reimbursement for expenses such as gasoline and maintenance. The company treated them as independent contractors, so they had to pay for those expenses. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the $27 million settlement is better than $12....

The Eric C. Conn Law Complex is an interesting place. From the photos and videos of the welded-together trailers, to the Lincoln Monument and Statue of Liberty replicas on the lot, the setting is reminiscent of every lawyer stereotype the rest of us laugh about. Uproxx calls him the “Real life Saul Goodman,” which isn’t too far off, except the whole criminal aspect. Except, that’s exactly what the federal government is calling him....

Thomson Reuters, the company behind legal must-haves like Westlaw and FindLaw, launched its newest legal service last week: Practice Point. Practice Point seeks to make legal information more useful and easily accessible – and hence, your work more bearable – by bringing together the expertise, legal knowledge, and technology that you need, as you need it. Here’s a quick preview. Westlaw + Practical Law + Some Magic Dust = Practice Point Practice Point works by taking the best of Westlaw, Practical Law, and Thomson Reuters’ legal expertise and combining them through task-based organization....

One of the time-tested ways to beat a traffic ticket is to show up in court and hope the police officer doesn’t. There are other legal strategies, but the first rule of winning anything is to show up. Attorney Michelle Rivera didn’t learn that lesson. The Clark County prosecutor didn’t make it to court because she was being arrested for public intoxication. Second rule of winning: don’t show up to court drunk....

The Supreme Court is primed to settle a Circuit split over the issue of child porn restitution, in a case where restitution was awarded to a victim who never even met the defendant. Paroline v. United States is one in a long line of “Amy and Vicky” cases – ones where restitution is sought from the child porn possessor and not the producer – and will decide if the Fifth Circuit’s approach to proximate cause is superior to other Circuits’ views....

So the iPad 2 is out and it’s creating a big buzz. Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance, despite his health issues, at the unveiling yesterday. But the official release from Apple doesn’t come until March 11 in the states and March 25 in Europe. It’s thinner, lighter, faster, includes dual cameras and comes in both black and white. The new processor is the A5. There is also a new smart iPad cover that makes use of magnets and does lots of cool tricks....

Someone asked me the other day about “boutique” law firms. My response was a stutter and a mumble about specialization. But the truth is, if you go on Craigslist or Google and look for firms, chances are that you’ll see a whole heck of a lot of firms flinging around that adjective. From an informal office poll, none of us could really tell if a “boutique” firm really was a distinct thing, or just another marketing term tossed around on the Internet and on business cards....

Time will tell whether it was a good strategy for President Trump to bring Rudolph Giuliani on board his legal team. For now, in the words of one opposing counsel, it was a “train wreck.” Giuliani changed course at least twice in less than a week, and there may be no turning back. But what are the lessons for the every day lawyer? Don’t litigate in the press? Quit while you’re ahead?...