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It’s the dream of many lawyers to hang out their own shingle. But once you set up your own practice, literally where should you hang your shingle? On the roof? In front of the building? On the window or front door? These are actually real concerns. As much as judges in the Ivory Tower like to wax poetic about how law is a “profession,” as we’ve written about before, law is – if you’re in a solo or small firm – a business as much as a profession, and you need to know how to run it as such....

We have already sung the praises of cloud -based backup site Dropbox. Now Rocket Matter, a cloud-based time keeping, billing and practice management application, is offering an exciting new feature: integration with Dropbox. With the new integration, attorneys will be able to backup client and law firm documents and synchronize them through a Rocket Matter Dropbox folder. The two services will work directly with each other, meaning that once a file is saved in Dropbox, it is already accessible in Rocket Matter, and vice versa....

If your PC is still running on Windows 8, it’s time for a change. Yeah, the operating system is a hard-to-use mess, better designed for tablets than desktops, and more focused on bad apps than business. But that’s not why you need to ditch it right now. Starting this week, Windows 8 isn’t just clunky. It’s dangerous. As of January 12th, 2016, Windows 8 is no longer supported by Microsoft, exposing those who continue to use it to potential security risks....

The giant pharma company Merck just settled an investor suit with a figure of $830 million. Although Merck admitted no wrongdoing, it was faced with allegations that it failed to inform its investors about less than encouraging data from early company-funded trials of its famous drug, Vioxx. The $830 million number is large, but it’s not the biggest pill that Merck & Co. has had to swallow. In 2008, it settled a plethora of suits related to drug to the tune of $4....

New York’s attorney office rule was thrown out by a federal judge in the Northern District of New York on Wednesday, making room for nonresident attorneys to practice law without having to maintain an office in-state. Brought by New Jersey-based attorney Ekaterina Schoenefeld, the lawsuit challenged New York Judiciary Law § 470 on the grounds that it violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause, imposing a burden on the right to freely practice law in different states....

In an action under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) for refusal to accommodate Plaintiff prisoner’s kosher food needs, the dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where RLUIPA does not authorize a claim for money damages against an official sued in their individual capacity. Read Rendelman v. Rouse, No. 08-6150 Appellate Information Argued: March 25, 2009 Decided: June 25, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Michael Counsel For Appellant:...

In a challenge to a restriction on late-term abortions, summary judgment for Plaintiff is reversed, where 1) the hypothetical situation posited by Plaintiff did not present a sufficiently frequent circumstance to render the statute wholly unconstitutional for all circumstances; and 2) Plaintiff did not present sufficiently concrete circumstances in which the as-applied challenge could be resolved. Read Richmond Med. Ctr. for Women v. Herring, No. 03-1821 Appellate Information Argued: October 28, 2008...

An Alabama Supreme Court decision from 2015 may have flown under the radar at the time it was issued, but then-Chief Justice Roy Moore’s dissent is coming back to haunt the now-Republican Senate candidate. The majority decision upheld the conviction of a 17-year-old child rapist (that was working at a daycare when he committed his crime) on one charge that required “forcible compulsion” to be proven. But Moore, alone out of the nine justices, dissented based upon a strict textualist approach that seemingly ignored the actual facts and court precedent....

On Monday, we learned that Emil Michael, senior vice president of business at Uber, said at a dinner party that he planned to spend “a million dollars” to hire researchers to investigate and harass reporters who wrote stories critical of Uber. The tone of Michael’s statements, as reported by BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, is pretty clear: “They’d look into ‘your personal lives, your families,’” he said, implying Uber would spend money to embarrass and expose journalists for the crime of doing their jobs....

It’s hard to believe the poop that comes out of some litigants’ mouths. Paula Emerson is one of those people. She almost literally pooped on her own case. She used a poop emoji on a Facebook post to threaten witnesses in her case. If you are getting sick of the excremental reference, think of it as a lesson on when to tell clients to shut up. Right to Remain Silent Emerson got a $17,000 sanction for her ill-advised post....

The Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments on Monday in the federal challenge against Texas’ recently enacted abortion regulations. Comments by members of the three-judge panel gave an air of skepticism to the court over the assertion that the new law creates an undue burden on Texas women, reports the Houston Chronicle. Why was the all-female panel of Fifth Circuit judges so skeptical? The panel that heard Planned Parenthood v. Abbott on Monday was made up of three Fifth Circuit judges:...

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Here in the United States, we are accustomed to freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution. Indeed, this freedom has been interpreted by the courts to include the freedom to speak freely on the Internet, even anonymously. (However, if such speech causes harm, it is possible that anonymity will be unmasked so that the victim of the speech can seek legal redress)....

In a wrongful death action, district court judgment is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff’s employer was a sophisticated user of defendants’ products, and defendants owed plaintiff no duty to warn about the dangers of their products; 2) plaintiff’s fraud claim fails as the record contains no evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that defendants’ were responsible for the allegedly false or misleading representations in a safety data sheet; and 3) plaintiff’s civil conspiracy claim failed as a reasonable jury could not conclude that conspiring defendants substantially assisted plaintiff’s employer in defrauding him....

While lawyering out of a food truck may not be something lawyers in private practice are clamoring to do, one Legal Aid office in Kentucky is breaking the mold and getting mobile. Legal Aid of the Bluegrass received a $50,000 grant to start a mobile “Justice Bus” to bring Legal Aid’s services directly to the communities that need it most. The “Justice Bus,” as the vinyl wrap proudly declares, has already served up some justice for the traditionally underrepresented as the ABA Journal recently reported....

The rest of your life is a long time, no matter how old you are. That’s how long Elizabeth Holmes, 34, could be in jail if convicted of fraud charges for duping investors and others about blood-testing technology. Holmes, who founded Theranos, was once a startup darling in Silicon Valley. But now she stands indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of attempted wire fraud. It could have turned out differently – five years ago....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Tumblr is a Website where users can share photos, music, videos, quotes and posts, all of which can be customized with different colors and themes. On its “About” page, Tumblr boldly suggests that users “follow the world’s creators.” With only 128 employees, Tumblr boasts 83.7 million blogs, 37.4 billion posts and a whopping 18....

It looks like Virginia may soon join the ranks of the states that recognize gay marriages. This morning, the new Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mark R. Herring, announced that he would stop fighting to uphold the state’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage, and would instead join the other side of the federal lawsuit, reports The New York Times. And to think, just last year, the then-Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, was fighting tooth-and-nail to uphold the state’s anti-sodomy law....

It’s the largest regional trade agreement in history, encompassing 12 Pacific Rim nations, 800 million people, and 40 percent of global GDP. It took years of negotiations and a special act of Congress before terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership could be finalized on Monday. The TPP could significantly change how business is done from the Straight of Magellan to Kuala Lumpur. That is, if it makes it through. The agreement faces strong opposition from environmentalists, unions, human rights advocates, and, as of Wednesday afternoon, Hillary Clinton....

Randy California may have made it to heaven, but his lawsuit over the song “Stairway to Heaven” is stuck in federal court. California, the late guitarist, claimed to have written a song that Led Zeppelin copied to record “Stairway to Heaven.” Michael Skidmore brought the copyright infringement suit on his behalf, but a jury decided the songs were not substantially similar. Taurus v. Stairway Born Randy Wolfe, California played for the Los Angeles-based progressive rock group Spirit....

There’s really nothing worse than a client who has a strictly casual relationship with the truth. (Well, maybe that and a client who can’t pay you.) When clients lie, it makes life difficult for everyone and makes you look like a schmuck; attorney-client privilege sort of precludes exclaiming, “But he swore up and down he didn’t have any other assets!” But even if no one else finds out about the lie, it harms your ability to represent your client....