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Encryption-Opera continues as Apple’s General Counsel announces plans to take the encryption debate to Capitol Hill by testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. Apple’s General Counsel, Bruce Sewell, plans to reiterate the arguments that Tim Cook has already made to the American public and its customers: We object. We’ve taken a look at the text of the opening remarks that Sewell will delivery to the HJC tomorrow. It’s mostly stuff that you’ve already seen....

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn may have stepped down in early April, but we’re only now learning about the intimate details of his relationship with a 29-year-old employee. And the amount of his severance package, of course. Despite engaging in a relationship that “negatively impacted the work environment,” Dunn will receive approximately $6.6 million. That’s a lot when compared to disgraced Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. He never opened the company up to a sexual harassment lawsuit, yet he got nothing....

For bilingual lawyers, second-language skills can translate into a competitive advantage in today’s legal job market. While the legal industry may not seem like a field in which foreign-language skills matter, the truth is that in this global economy, the more language skills you have, the better. Just check out the local attorney job postings in your area, and note the number of positions that require (or would prefer) attorneys fluent in additional languages....

The Texas Twitter Laureate, and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, Justice Don Willett, found himself in the hot seat during his Senate confirmation hearing due to his large social media following. However, it was not just the following that drew scrutiny, but also the content of a handful of his past tweets, as well as his future social media plans (if confirmed). After the nomination, Willett basically signed off Twitter and has only tweeted once since his nomination to the Fifth Circuit bench....

We suspect that banks deduct multiple transactions from a customer’s checking account in the order of greatest amount to least amount. If the customer overdrafts, that would maximize the bank’s profits. In college, we occasionally overdrafted because we were too absent-minded busy to keep a check register; Dad was not pleased. Whenever we received a bank statement, it was obvious that our bank had manipulated same-day withdrawals in the way that would yield the most fees....

Which is best for lawyers, e-readers or tablets? It’s a question that doesn’t yet have a clear answer. And with Microsoft’s recent investment in the area, the answer is even more ambiguous. Both have features that benefit attorneys. Neither is perfect. So figuring out which is best for your practice will come down to preference. At least until an amalgamation of the two is released (one that doesn’t suck). It’s hard to say which you should get, but here are four of the best....

The Law Office of David J. Stern, the ex-Florida Foreclosure King, has been slapped with a class action lawsuit. About 700-850 full-time employees are expected to join the case. The lawsuit claims that the firm and its processing arm DJSP Enterprises failed to give laid off employees proper notice under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act). The firm failed in 2010. It was alleged to have contributed to improper documentation and filing of foreclosure-related documents....

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld sports agent Gustavo “Gus” Dominguez’s conviction for smuggling Cubans today. The Cubans in question, however, were not Cohibas and Montecristos, but Cuban baseball players. Dominguez, who has represented many Cuban baseball players, including several defectors, was charged in 2006 with paying to smuggle athletes and their families to the U.S. from Cuba. Though Dominguez argued that he was trying to help oppressed athletes escape and seek asylum, prosecutors maintained that he was bringing athletes into the country for personal gain....

If you haven’t heard of Prenda Law, well, where the heck have you been all these years? For the better part of the decade, the infamous Prenda Law firm has popped up in the news again and again and again. Prenda Law first came to the public’s attention as one of the worst examples of copyright trolling, tracking down porn downloaders and threatening to reveal their smutty predilections in litigation – unless they paid to settle quickly....

Everybody knows that lawyers are real sticklers for tradition. We like musty law books. We like burnt-umber colored desks. We like Latin. And we also like hiring only 90th percentile students from the T14. But that’s changing, at least according to the opinion of Phil Weiser writing for the ABA Journal. With the help of big data insights about new hires, more holistic means are being employed by law firms when selecting their lucky associates....

When people step on an ant, they don’t imagine it could affect a whole colony. One lost worker won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but a dead queen will change everything. An entire colony could die. That sort of happened to a large group of journalists. Facebook stepped on them, and the company didn’t even notice. Facebook Views It happened when Facebook started pushing information on its platform during the 2016 election....

No matter what you think of Donald Trump as a president, he is good at surviving bankruptcy. His companies filed for bankruptcy six times, yet he emerged a billionaire. Whatever his legacy may be, there is a lesson to be learned from his bankruptcy strategy. How do you do bankruptcy? Better yet, how do you handle rumors that your company is going bankrupt? Doing Bankruptcy Trump never filed for personal bankruptcy – just his hotels and casinos....

Perusing unpublished opinions may seem like a waste of time, but the appellate courts often offer mini-lessons on legal practice within those non-binding words. For example, this week the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals discussed a defendant’s right to proceed pro se on appeal. Michael J. Pavlock was convicted following a jury trial of 12 counts of wire fraud and 3 counts of making false entries in a bankruptcy document. He was sentenced to 324 months in prison....

How much would you pay for 24 songs? Jammie Thomas-Rasset is expected to pay $222,000 for two dozen songs that she downloaded through Kazaa, a now-defunct peer-to-peer file sharing service. Thomas-Rasset is famous in legal circles for being the first defendant to be tried before a jury in the U.S. for unauthorized file-sharing, according to Ars Technica. She asked the Supreme Court for relief against her after her case bounced through three trials and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals....

Smart lawyers use two computer monitors. A second screen is one of the few plug-and-play tech additions you can get that will really improve your productivity and ease of work, almost instantly. With two displays, you can draft a letter on the screen on the left while looking at client notes on the right, edit a document on one screen while reviewing research on another, or just stream Netflix on one screen while working late on the other....

A lawyer who made material misrepresentations in a lawsuit may be sued under New York’s ‘attorney deceit’ statute, even if there was only a single act of misrepresentation. The suit, brought by Canon, the camera and photocopier company, involves accusations that a New York attorney and his firm colluded with their clients during a dispute over a Canon dealership. Canon claims that the attorney knowingly filed false papers with the court during litigation over the dealer agreement, Bloomberg reports, in a story that comes to our attention by way of the ABA Journal....

Judge Henry T. Wingate has been on the federal bench for more than 30 years. When he was appointed, it was a different world. The Soviet Union still existed. Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet. Maybe that’s why the judge started to have a problem with his case backlog – his staff didn’t have computers. What’s the Backup, Doc? Whatever the reason, the chief magistrate in the Southern District of Mississippi has extended orders to relieve Wingate from any new assignments while the judge catches up....

Mutual fund employees at publicly-traded companies are not covered by federal whistleblower laws, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday. In a case of first impression, the First Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to apply the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to private company advisers that contract with public companies. The case involved two former Fidelity Investments employees who claimed that they were punished by their employer for alleging fraudulent practices at the company....

Noble Drilling Servs. Inc. v. Certex USA, Inc., No. 10-20083, involved plaintiff’s appeal from the district court’s dismissal of its case pursuant to an arbitration clause incorporated into two agreements to which plaintiff was not a party. The court reversed because no evidence supported a conclusion that plaintiff knew of the terms of the agreements, plaintiff could not have the knowledge necessary to support the “knowingly exploited” theory of direct benefits estoppel....

But it was on sale! If that cost-saving expression doesn’t sound familiar, then you haven’t been to Nordstrom Rack. Every true shopper – or shopper’s spouse – knows these things. Judith Shaulis, however, had a problem with it. She bought a sweater for $49.97, which had a “compare at” price tag of $218. Joined by a class of other Nordstrom shoppers, she sued for deceptive advertising in Shaulis v. Nordstrom, Inc....