Have you ever seen grown-ups talking baby-talk to little children? It’s understandable why they do it, but it can get a little weird at times. People assume babies understand the gibberish, but actually it makes no more sense to the babies than to the adults. That’s kind of the problem with businesses trying to woo Millennials, as they vie to tap the buying power of a generation that now outnumbers Baby Boomers....
Custody battles are typically associated with the children of divorcing parents and, occasionally, the beloved pets of over-indulgent rich people. For convicted murderer Jason Wayne Pleau, it’s the feds and state authorities who are fighting for custody of him. In his case, however, the winner could decide whether he lives or dies, and the outcome of the custody battle is once again in the hands of the First Circuit Court of Appeals....
Your briefs should be, well, brief, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit reminded lawyers in a recent opinion. In a case involving the right to a public audience in a voir dire proceeding, the judge devoted his final paragraph to criticizing the appellate lawyers for their verbosity, for which there was “no justification.” Just how bad was were the briefs in order to justify the public scolding? The parties’ briefs, Judge Posner wrote, totaled 250 pages, in a straightforward case where less than 100 pages would have sufficed....
Where do you go when you have a question about the law or practice? To FindLaw’s legal professional blogs, of course! But aside from blogs, some of the best advice you can get will often come from your colleagues – the expert down the hall, if you will. It’s those conversations that are the inspiration for a new podcast, “Thomson Reuters: Down the Hall With Practical Law.” (Disclosure: Thomson Reuters is FindLaw’s parent company....
Did you wonder how that whole shutdown nonsense was going to affect you? If you guessed “fee hikes,” you get a cookie. Well, not really, those aren’t in the budget. But you do get to pay more for filing a case in the Eleventh Circuit, unless, of course, you work for a government agency. (Government causes shut down. Government gets free cases. Private citizens pay the tab. God Bless ‘Merica.)...
The Supreme Court has granted cert to an appeal of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that native Indian tribal courts have jurisdiction to hear civil tort claims against nonmembers. Specifically, the Fifth Circuit found that a Dollar General store could be sued in tribal court after a store manager of a store on tribal land allegedly molested a young member of the Choctaw tribe. The ruling was the first of its kind and suggested that businesses and individuals who enter into agreements with an Indian tribe, especially commercial ones, can be subject to the jurisdiction of the tribal courts....
Attorneys have many duties to their clients, including the duty to zealously advocate on their behalf. But does that expand to the duty to comment on news articles describing the case? The duties of representation all have limits. That allows both for work-life balance and for lawyers to split their time and energy among multiple clients. But in some cases, that extra bit of work on behalf of a client takes little time and effort....
Cloud computing carries a lot of promise. With the move of software from locally-installed to remotely-stored, lawyers have redundant copies of data, can access files anywhere and on nearly any modern device, and can increase productivity. It’s not all roses, however. Here are a couple of issues we’ve run across lately: Security Just this past weekend, Evernote was hacked. In the past month, tech superpowers Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft were hacked....
For years, grammarians and spell checkers have been telling you to capitalize the word “internet.” Then, a couple years back, a change in the capitalization tide took place, and over time, the word lost its proper noun status. It even reached, or maybe was just exacerbated by, the Supreme Court. However, despite the fact that spell checkers now have no problem with, and often recommend using a lowercase “i” in “internet,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has not been persuaded by the so-called “trend” and harbors a difference of opinion....
While typing out briefs on your Android device may never be as easy as doing it on a computer, there are times when using a mobile word processor might be a necessity. But which Android word processor is most up to the task? There’s certainly no shortage of options to choose from in the Google Play Store. Each of the apps featured below are office suites, meaning in addition to word processing, they can also be used to make spreadsheets and slide presentations....
The internet is a dangerous place and attorneys are increasingly being targeted by hackers seeking to hold important files for ransom or make a buck off insider information. As a result, more and more attorneys are turning to cyber insurance to help protect against the costs of an attack. Even the ABA is jumping on the cyber insurance bandwagon. The Association announced this week that it will begin expanding its cyber insurance offerings to cover more lawyers and firms....
Many people see Snapchat as one of the four horsemen of a coming tech-pocalyse, a bubble burst that will make the “Dot Com” collapse look like a minor ripple. It’s an app, worth $3 billion or so, that does one simple thing: it allows you to send and receive self-destructing pictures to each other. Typically, that means snapshots of naughty bits. It’s allegedly worth the money because of its immense popularity....
Are you a lawyer with an appetite? A lover of fine wines, heirloom vegetables, perfectly frosted donuts? Well, you don’t need to keep your food, booze, or candy passions outside of your work life. For the lucky few, there’s a career to be made in craft spirits, farm-to-table agriculture, or just pizza. If you’re looking for a career on the legal side of the culinary arts, here’s our advice for you, from the FindLaw archives....
Our last “get happy” post covered ways to get happier instantly. It was filled with tips you can use right now. This post covers three ways to get happier in the long run – ways to become a happier and healthier person. If you’re feeling a little down thanks to your work, or anything else, read on for some fresh ideas. Because a happy lawyer is a better lawyer. Get In Shape – It’s Easier Than You Think Okay, advising you getting in shape isn’t that fresh....
Such audio data could hold a wealth of information for criminal (and other) investigations. Recorded commands, for example, could show when you went to sleep, when you got up, when you were in the house, who you were with, and more. Can Alexa Solve the Crime? Enter the dead body in the hot tub. Victor Collins was found strangled and drowned in James Bates’ hot tub last November. Collins had been having a soak with Bates and two other friends the night before....
The Eleventh Circuit decided one civil rights matter and two criminal cases. Keating v. Miami, No. 09-10939, was an action alleging violations of plaintiffs’ First and Fourth Amendment rights during a demonstration held in November 2003 outside the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Miami. The court of appeals affirmed the denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity on plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims against certain defendants, holding that plaintiffs satisfied the heightened pleading requirement for a 42 U....
Two high-ranking BP employees working on the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling platform when it exploded on April 20, 2010, can’t be charged with 23 counts of “seaman’s manslaughter,” the Fifth Circuit ruled last week. The issue here is statutory interpretation, and much like the Supreme Court’s recent decision that a fish is not a “record,” the Fifth Circuit decided that a BP employee is not an “other person” within the meaning of the statute....
Dickie Scruggs is a legal legend on the Gulf Coast. The former plaintiffs’ attorney became one of the wealthiest men in Mississippi and was depicted in The Insider before he pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe Circuit Judge Henry Lackey of in 2008. And while the elder Scruggs is serving time in an Alabama prison —and appealing a 2009 conviction for improperly influencing then-Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter of Hinds County — his son, Zach Scruggs, is appealing his own misprision conviction to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals....
Clorox’s latest attempt to rid itself of a cat litter lawsuit over its Fresh Step brand were only partly successful. On Friday a federal court judge dismissed part of the suit against Clorox’s kitty litter but it didn’t end litigation. The ruling is part of a long legal process over ads Clorox used for its Fresh Step product. The issues began when a competitor sued Clorox for false advertising. That case settled out of court but it sparked the current suit which was brought by consumers....
And then there were two (vacancies). Congratulations to Judge Gregg Jeffrey Costa, who, yesterday, moved from the district court bench to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after a unanimous confirmation. The filled seat leaves two more vacancies, one from mid-2012, the other from the end of last year, on the Fifth Circuit bench. Who is this new, and highly uncontroversial judge? Read on, local practitioners: Least Controversial Appointment? As we noted in February, though Costa was appointed to the District Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Barack Obama, he’s drawn pretty much no opposition whatsoever from the opposite side....
