Posts

Well, Technologist reader, we thought you would like to know that the federal government is weighing in on the best practices for citing and hyperlinking internet materials in court opinions. It began as a pilot project conducted by circuit libraries and organized by the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management (CACM). The pilot project involved observing and noting how webpages were cited in opinions over a six-month period and resulted in a body of “suggested practices” for courts across the country....

Fending off hackers can be like fixing a leaky roof – as soon as you patch one, another spot springs a leak. Google managed to recover from a big one last year, then quickly sealed off another last week. The company says it shut down the Google Doc phishing scam in less than an hour. “Fewer than 0.1 percent of our users were affected by this attack, and we have taken steps to re-secure affected accounts,” said Mark Risher, director of counter-abuse technology for the company....

Surprisingly, given the sheer number of lawsuits stemming from mis-payment of musical artists as a result of streaming music services, the legislature is actually responding to quell the continually rising tide. However, rather than trying to put a bandage over the problem, the Music Modernization Act seeks to revolutionize the way artists get paid by streaming music services. In short, the act sets up a new method for streaming services to positively identify everyone that should be paid royalties so that we don’t get repeats of the $1....

You won’t find Maio & Cardenas in any law firm directory, because it doesn’t exist. Yet the fake law firm, and others like it, collected more than $8 million in legal fees in a fraud linked to a former in-house counsel named Anthony Chiofalo, a lawsuit asserts. Chiofalo was the in-house legal chief at Tadano America Corp., a hydraulic crane manufacturer based in Houston. Tadano’s lawsuit accuses Chiofalo of billing the company for legal services that were never provided, the ABA Journal reports....

In two related cases involving a bankrupt corporate debtor, rulings rejecting (i) a claim by corporate debtor’s former CEO that the severance payments he received from the company were not fraudulent transfers, and (ii) a claim by a trustee in a related matter that the estate was covered under a policy issued by appellee-insurer, are affirmed where: 1) the severance payments made to the CEO after his dismissal were obligations incurred by debtor within two years of its petition date and thus constituted fraudulent transfers; 2) debtor did not receive reasonably equivalent value for the payments to the CEO; and 3) the CEO’s repayment of the amounts received did not constitute an insurable “Loss” under the insurance policy....

Having a heavy caseload can mean having to create your own virtual office space. A busy airport or a courtroom cafeteria can all be good places to hunker down and get some work done. Well, you could. If you’re willing to spend some money on it, that is. But, like most tech gadgets, there’s the good - and there’s also the bad and the ugly. And, make no mistake - while this is called a “pen” it’s not what you would think of when you think of pen scanners....

A spokesperson for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on Wednesday that the agency has extracted a $3.1 million settlement in a racial bias suit filed against PepsiCo. The EEOC’s Pepsi suit focused on the company’s policy of not hiring workers who have arrest records, as well as those convicted only of minor offenses. Though applied neutrally, the policy disproportionately affected African-American job applicants. Approximately 300 of those applicants will share in the settlement monies....

It’s funny how sometimes your fate can turn on a word. David Patrick Diaz, who madly yelled “jihad” as he rushed towards the cockpit on a commercial flight, pleaded guilty to interfering with the crew. He was ordered to pay $22,151.77 in restitution because the flight and its passengers had to return to the airport. But the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the order in United States of America v....

In 2011, one of Al Franken’s constituent groups in Minnesota, the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, reached out to him about their concern over GPS tracking apps or “stalking apps” on mobile smartphones. Since then, Senator Franken has made this one of his top priorities. In 2012, he introduced the Location Protection Privacy Act of 2012, which came through Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support, but never resulted in a vote....

For criminal defense attorneys and defendants, sometimes getting creative is the only way to get justice. Unfortunately, most of the time creativity can’t carry the day when the facts and evidence are just stacked against your client. One Indiana man is learning, the hard way, that getting doused in lime juice doesn’t give you a free pass to break the fluid thrower’s nose. Trent Summers, of Jasper, Indiana, appealed his felony conviction after punching another man in the face after he grabbed a bottle of lime juice and sprayed Summers’s chest and arm....

Prevents Unfair Increases in Interest Rates and Changes in Terms Prohibits arbitrary interest rate increases and universal default on existing balances; Requires a credit card issuer who increases a cardholder’s interest rate to periodically review and decrease the rate if indicated by the review;Prohibits credit card issuers from increasing rates on a cardholder in the first year after a credit card account is opened; Requires promotional rates to last at least 6 months....

Doing criminal background checks for new hires is just doing business these days, but not so fast. A settlement against Target suggests 3.74 million reasons why companies should pay closer attention to how they use criminal histories. If employers are not careful, they may have to pay the hard way. Target admitted no wrongdoing in the case, but it still has to pay $3.74 million to settle it. Criminal Histories In addition to the payout, Target will make some changes to its employment practices under the settlement....

When you’re a corporate behemoth trying to look hip, you bring Pharrell to your corporate campus, as Apple did last April. When you’re trying to look all-American, you bring in Clint Eastwood, as the GOP did for Mitt Romney’s nomination. And when you’re a data nerd, you bring in Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight and arguably the most famous statistician in human history. So Silver was on hand last week when Thomson Reuters debuted its new eDiscovery product, eDiscovery Point....

Blockchain technology is set to transform industries and institutions throughout the world. What started as an idea synonymous with Bitcoin, the virtual currency, is now making its way into everything from contract drafting, to election monitoring, to land registry systems. Many people hope blockchain applications open access to the justice system and lower attorney’s fees, making the process faster and more affordable. In this article, we will discuss what blockchain is, its history, and what it means for the legal industry....

Actually, we didn’t. We’re still holding on to Windows 7 for the time being. Like many lawyers out there, we had ancient computer systems in place that lack touch screen monitors. Plus, the downtime from having to learn a new operating system, and Windows 8’s negative reputation gave us pause. The rumors in the tech world have pointed towards Microsoft moving to a rapid-release cycle, either a la Google (which pushes updates to your Gmail, Calendar, and Android services as soon as they are ready) or a la Apple (which releases a new cat-named OS every year or so, albeit at a cheap upgrade cost)....

What a difference a comma can make. In a recent case out of Maine, a missing comma in the state’s overtime law decided a dispute between a dairy company and its delivery drivers, where, literally, for want of a comma the case was lost. Of course, writers, grammarians, lawyers, and the like (wordsy, rulesy people, all) love to debate the value of commas. And few comma issues are as divisive as the Oxford, or serial, comma....

In a case that should remind us all of our loan obligations, the First Circuit affirmed that if you fail to pay your loans, despite your financial circumstances, the default is on you. FDIC v. Estrada-Rivera had the Court sizing up a claim that a bank later taken over by the FDIC was somehow complicit in destroying a third party deal that left the appellants with no money to pay their loans....

It’s about time to double-check your workers’ legal status. Emerging federal policies – such as restricting travel, building a wall, and deporting undocumented children – obviously target immigrants in America. But the laws affect American companies as much as anybody. Employers have to keep an eye on the following issues: I-9 Investigations Make sure your company uses the right forms when hiring workers. The original I-9 form, part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, has been updated over the years....

Forget fake news. What about fake sales? “This jury award should serve as a notice to all those determined to engage in intellectual property infringement or other similar unlawful activity that they are not beyond the reach of justice by federal court juries,” said Paul Zadoff, president of TRX for Fitness Anywhere about its win against WOSS Enterprises. The War Is Far From Over “When the orders come rolling in they almost immediately claim that the items have left the seller facility and are in transit to the carrier – which releases the payment to their account,” Wade Shepard wrote....

As noted in a post on FindLaw’s Greedy Associates, the season of rejoicing that is bonus season has arrived. Will in-house counsel have the same reasons for gladness as their outside colleagues, or perhaps even more? Some say the in-house bonus system leads to more long term benefit, while firms, especially BigLaw, are set up for an entirely different purpose. The bonus structure is different in BigLaw firms than in-house say the folks at Law Shucks....