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Legal Blog Watch 
Tracks the daily musings of Law.com bloggers.
Post Frequency: 5.8/day Last Entry: November 19, 2009 at 16:19:18 Recent Entries: 1819
By Lisa Stone
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A 'Most-Hated' List of Modern Phrases
Posted on November 19, 2009Yesterday on the Legal Writing Prof blog, Professor James "I am the scholarship dude" Levy flagged an interesting blog article from The New York Times on some of the words and phrases that are becoming despised in our society. The author of the article, law professor Stanley Fish, gets the ball rolling by offering up some examples from the "class of utterances that, when encountered, produces irritation, distress and, in some cases, the desire to kill...
'I Hate Teena Club' Leads to Employee's Termination
Posted on November 19, 2009Further proving what your mother told you when you were five years old ("If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all") is the case of Sindoni v. County of Tioga. In this bizarre case involving employees of the County of Tioga, N...
Communities Battle Over the 'Right to Hang'
Posted on November 19, 2009"If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry." So says Carin Froehlich of Perkasie, Penn., who likes to hang her laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between trees outside her home. Her small town, however, does not like it so much, and she has had requests from a town official and at least two anonymous neighbors that she keep her laundry to herself...
Thursday's Three Burning Legal Issues
Posted on November 19, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I am a police detective. Is there any way I can use the police computer system to help me pick up chicks? Answer: Yes, actually. But you might get convicted of a crime and suspended from the force...
ABA Executive Director Steps Down
Posted on November 18, 2009The executive director of the American Bar Association, Henry F. White Jr., resigned this week after three years in the job, the ABA Journal reports. ABA General Counsel R. Thomas Howell Jr. has been named to step in as interim executive director. Neither the ABA Journal report nor an official ABA news release gave any explanation for White's resignation...
Black Firefighters Ask to Intervene in 'Ricci'
Posted on November 18, 2009In an end-of-term decision handed down in June, the Supreme Court in Ricci v. DeStefano decided that New Haven's decision to discard results of a firefighter promotion examination violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The city through out the test after results came back showing that white candidates had significantly outperformed minority candidates...
The Google Gorilla Enters the Research Game
Posted on November 18, 2009Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, ponders whether the 1,000-pound Gorilla of the Web is pursuing an altruistic endeavor to offer all the world's information for free or is a marauding monster on a mission to dominate the media and information landscape...
Tom Cruise Honors a Legal 'Top Gun'
Posted on November 18, 2009The memorial service at the federal courthouse in Boston this week for lawyer Earle C. Cooley was attended by a who's who of the city's legal community. It also included one Hollywood A-lister -- Tom Cruise. Cooley was a legendary trial lawyer in Massachusetts who founded the law firm Cooley Manion Jones and who represented major Boston-area clients including Boston University and the Boston Celtics...
Must Law Firms Know the Cost of Each Matter They Take On?
Posted on November 17, 2009There has been plenty of talk over the past year or so about how the billable hour at law firms is under attack, and how changes may be in store. Of course, most of it is just talk so far, and precious little action, as law firms cling to their traditional ways...
Recession Prompts Wave of Volunteers for Jury Duty
Posted on November 17, 2009Last month, an article in The New York Times observed that for people being squeezed by the recession, a summons to perform jury duty holds a new fear: financial ruin. In Bonneville County, Idaho, for instance, the jury commissioner said that while she typically summons 400 people for a two-week term of service, she has lately had to "pop it up to 500? because of rising numbers of economic hardship claims...
Influenza Futures Markets: Accurate but 'Taboo'
Posted on November 17, 2009You know about the futures markets for things like soy beans, coffee and orange juice, but what about the markets for swine flu, bird flu and SARS? Earlier this month, The Faculty Lounge blog wrote about the influenza futures now being traded on the Iowa Electronic Markets, which is run by Iowa University?s Henry B...
Tuesday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 17, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I am about 80 years old and carry an oxygen tank with me at all times. Will this hinder my ability to rob banks? Answer: Not at all! (Fox 5 San Diego) 2) Question: I have spent the last 20 years following the Grateful Dead around on tour...
'Lawyer You Can Trust' Gets Prison for Theft
Posted on November 16, 2009The Web site for Raymond A. Desautels III once boasted that he was "a lawyer you can trust." Last week, the disbarred Massachusetts lawyer was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for misappropriating $1.99 million from a client's account, reports the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester...
Plan for Public Law School Advances in Mass.
Posted on November 16, 2009An effort to create the first public law school in Massachusetts got a boost Friday when University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson gave it his endorsement. Wilson said he is convinced that the law school proposal is fiscally sound and would create a program with high academic standards...
Law a Jackpot for Lawyers Who Wrote It, AP Says
Posted on November 16, 2009Seattle University School of Law professor Joaquin Avila says he was the primary author of the 2002 California Voting Rights Act, drawing on advice from Robert Rubin, legal director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and others...
More Tales From the Annals of Online Evidence
Posted on November 16, 2009By now, we should all know well the lesson that what we do online can come back to haunt us -- or maybe help us -- as evidence in court. But new stories continue to come along of the things people do online and of how they get used in court. Here are three recent stories from the annals of online evidence...
Twitter 'Number of Followers' Debate Rages On
Posted on November 13, 2009As I wrote back in August, the number of Twitter followers one has continues to be an extremely misleading metric. This week, Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo, advanced that idea further, writing on the Legal Technology blog that it was time for him to "let the cat out of the bag" and debunk the notion "that the number of Twitter followers one has is positively, if not perfectly, correlated to the amount of influence someone has in the marketplace...
Plenty of Fantasy Players on This Bench
Posted on November 13, 2009I thought we had completely maxed out on the Supreme Court geekiness with the baseball cards and then the oral arguments available on iTunes, but no... not even close. Today, I present you with the new gold standard in Supreme Court geekery: "FantasySCOTUS...
Friday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 13, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: The D.A. is charging me with robbery, but I say I'm innocent. In fact, I was busy on Facebook at the time of the robbery. Successful alibi? Answer: Yes...
6th Circuit Finds 'Bow Wow' Belongs to Clinton
Posted on November 13, 2009On April 23, 2008, Judges Daughtrey, Cook and Farris of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Nashville donned their robes and heard oral argument in the matter of Bridgeport Music, Inv. v. UMG Recordings, Inc. Last week, the 6th Circuit delivered its considered judgment in the case: The phrase "bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yea" belongs exclusively to funk legend George Clinton, who used it in his song, "Atomic Dog...
Lawyer's Breath, The Perfect Holiday Gift
Posted on November 12, 2009It is not too early to start your holiday shopping and what better gift for that special lawyer or judge than a bottle of Lawyer's Breath hot sauce or a jar of Hot Lawyer's Nuts. These and other legally themed delectables are available for purchase online through Judicial Flavors, a company started by Auburn, Calif...
Baseball Season Over? Not in Divorce Court
Posted on November 12, 2009One World Series ended last week but another is just getting started. Yes, the New York Yankees triumphed over the Philadelphia Phillies. But in the Family Division of the Superior Court in Los Angeles, what may prove to be the World Series of divorce cases is only in its opening innings...
Has Judicial Immunity Lost its Appeal?
Posted on November 12, 2009The doctrine of judicial immunity shields judges from lawsuits that target their actions on the bench. But when a judge's conduct is particularly egregious and perhaps even violates someone's civil rights, should the shield come down? In a piece published today in the Wall Street Journal, Ashby Jones, lead writer for the WSJ's Law Blog, considers this question...
U.K. Law Firms Face Their 'Greatest Turmoil'
Posted on November 12, 2009It is hard to know just what the take-away should be from the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2009 survey of U.K. law firms. For the Times Online, the headline from the survey is that the economic downturn has not kept London's leading law firms from producing hundreds of millionaires among their partners...
Wednesday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 11, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I'm a patent lawyer. My white-collar defense colleagues have cool movies and TV shows about their practice areas. Is there anything out there for me and my patent buddies? Answer: Of course not...
Motorist Reports Drunk Driver to 9-1-1: Herself
Posted on November 11, 2009Bizarre calls to the "9-1-1 emergency" line are the stuff of legend. There is the woman who called 9-1-1 (audio available here) because she thought the police officer who had just visited her house on a complaint was a "cutie pie" and she wanted him to come back (he did come back and arrested her for misusing 9-1-1)...
Could You Confuse These Rubber Shoes With a Sports Car?
Posted on November 11, 2009"The question of 'likelihood of confusion' is the signal test to determine if a trademark infringement claim is valid." So says the introduction to the excellent Likelihood of Confusion blog. Using that test, then, I ask you: Would you be likely to confuse a $30 pair of rubber shoes with a $50,000 sports car? That "likelihood" appears to be the fear of Porsche...
Appellate Oral Arguments Available for Free on 'iTunes U'
Posted on November 11, 2009You've already ordered your U.S. Supreme Court baseball cards. Now it's time for all of you appellate law geeks aficionados to take the next step and get yourself some good oral arguments on iTunes to listen to while you work out. The Tex Parte Blog reports here that St...
Daughters' Film Documents Controversial Lawyer-Dad
Posted on November 10, 2009The New York Times once called William Kunstler, "The most hated and most loved lawyer in America." In the 1960s and '70s, he was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and radical politics. Kunstler defended the Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961, the Chicago Seven after the 1968 Democratic National Convention, American Indian Movement leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks after Wounded Knee in 1973, and Attica Prison inmate John Hill in 1974, accused of killing a guard during the riot there...
Forget Retirement, Court Tells Prominent Lawyer
Posted on November 10, 2009If you divorce, don't expect to retire. That, in so many words, was the message delivered yesterday by Massachusetts' highest court to a prominent Boston and Washington, D.C., lawyer and former judge. The lawyer, Rudolph F. Pierce, sought to eliminate his annual alimony payment of $110,000 after he turned 65 and retired from his law firm, Goulston & Storrs (where he remains of counsel)...
Why Do Catholics Get All the Blame for Clergy Abuse?
Posted on November 10, 2009At his blog Tillers on Evidence and Inference, author and law professor Peter Tillers wonders why the clergy sex-abuse scandals of recent years have focused on Roman Catholic priests. "I thought to myself that Protestant clergy (for example) surely also occasionally succumb to sexual temptation and engage in wrongful sexual conduct," he writes...
More Perspectives on the 'Connecticut Five'
Posted on November 10, 2009As I noted here last week, Connecticut's attorney grievance committee begins its hearings Thursday into the cases of five attorneys accused of violating state ethics rules by participating in the Web site TotalBankruptcy.com. As I wrote then, my former Legal Blog Watch colleague Carolyn Elefant, writing at her blog MyShingle, wondered why so many in the legal community were letting the so-called Connecticut Five be "hung out to dry...
Monday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 09, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: My wife wants to name our new baby twins "Benson" and "Hedges." I prefer the names "Fish" and "Chips," or perhaps, if we don't want to be so cutesy, we could go with "Number 16 Bus Shelter" and "Sex Fruit...
Justice Roberts Appearing Soon in Spokes of Your Bicycle
Posted on November 09, 2009I'm not going to say that what follows below is among the geekiest things I've seen because I don't want the High Court issuing any writs of mandamus against me or anything. So without any commentary, let me tell you about "Supreme Court baseball cards...
Twittering From the Courtroom? Not So Fast
Posted on November 09, 2009On his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, Eric Turkewitz writes that although Houston criminal defense attorney Mark Bennett is "live-twittering" today (here) while his protege picks a jury, at least one federal court ruled just last week that the federal rules prohibit tweets from court...
Going ... Going ... the DWI Chair is Gone!
Posted on November 06, 2009The city of Proctor, Minn., is $11,000 richer today but $30,000 poorer than it would have been had it not been for the intervention of the lawyers for La-Z-Boy Corp. The city was finally able to conclude its eBay auction of the now world-famous, pimped-out motorized recliner it seized after arresting the recliner's driver for operating under the influence...
Psycho-Acoustic -- or Just Psycho?
Posted on November 06, 2009Beatles fans did not know whether to gasp or cheer when a little-known music site, BlueBeat.com, began to sell the Fab Four's remastered catalog for just 25 cents a song. After all, it was less than two months ago that fans were let down when rumors proved false that the Beatles would be available on iTunes...
Connecticut Set to Hear 'Total Attorneys' Case
Posted on November 06, 2009Connecticut's attorney grievance committee will begin hearings Nov. 12 on whether five attorneys violated state ethics rules by participating in the Web site TotalBankruptcy.com. The state's chief disciplinary counsel, Mark Dubois, charges that the lawyers payments to the site violate the ethical prohibition against providing anything of value in exchange for a client referral...
Legal Adviser in Iraq Named Judge in Mass.
Posted on November 06, 2009A lawyer and U.S. Army colonel who has spent much of the last two years in Baghdad on a special assignment to improve the legal rights of women was named this week to a judgeship in Massachusetts. Gov. Deval L. Patrick nominated Col. George F. Phelan to be a judge of the Probate and Family Court on the island of Nantucket...
Thursday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 05, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I just left Toys-R-Us with my new can of Silly String. Now I'm being issued a $1,000 fine by the LAPD. What the heck?! Answer: Did this happen on Halloween, by any chance? If so, pay up...
California Kidnapping Case Involves Bizarre 'Fake Rescuer'
Posted on November 05, 2009The California Appellate Report blog writes here about a recent decision involving a kidnapping for ransom. The actual opinion relates to evidentiary issues resolved on appeal, but the post highlights a bizarre and startling set of facts in the case that are worth repeating...
Former Band Members Still Less Than 'Sublime,' Court Rules
Posted on November 05, 2009The THR, Esq. blog wrote this week about an interesting case in Los Angeles involving one of my favorite bands, Sublime. Bradley Nowell, the band's lead singer, died in 1996 of a drug overdose. For many years, the remaining band members continued to perform as the "Long Beach Dub Allstars," but they recently attempted to revive the Sublime name after they brought on a new lead singer...
Prosecutor's Best Friend? People Convicted in 'Scent Lineups' Fight Back
Posted on November 05, 2009Via this post on the ABA Journal's Criminal Justice page, I came across this New York Times article about several people who are doing hard time because of "scent lineups," in which a dog chose them and their smell out of a group of other, um, smells...
Appeals Court Lawyer 'Traffics' in Term Papers
Posted on November 04, 2009In Massachusetts, as in 16 other states, it is against the law to sell a term paper. That was news to Damian Bonazzolli, a senior staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Bonazzolli advertised himself on Craigslist as available to write term papers for a fee, promising to deliver a "quality grade...
La-Z-Boy Calls in Lawyers, Calls Off Auction
Posted on November 04, 2009When last we left the notorious pimped-out, motorized La-Z-Boy whose driver had become the first person ever to be arrested for driving an easy chair while intoxicated, it was on course to be sold on eBay for somewhere north of $40,000. But when I checked back later in the day, the listing had disappeared...
Her Disappearance Unsolved, Lawyer Declared Dead
Posted on November 04, 2009I have written several times here about the 2008 disappearance of Georgia lawyer Elizabeth Calvert and her husband John from their yacht docked at Hilton Head, S.C. (See prior posts here, here and here.) The couple was last seen on March 3, 2008, meeting with their accountant, Dennis Gerwing...
Obama Girl's New Crush? A Kentucky Lawyer
Posted on November 04, 2009Kentucky lawyer Eric C. Conn desperately wants President Obama to appoint him to a seat on the Social Security Advisory Board. He wants it so much that he has enlisted actress Amber Ettinger -- better known as YouTube sensation "Obama Girl" -- and bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley to appear in a video intended to lobby the president for Conn's appointment...
The Next Level of Lawyer Advertising Glows
Posted on November 03, 2009Lawyer advertising is always a highly-charged discussion, with many lawyers and members of the public finding the practice to be "beneath" the standards of the profession. To those of you who hold this opinion, I say: Meet David Haenel. In an era when lawyer advertising has already crept onto giant billboards and even to its own LegalTube video channel, Haenel still takes things to the next level...
Ten States Impose a Statutory 'Duty to Rescue'
Posted on November 03, 2009One of the memorable moments of torts class in law school comes when the "duty to rescue" is discussed. In short, the common law is that a person who witnesses a crime or other emergency that is placing another person at risk of grave physical harm has no "duty to rescue" or to do anything whatsoever...
Tuesday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on November 03, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I just spent a year in jail for throwing a shoe at President Bush. Is there any way to parlay this into some cash? Answer: Absolutely. You should be able to own the northeastern Bangladesh footwear market right now...
LBW Document of the Day: Rejection Letter From Another Era
Posted on November 03, 2009Employment lawyers, think of how different your job would have been 70 years ago. From deep within the Walt Disney archives, Settle It Now (via the wonderful Letters of Note blog) has discovered this rejection letter from 1938 that tells an Arkansas woman not to bother applying for any of the creative work done on Disney cartoons as that work "is performed entirely by young men...
Advice on Getting Creative With Legal Invoices
Posted on November 03, 2009I've seen a couple of legal blog posts lately that discuss invoices for legal services, and some creative (although arguably unlikely) ways in which that practice might evolve for lawyers. A post on Lawyerist.com last week suggests that lawyers who are having trouble collecting from clients might want to introduce some "emotion" into their invoices...
Trivial Pursuit, Federal Courts Edition
Posted on November 02, 2009A hat tip to Sabrina Pacifici at beSpacific for pointing out the latest update to the federal judiciary's compilation of judicial facts and figures. The numbers span 1990 to 2008 and provide a surprisingly interesting look at the caseloads of the federal courts and how they have evolved over nearly two decades...
Going Soon on eBay: One OUI La-Z-Boy
Posted on November 02, 2009What would you pay for a pimped-out La-Z-Boy? This is not just any easy chair. This is THE motorized La-Z-Boy that gained global glory after its driver was arrested for operating it under the influence. Would you pay somewhere north of $40,000? That's what it would cost you...
What Did That E-Mail Opinion Say?
Posted on November 02, 2009As Emily Litella famously said: "Nevermind." In a post here last week, E-Mail Not Protected by 4th Amendment, Judge Says, we discussed a federal judge's ruling that the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to e-mail...
Contracts: Throughout the Universe, From the Beginning of Time
Posted on October 30, 2009Inspired by a odd contract phrase that has suddenly popped up in a few places, the WSJ had an interesting story yesterday on the lengths to which lawyers are willing to go to be thorough in the agreements they draft. The Terms of Use on Starwars.com tell users that they give up the rights to any content submissions "throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed...
Friday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 30, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I just received a Christmas card with a photo of one of my relatives with her ex-boyfriend. I was surprised because I know they had a nasty break-up...
Gov. Schwarzenegger Has a Message for the Calif. State Assembly
Posted on October 30, 2009The blawgosphere wants to know: What message was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sending to the California State Assembly through his veto last week of Assembly Bill 1176? At first glance, the Governor's message seems fairly routine: But take a closer look at the combination of letters along the left side of the two main paragraphs...
Is Gmail Making the Leap From the 'Unacceptable?'
Posted on October 30, 2009Back in August, Esquire Magazine posted a series of "rules" that included this one: Esquire's Rule #1033. If your lawyer's email address ends in hotmail.com, gmail.com or yahoo.com (or aol.com), find a new lawyer. This prompted a flurry of discussion in this post on the Simple Justice blog (written by SHGLaw@aol...
Legal Site's Buzz-Building Ploy Backfires Badly
Posted on October 29, 2009And now, for the latest entry in the "What were they thinking" department. The lawyer-referral site LawFirms.com wanted to build buzz for immigration lawyers through a social-media marketing campaign. So it decided that the best way to do that was to poke fun at illegal immigrants and the so-called coyotes who profit by smuggling them across the desert into the United States...
Legal Believe It or Not
Posted on October 29, 2009Among the truth is stranger than fiction items in today's news: An assistant attorney general in South Carolina was fired after police found him in his SUV parked in a cemetery in the company of a stripper, a Viagra pill and various sex toys. The 66-year-old former state legislator explained to police that he was on an innocent lunch break and always kept the Viagra and sex toys in his car "just in case...
Soupy Sales, Expert Witness
Posted on October 29, 2009I was such a fan of the subversive humor of comedian Soupy Sales that, when he died this week, I wished for a legal angle so I could blog about him. After all, this was a man who not only perfected pie throwing as an art, but who once told the viewers of his children's TV show to sneak into their parents' bedrooms, "take some of those green pieces of paper with pictures of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln and Jefferson on them," and "send them to me...
E-Mail Not Protected by 4th Amendment, Judge Says
Posted on October 29, 2009Update: Orin Kerr says he misread the opinion. Read his correction here. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to e-mail, a federal judge has ruled. The judge's reasoning would seem to sound a warning bell for anyone -- lawyers in particular -- not only who use Web-based e-mail accounts, but also who store documents of any kind online in "the cloud...
What Would YOU Do for World Series Tickets?
Posted on October 28, 2009In honor of the World Series, which starts tonight in New York, I give you this nugget from the CBS News Crimesider blog that presents the question: What would you be willing to do to see your favorite team in the World Series? The answer for one Philadelphia woman, police say, was just about anything, including prostitution...
Trend Watch: Fake/Parody Web Sites Create Legal Issues
Posted on October 28, 2009Legal disputes over "fake" Web sites and social media profiles seem to be a developing trend. On Monday, I discussed in this post how Connecticut Republicans recently set up dozens of fake Twitter accounts and Web sites using the names of Democratic state representatives, e...
Wednesday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 28, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I was using my laptop to train myself on some new software my company is using and totally lost track of time. This caused me to be about 90 minutes late on a project for work (Full disclosure: I'm a pilot and the project was landing Northwest Flight 188 -- We went 150 miles too far...
Superhero Lawyer 'Snyderman' Wears His Costume Year-Round
Posted on October 28, 2009Sure, you may have a Web site for your law firm. You may even have a Twitter account and a blog. But do you have an animated cartoon presenting yourself as a superhero? Well, do you? Didn't think so! Via this post on the Bad Lawyer blog I stumbled upon this cartoon video about "Snyderman," a "superhero of incredible strength and legal savvy, who uses creative imagination and courtroom skills to protect corporations and individuals against misconduct...
From Arts to Law: Two Lawyers' Career Paths
Posted on October 27, 2009Two unrelated but parallel stories caught my eye this week. Both portray lawyers who chose careers in the legal profession over promising futures in the arts. One is Sergiu Gherman. A talented piano virtuoso from the Eastern European country of Moldova, Gherman's life took a dramatic about face when, in the middle of pursuing his doctoral degree in classical piano, he decided to go into law and enrolled at the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida...
Swine Flu Claims Lawyer's Life
Posted on October 27, 2009Sidney H. Davis Jr., a Dallas attorney who was appointed last month to lead an investigation into the conduct of Dallas County constables, died Monday from complications of the H1N1 virus, the Dallas Morning News reports. The 54-year-old partner with the firm Touchstone Bernays fell ill and slipped into a coma last week...
Prominent Wis. Justice Official Commits Suicide
Posted on October 27, 2009It was just a week ago that I blogged here about the suicide of Kilpatrick Stockton lawyer Mark Levy, movingly recounted by writer Richard B. Schmitt in the cover piece for this month's ABA Journal magazine, A Death in the Office. Now, a prominent law enforcement official in Wisconsin and husband of an assistant attorney general has taken his own life...
Jon & Kate Plus Lawyer Irate
Posted on October 27, 2009I cannot claim to be a close follower of the legal wrangling between Jon and Kate Gosselin, the ill-fated stars of the reality TV show that was to follow their lives together raising eight children. The plot changed when Jon reportedly took up with another woman and the couple separated...
Monday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 26, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I am incapable of consistently parking my car in a standard 2.3-meter-wide parking spot. I just can't do it. Are there any countries that will make accommodations for my disability? Answer: Are you a woman? If so, then South Korea has a special, pink-painted 2...
Wait, Baby Einstein Won't Make My Kid a Genius?
Posted on October 26, 2009Over the weekend, the The Faculty Lounge blog highlighted a story in the New York Times about the "Baby Einstein" videos that are known to just about every parent these days. In short, it turns out that the videos will not make your child into an Einstein or a genius, and the Walt Disney Company is now caving to demands that it offer refunds to all purchasers...
In Connecticut, Republicans Attack Dems via Fake Twitter Accounts
Posted on October 26, 2009A novel online tactic employed by Connecticut Republicans to attack their Democratic opponents has been shut down by Twitter. The New Haven Advocate reports that last week, Twitter terminated 33 fake accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives...
Debunking Several Myths About the Passive Voice in Legal Writing
Posted on October 26, 2009Any law student who has taken a legal writing course has probably heard, repeatedly, that the passive voice is bad. Evil. To be avoided at all costs. In most cases I would agree this is true, and that vigorously purging the passive voice from your writing makes it clearer and easier to read...
Suit Says U.S. Attorney's Office a 'Girls Club'
Posted on October 23, 2009The U.S. attorney's office in Puerto Rico was a "girls club" in which male attorneys were the victims of discrimination and a hostile work environment. That, at least, is the allegation of Juan E. Milanes, a former assistant U.S. attorney there. He has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was discriminated against based on his gender and constructively discharged...
Computers May Usurp Oral Testimony, U.K. Chief Justice Warns
Posted on October 23, 2009Given that he occupies a judicial position that traces its history to the Middle Ages, the comments this week by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales were particularly striking for the deviation from tradition they predict. In his first press conference since taking office last year, Lord Judge said that, within 15 years, oral testimony in courts may have to be replaced by evidence presented entirely by computer...
La-Z-Boying While Intoxicated
Posted on October 23, 2009You would think that, having consumed eight or nine beers, Dennis LeRoy Anderson's La-Z-Boy would be the perfect place for him. But this particular chair had wheels and a motor. And when the 62-year-old Anderson got in it to drive home from his local bar in the northern Minnesota town of Proctor, he quickly crashed into a parked car...
The New Adventures of Older Lawyers
Posted on October 23, 2009Why, when I was a young whippersnapper, we had respect for our elders. The silver-haired among us were seen as vaults of accumulated wisdom, as mentors with lifetimes of lessons to share. But in today's youth-obsessed culture, those in their 70s and up sometimes seem to be all but invisible...
Survey: News Reporters Find Lawyers Unhelpful
Posted on October 22, 2009News reporters who cover litigation say lawyers are not particularly helpful when it comes to helping them understand the core issues in their cases. Plaintiffs lawyers, however, are more helpful than defense lawyers. Asked which side in a case is more helpful to them, not a single reporter said it was the defense...
Thursday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 22, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: My husband of 17 years left his cell phone at home. I was checking it out and discovered that the nickname he has attached to my phone number in his Contacts is "Guantanamo...
Questioning Morehouse's Commitment to Fabulousness
Posted on October 22, 2009The Faculty Lounge blog brings us news from Morehouse College, a private, historically black liberal arts college for men that, after over 140 years in existence, has deemed it necessary to impose an unusual dress code: a ban on the "wearing of women's clothes, makeup, high heels and purses...
Rule 1: When the Judge Agrees With You, Stop Talking
Posted on October 22, 2009As a law student learning trial practice, and later as a young lawyer, I recall being instructed numerous times about "Rule 1," i.e., "When the judge agrees with you, stop talking!" Actually, I recall a couple of other commandments characterized as "Rule 1" -- "Get paid;" and "If anyone is going to jail make sure it is not you" -- but the "stop talking" rule was constantly reiterated through the years...
Attorney Charged With Posting Ad Seeking 'Secretary With Benefits'
Posted on October 22, 2009To borrow a line from Martin Landau's Bob Ryan character on the HBO show "Entourage," what if I was to tell you about an Illinois Disciplinary Commission complaint against an attorney who allegedly attempted to hire a secretary whose duties would expressly include sexual interaction with him and his partner, and that as part of the interview process the candidate would be required to perform for them sexually? Is that something you might be interested in? The Legal Profession Blog reports here on this bombshell of a complaint over the attorney's May 2009 ad for a secretary/legal assistant...
Prosecutor Defends Subpoena to Students
Posted on October 21, 2009Call this course, "Introduction to Overreaching." But it is not one students at Northwestern University's Medill journalism school willingly signed up for. The state's attorney in Cook County, Ill., has issued a subpoena asking Northwestern to turn over a variety of student records, including grades and performance evaluations, after the students uncovered evidence they say proves the innocence of a man who has spent three decades in prison for murder...
The Economy's Most Tragic Consequence
Posted on October 21, 2009On the morning of April 30, 2009, Kilpatrick Stockton lawyer Mark Levy arrived early to his Washington, D.C., office. He had cleared his calendar the day before. He changed his e-mail auto-response to say, "As of April 30, 2009, I can no longer be reached...
Tuesday's Three Burning Legal Questions: License Plate Edition
Posted on October 20, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I acquired Alabama vanity license plate "XXXXXXX" for my car (as an "homage" to my nickname, Racer X). Now I'm suddenly receiving as many as 10 parking ticket notices a day from the city of Birmingham...
Embracing the 'Real-Time Web'
Posted on October 20, 2009As I mentioned here last week, it struck me on the day of Balloon Boy Falcon Heene's (non)flight that the most up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of the episode I could find that afternoon was delivered through a simple "hashtag" on Twitter ("#boyinballoon")...
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Children Resolve Bitter Dispute Over Estate
Posted on October 20, 2009An out-of-court settlement has finally resolved a long-standing dispute among Dr. Martin Luther King's children over his multimillion-dollar estate. Although Dr. King died in 1968, his estate continues to produce substantial income. Among other things, the estate includes the broadcast rights to Dr...
Document Review: When 'As Fast as I Can' Doesn't Cut It
Posted on October 20, 2009This post yesterday on the Temporary Attorney blog shared a directive sent out via e-mail to contract attorneys handling a "junior" level document review (paying $23 an hour): Please pick up the pace. They are expecting you to do about 80 docs an hour and all of you are less than half that...
Lawyer Named Head of Screen Actors Guild
Posted on October 19, 2009The board of directors of the 125,000-member Screen Actors Guild has appointed lawyer David P. White as its national executive director and chief negotiator. At its national meeting in Los Angeles over the weekend, the board approved a two-year contract with White, who had been SAG's interim director since January...
'Healthy' Smokers Win Landmark Tobacco Ruling
Posted on October 19, 2009The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled today that cigarette smokers who have suffered no apparent injuries to their health may nonetheless bring a lawsuit to force tobacco makers to pay for medical monitoring to scan for cancer that may develop in the future...
Can Avvo's Ratings Be Gamed?
Posted on October 19, 2009Critics of lawyer-rating site Avvo.com have found their standard-bearer in Massachusetts lawyer Leonard H. Kesten. In an article published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Kesten describes how he "impersonated" a young lawyer at his firm and manipulated his Avvo profile until he raised the lawyer's ranking to a perfect 10...
Trial Lawyers' Group Suspends Top Three Execs
Posted on October 19, 2009The Florida Justice Association suspended its top three executives Friday after an investigation disclosed their roles in sending out a racially charged mailing last month in an attempt to defeat former Florida House Speaker John Thrasher in his Republican state senate primary...
Battle Lines Form Over Mass. Law School
Posted on October 19, 2009Just a few days after University of Massachusetts officials announced a plan to take over the private, unaccredited Southern New England School of Law and give the state its first public law school, proponents and opponents are lining up for what promises to be a heated battle...
Friday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 16, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I am a truck driver and I'm sitting in my truck smoking a cigarette. A police officer is giving me the evil-eye. Am I missing something here?Answer: Are you in Ontario, by chance? Yes? Then get ready to pay the Man for smoking in an "enclosed workplace...
Balloon Boy Hits the Blawgosphere and Twitter
Posted on October 16, 2009It did not take long for "balloon boy," aka Falcon Heene, to make his appearance in the legal blawgosphere. Here is a sampling: Law and More asks here whether the shiny, flying, silver Jiffy Pop-looking craft tethered in the backyard of Richard Heene was an "attractive nuisance" under the law...
Law.Gov Report Coming in 2010
Posted on October 16, 2009Via this post yesterday on the ABA Journal's "Law Libraries" site, we came across the interesting "Law.gov" initiative now underway by an organization called Public.Resource.org. According to its Web site, Law.Gov is an effort to create a report documenting exactly what it would take to create a distributed registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States...
On the Death of Bruce Wasserstein
Posted on October 15, 2009In the annals of lawyers who went on to bigger and better careers, Bruce Wasserstein, who died yesterday at the age of 61, reigns supreme. The Harvard Law School graduate and onetime lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore became one of Wall Street's best-known and most successful investment bankers and was chairman and chief executive officer of Lazard Ltd...
Bon Jovi Heads to Lanier; Lanier Heads to London
Posted on October 15, 2009You might think that announcing you'd secured Bon Jovi to play at your holiday party would be news enough for any law firm in a single week. But you wouldn't be Texas plaintiffs lawyer W. Mark Lanier, who also this week revealed plans to open his firm's first European office in London early next year...
Most States Fail to Protect Children's Rights
Posted on October 15, 2009A report to be released today says that most U.S. states do not adequately protect the rights of abused and neglected children, most notably by failing to provide these children with appointed counsel to represent their interests. The report grades each state and the District of Columbia on how well they protect the legal rights of abused and neglected children in juvenile court proceedings...
Mass. Explores the Public Option for a Law School
Posted on October 15, 2009While Congress debates "the public option" as a component of health care reform, Massachusetts is about to have a public option debate of its own. Only in this case, the debate is over whether the state should open a public law school as part of the University of Massachusetts...
Wednesday's Three Burning Legal Questions
Posted on October 14, 2009Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I work the metal detector at the Taylor County Courthouse in Texas. Some dude just came through the machine and put a baggy of marijuana in the blue dog bowl we use to run items through the x-ray machine...
Woman Subject to Protective Order Arrested for Facebook 'Poke'
Posted on October 14, 2009On June 10, a court issued a protective order prohibiting Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tenn., from "telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with" another Hendersonville woman, either "directly or indirectly." On Friday, Sept. 25, Jackson was "extremely shocked" when police arrested her for allegedly violating the order...
Former BigLaw First-Year Recounts His Path to Joblessness
Posted on October 14, 2009The Jobless Lawyer blog provides a candid and eye-opening account of the plight of a recently laid-off first-year BigLaw lawyer. The anonymous blogger describes himself as a licensed attorney in the State of New York with two Ivy League degrees who, until March 2009, was practicing commercial litigation at one of the top 10 firms in the U...
U.K. Hourly Rates Head in an Unfamiliar Direction
Posted on September 30, 2009There has been a steady onslaught against the billable hour in recent years, not least of which is such as the demand by many clients for alternative billing arrangements. Still, the latest argument for not dividing your day into 6-minute segments may come as a surprise: For the first time in recent memory, attorney billable rates appear to be declining...
Are the Yellow Pages Now Obsolete for Lawyers?
Posted on September 30, 2009The Lawyerist blog asked a great question in this post yesterday: Are the Yellow Pages now obsolete as a form of advertising for lawyers? Sam Glover ponders that question, noting that he has "not heard any Yellow Pages success stories in a very long time, except from the occasional criminal defense or personal injury lawyer with a full-page spread...
Pint Glass Injuries Cause British Government to Leap Into Action
Posted on September 30, 2009Writing on his "Lowering the Bar" blog, Kevin Underhill brings us news of the latest effort to make life difficult for personal injury lawyers. On the heels of its ill-fated effort to control stabbings by banning knives that have a point on the end, the British government is now seeking a new design for pint glasses that it hopes will reduce the number of incidents in which people use them to attack each other...
A Video Matching Site for Lawyers and Clients
Posted on September 29, 2009A new video site wants to play matchmaker for lawyers and clients. The idea behind LegalTube is to help potential clients find the right lawyer by letting them view videos of the lawyers discussing themselves and their areas of practice. "LegalTube is the only legal directory where finding a lawyer or the answers to your law-related questions is as easy as channel surfing," the site promises...
Practice Management Group Inducts 12 as Fellows
Posted on September 29, 2009I try to avoid shameless self-promotion here, figuring I can do that on my own blog. This weekend, however, I found myself in the company of a group of outstanding legal professionals, all of whom were being honored as leaders and innovators in the field of law practice management...
Judge: No Proof Cows 'Tormented' By Oral Sex
Posted on September 29, 2009This has to be the strangest legal story I have read in a long time, if not ever. In New Jersey, a judge has dismissed charges against a former police officer accused of engaging in oral sex with calves. The reason the judge dismissed the charges: He had no way of knowing how the calves felt about the encounters...
Should the SEC Deputize the Zero Hedge Blog?
Posted on September 28, 2009The beleaguered SEC can use all the help it can get right now, so maybe it should deputize the Zero Hedge blog? On Sept. 17, one of its contributors ("Anal_yst") wrote in a post entitled, "Unsolicited Offer to the Securities & Exchange Commission: Hire Me," that the SEC was in such dire shape that I personally just can't sit idly by and facepalm/laugh/cry anymore...
101 Damn Fine and Not-So-Fine Law Firm Taglines
Posted on September 28, 2009The Stem Legal blog has collected 101 "taglines" from major law firms in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. As Steve Matthews of Stem Legal observes, these taglines, which firms use to brand themselves on their Web sites and elsewhere, seek to describe the firm?s philosophy "succinctly and (hopefully) memorably" through all sorts of methods: alliteration, puns, you name it...
Indiana Grandmother Jailed After Buying One Box Too Many of Cold Medicine
Posted on September 28, 2009Ultimately, it was the box of Mucinex-D that Sally Harpold purchased for her daughter in March 2009 at a Clinton, Indiana, drugstore that got her thrown in jail. Because it came on the heels of a purchase of a box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine that she had already dared to pick up for her husband earlier that week, Harpold, a grandmother of triplets, was awoken by police officers banging on the front door of her home on July 30 (four months after the purchases) and taken in handcuffs to the Clinton Police Department...
Juror's Googling Results in New Trial
Posted on September 25, 2009The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that a judge was justified in throwing out a defense verdict and ordering a new trial in a wrongful death case because of a juror's Google searches. In a Sept. 16 opinion, Russo v. Takata Corporation, the court affirmed the order of a new trial in a case brought against a seat-belt manufacturer by the estate of a 16-year-old girl who was killed after she was thrown from her vehicle...
Schemes Let Lawyers Sidestep Ambulance Chasing
Posted on September 25, 2009Why chase after ambulances when you can just wait around the hospital for them to arrive? That appears to be the thinking of personal-injury lawyers in two states who are alleged to have purchased hospital records to find clients and beef up recoveries...
Lawyers Convene to Consider Polygamy and the Law
Posted on September 25, 2009Lawyers are convening today at the Snowbird Resort in Snowbird, Utah, for the first-ever conference focused on the legal implications of polygamy. Sponsored by the polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices, the conference is designed to provide a snapshot into the family, criminal law and constitutional issues that often confront plural families, Principle Voices Director Mary Batchelor told Associated Press...
Remembering Judge Jerry Buchmeyer
Posted on September 25, 2009If truth is stranger than fiction, few knew that better than U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer of Dallas, who died this week at the age of 76. Highly regarded as a jurist, Buchmeyer was also well known for his long-running Texas Bar Journal column, "et cetera," which culled real-life humor from actual trials and depositions...
They Call Me Bruce
Posted on September 24, 2009First off, let me just say that I know this won't be easy. My prolific predecessor, Carolyn Elefant, cultivated a very loyal following over her three-and-a-half years writing Legal Blog Watch. Indeed, Carolyn did such a great job during her time here that lawyers from different continents penned poems in her honor when she announced her departure last week...
Deputies' Wii Bowling During Drug Raid Doesn't Please Sheriff
Posted on September 24, 2009Professor Jonathan Turley's Res Ipsa Loquitur blog has a priceless video (below) showing the execution of a search warrant for drugs carried out by deputies in Lakeland, Fla. The officers of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force did, in fact, find marijuana, meth, weapons, drug paraphernalia and over $30,000-worth of stolen property...
Legal Blog and Journalism Leaders Discuss 'New Media & the Law'
Posted on September 24, 2009Last night at Georgetown University Law Center, several leaders in the legal blogging and journalism world met to discuss "New Media & The Law." The panel featured David Lat (center in the lousy photo from my camera phone below) from Above the Law, Tony Mauro (right) from the National Law Journal and the Blog of the Legal Times), and Matt Welch (left) from Reason Magazine...
In-House Counsel Confront Social Media
Posted on September 23, 2009On Monday, I chaired a day-long program in New York, Social Media: Risks & Rewards. The program was produced by Corporate Counsel magazine and its publisher, ALM, which is also publisher of this blog. I cannot offer praise enough to this program's organizers and participants...
Breyer Urges Judges to Engage the Public
Posted on September 23, 2009Standing before a Boston ballroom packed with hundreds of judges and lawyers, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer last night urged them to continue their efforts to educate the public about the role of the judiciary and to engage them in the judicial process...
Two Rebels of Legal Journalism Have a Chat
Posted on September 23, 2009What happens when the original rebel of legal journalism, Steve Brill, sits down for a chat with today's best-known rebel of legal journalism, David Lat? Well, if you happen to have a camera present, you get the fascinating three-part interview posted this week as part of the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels project...
Farewell to Carolyn Elefant
Posted on September 23, 2009I have not blogged here since last Thursday. In the interim, something momentous happened. Carolyn Elefant left Legal Blog Watch. Carolyn and I co-authored this blog for 3.5 years, alternating posting duties every other day, with occasional time off for good behavior...
Want Dignitary Status? Bring Your Own Shovel
Posted on September 22, 2009See anything wrong in this picture? No? Then you're clearly not from Texas, where the law bloggers are having all kinds of fun with the recent prank by attorney and party-crasher George Lobb (white hard hat above). On Sept. 2, officials and dignitaries were on hand to break ground for a new federal courthouse in Austin, Texas...
Legal Business Development via Twitter: The Challenge
Posted on September 22, 2009In a post today on Legal Technology called "Where to Focus With Social Networking," Larry Bodine argues that while the number of online social networks continues to grow quickly, the good news is that marketers and lawyers can ignore most of them. At the top of his list of "time-wasters" that can be ignored is Twitter, which he says a study has shown to be 40 percent "total pointless babble...
East Texas 'Troll Tracker' Defamation Lawsuit Settles
Posted on September 22, 2009The Prior Art reports that after four days of courtroom testimony in Tyler, Texas, the "Troll Tracker" defamation lawsuit ended last night in a confidential settlement. The jury was set to hear closing arguments and begin deliberations today. According to The Prior Art: Cisco issued a statement Tuesday morning in which it said the dispute between the parties "has been resolved to their mutual satisfaction, and Rick Frenkel and Cisco apologize for the statements of Rick Frenkel on the Troll Tracker blog regarding Eric M...
Lawyers Must Learn to Search
Posted on September 22, 2009For as long as there has been civil discovery in lawsuits, litigators have had responsibility for the task of figuring out how to search for the documents responsive to an adversary's requests. As the amount of information available to companies and people explodes, however, that task has become more challenging...
Patent Auctions Continue, Despite Setbacks
Posted on September 21, 2009The New York Times ran a piece yesterday on patent auctions, focusing on the story of Daniel Schlager, a doctor who invented a "personal alarm" device using GPS technology in the early 1990s. As a small inventor, Schlager and a partner hired a patent licensing consultant to help them present the technology to cellphone companies like Qualcomm and Motorola...
Pro Bono Effort Makes All the Difference Between Two Death Penalty Appeals
Posted on September 21, 2009Earlier this month, The New Yorker ran an epic-length article on the trial, conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was accused of setting his own house on fire and killing his three young children. Willingham was put to death in 2004, but writer David Grann details how the pseudo-science prosecutors relied on to show that the fire was not an accident, and a lackluster defense by court-appointed lawyers who couldn't disprove it, doomed Willingham to death by lethal injection...
My Last Day at Legal Blog Watch
Posted on September 18, 2009So let me get right to the point: Today is my last day as a contributor to Legal Blog Watch. Though I've spent the past three-and-a-half years here trying to uncover salacious little tidbits or outrageous controversies in the legal world to enlighten or entertain readers, I'm disappointed to report that there's no scandalous backstory to my departure...
Are Lawyers Getting Clients From Twitter?
Posted on September 18, 2009I'm a fan of Twitter, and have been using the service since early this year both personally (@brucecarton) and as a news feed for securities litigation news (@SecuritiesD). I'm also interested in its use and value to lawyers, particularly to lawyers in the "BigLaw" world...
Lawyers and Social Media: A Force for Good or 'Evil'?
Posted on September 18, 2009An article in Saturday's New York Times highlighting the hazards of attacking a judge in a law blog has sparked a variety of reactions from lawyers. Back in 2006, criminal defense attorney Fred Conway lashed out at a Florida state judge, labeling her an "EVIL, UNFAIR WITCH" and "seemingly mentally ill" in this post on JAABlog, which covers the Broward Country court system...
Study Surveys Public's Idea of 'Noncommercial Use'
Posted on September 17, 2009A key concept in copyright law is that of commercial use. It is a factor in analyzing fair use. And the Creative Commons licensing scheme includes a noncommercial license, by which copyright owners allow others to use their work provided it is for noncommercial purposes...
Courts Clamp Down On Jurors' Web Use
Posted on September 17, 2009We've written here about the challenges judges and lawyers face from jurors' tweets and jurors' blogs. Separate stories in the news out of California illustrate how courts are dealing with these challenges. In Sacramento, the court presiding over a wrongful death lawsuit is taking the unusual step of requiring jurors to sign a declaration attesting that they will not use "personal electronic and media devices" to research or communicate about any aspect of the case...
Tax Court Writes Off Lawyer's Deduction for Prostitutes
Posted on September 17, 2009A veteran New York tax lawyer has lost his legal battle to claim tax deductions for more than $100,000 he spent on prostitutes and pornography. But, hey, you can't blame a guy for trying. William G. Halby, a tax lawyer first admitted to practice in New York in 1956, claimed the deductions as medical expenses...
Controversy Continues Over Law Prof's Anti-Gay Ad
Posted on September 17, 2009As a graduate of Boston College Law School, I was disappointed to read about BC Law Professor Scott T. Fitzgibbon's starring role in an anti-gay marriage TV ad targeted at voters in Maine. Now that I've watched the ad and read more about it, I find it even more disappointing for the ways in which it distorts some of the underlying issues...
Kind of Like Match.com, for Lawyers and Clients
Posted on September 16, 2009Corporate counsel routinely issue requests for proposal as a way to hire law firms. Now, even small fry clients can do the same using a just-launched site called LawBidding.com, featured today in an article on the State Bar of Wisconsin's Web site. From the article, here's how LawBidding...
Does Bar Exam Failure Presage Career Failure?
Posted on September 16, 2009Law student blog The Shark takes issue with a UCLA law school researcher's study (first reported at the ABA Journal) which concluded that people who fail the bar exam fare worse than even college graduates in the first five years after graduation but spring back later in their careers...
Is Total Attorneys Complaint a Total Joke?
Posted on September 15, 2009What are we to make of the complaint by Connecticut lawyer Zenas Zelotes against Chicago-based Total Attorneys and its lawyer-founder Kevin Chern? Zelotes has filed versions of his 303-page complaint against more than 500 lawyers in 47 states. He alleges that these lawyers are obtaining referrals through and sharing fees with Total Attorneys in violation of legal ethics rules...
Report Ponders a Democratic NLRB
Posted on September 15, 2009Fasten your seatbelts for a Democratic National Labor Relations Board. That is the warning that opens a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report that considers how the labor board is likely to change under the Obama Administration. "After eight years of Republican majorities and relatively well-balanced NLRB decisions, most of which were accepted by the federal circuit courts of appeals, the Obama Administration will usher in a new Democratic, pro-union majority set to reverse Bush Board decisions and much more," says the report, The National Labor Relations Board in the Obama Administration: What Changes to Expect...
DMCA Protects Video Site, Judge Says
Posted on September 15, 2009In what is being hailed as a major victory for video-hosting sites, a federal judge in Los Angeles has dismissed Universal Music Group's copyright case against Veoh, a video site that allows users to share videos. Finding that Veoh qualifies for protection under the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, U...
Senate Hopeful Once Had Centerfold Spread
Posted on September 15, 2009Scott Brown, a lawyer running as a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat, has achieved much in his career. He has been a Massachusetts state senator since 2004 and before that he served three terms as a state representative. For 30 years, he has been in the National Guard, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps...
Prop 8 Controversy Splits California Bar
Posted on September 14, 2009A year ago, I posted here about a group of law professors that decided to boycott the Association of American Law Schools' annual meeting at the San Diego Manchester Grand Hyatt as a protest of hotel owner Douglas Manchester's financial support of the Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriages...
Hulk Hogan Sues Law Firm for Overcharging
Posted on September 14, 2009Retired professional wrestling champ Hulk Hogan is up for another fight, only this one doesn't involve grappling with another large man clothed only in a few strategically placed swathes of spandex. Instead, Hogan is taking on American Lawyer "Litigation Boutique of the Year" finalist Zuckerman Spaeder, alleging that the firm overcharged Hogan by more than $1 million in legal fees...
Law Students Exiled to Externships
Posted on September 14, 2009It used to be that unpaid externships were the ugly stepsister to highly paid summer associate programs. But in this new economy, no more. According to a story in The National Law Journal (Hat tip to The Am Law Daily), externships -- unpaid, for-credit work opportunities -- are providing a path to hands on experience now that many law firms have canceled their internships...
Lawyer on Tap to Lead AFL-CIO
Posted on September 11, 2009Richard L. Trumka, the former coal miner expected to be elected president of the AFL-CIO, America's largest labor federation, at its convention in Pittsburgh next week, is a lawyer who got his start in the labor movement as a staff attorney for the United Mine Workers of America...
Lawyer Faces Discipline Over Blog Posts
Posted on September 11, 2009A former Illinois assistant public defender faces disciplinary charges over postings to her blog that Illinois authorities say exposed client confidences and revealed her complicity in a client's fraud on a court. The attorney denies the charges and says she plans to hire legal counsel to help her fight them...
Judge Slams Blogger's Special Treatment
Posted on September 11, 2009A federal prosecutor's decision to let prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan off the hook for a marijuana bust was condemned yesterday by a federal magistrate judge as unjustified favoritism. But finding that he was without power to override the prosecutor's decision, the magistrate judge dismissed the charges nonetheless...
A Wound That Time Can't Heal
Posted on September 11, 2009Time heals all wounds, my mother used to tell me. But eight years later, the horrible events of 9/11 continue to hurt. Some were wounded more critically than others that day, they who lost sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, spouses and loved ones...
News Round-Up
Posted on September 10, 2009Brooklyn man meets his match in lawsuit against Match.com: Sean McGinn, a Brooklyn man who filed a $5 million class-action suit against Match.com over unanswered emails has dropped the suit due to the extreme amount of ridicule he endured from media coverage...
Only a Small Percentage of Lawyers Use Twitter
Posted on September 10, 2009At the beginning of 2009, Larry Bodine predicted that Twitter would become a popular social media tool for lawyers. However, after several months of usage, Bodine discovered that Twitter was not as effective for lawyer marketing as he'd initially believed...
Law Schools Cutting Back in Down Economy
Posted on September 10, 2009Turns out the ivory tower isn't insulated as many would believe. Just as law firms have been cutting lawyers from the ranks to deal with the current economic client, now law schools are doing the same. The Harvard Law Record details some of the cuts at Harvard Law School resulting from the downturn...
Corporate Counsel Exchanging Information Through Social Networking
Posted on September 10, 2009Lawyers -- do you feel your ears burning? Maybe that's because corporate counsel are exchanging information about your services and how to save money on them on social networking sites like Linked In, Legal OnRamp and Martindale-Hubbell Connected, to name a few...
DA Hopeful Shows He's Tough on ... Himself
Posted on September 09, 2009Michael Untermeyer, a Republican candidate for district attorney in Philadelphia, believes the city could save millions of dollars by moving nonviolent defendants out of prison and keeping track of them by way of electronic monitoring bracelets. To underscore his point, Untermeyer is demonstrating the effectiveness of GPS ankle bracelets -- by slapping one on himself...
Bankrupt Firm Owes $1.5M for Phone Book Ads
Posted on September 09, 2009Here is the best reason yet for lawyers to quit advertising in yellow pages -- in fact, here are 1.5 million reasons. A Florida personal injury firm filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, listing debts of $2.5 million to its top 12 creditors, $1.5 million of that for advertising in various phone directories...
Lawyer, Trivia Whiz
Posted on September 09, 2009Did you know that Daniel Boone, that iconic American hero, was once put on trial for treason? Did you know that Lizzie Borden, the woman who the rhyme says "gave her mother forty whacks," was actually acquitted by a jury of any wrongdoing? These are just a couple of the little-known facts presented in the Famous Trials section of the Web site Awesome Stories...
ALM, All Over Again
Posted on September 09, 2009I used to work for a company called ALM. Sometimes when I tell people that, they answer, "Now, which one is that?" When I add, "You know, it publishes The American Lawyer and The National Law Journal and operates Law.com," I immediately see any uncertainty disappear...
JDs Not to Be
Posted on September 08, 2009With law firms cutting back, some career counselors are advising lawyers to think about another profession. This week's Maryland Daily Record profiles lawyers who did more than think about leaving the law; they've actually done it. According to the article, nonpracticing lawyers fall into one of two categories: Either they always wanted to be lawyers but found once they started that it wasn?t what they?d hoped for, or they never wanted to be lawyers but drifted into law school because they couldn?t think of anything else to do...
Do Proliferating Ads for Med-Mal Plaintiffs Mean Suits Are On the Rise?
Posted on September 08, 2009The Blog of Legal Times reports on a recent study by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform that found that television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits increased from about 10,150 ads in 2004 to more than 156,000 ads in 2008 -- a whopping 1,400 percent increase in four years...
Law Firm Marketer Gone Wild
Posted on September 08, 2009Legal marketers abound. Some are reputable and generate positive results, others are simply ineffective, but still, do no harm besides wasting a lawyer's money. Then there's the third category of marketer who's discussed over at Mark Bennett's Defending People blog: one who causes damage to the reputation of the lawyer for whom he's working...
Playing the Odds on Poker's Legality
Posted on September 04, 2009Those of you who enjoy anteing up for a barroom game of poker might want to check out recent court actions involving gamblers. That line between the friendly game of cards and the kind that can get you arrested seems to be getting thinner. DeeDee Correll at the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday on a spate of recent poker player arrests in homes, bars and other small-time venues around the country...
Firms Developing Social Media Policies
Posted on September 04, 2009The Wisconsin Law Journal reports that law firms are beginning to develop guidelines for social media, to ensure that social media activities by the firm's individual lawyers remain consistent with the law firm's image. Unfortunately, some of the contemplated policies seem a bit draconian...
The Silver Lining Behind Attorney Layoffs
Posted on September 04, 2009On Thursday, The National Law Journal published a piece by Ari Kaplan about three lawyers pursuing unusual career paths. His message to the huddled masses of displaced and would-be attorneys? When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Among the former lawyers mentioned in Kaplan's article are a stand-up comedian and professional speaker, a television producer and novelist, and a Lego sculptor...
Students From Lower-Tier Schools Are Happier at BigLaw
Posted on September 04, 2009Great credentials may or may not make better lawyers, but apparently they don't make more satisfied lawyers. That's the conclusion of a study entitled "After the JD" by the American Bar Foundation, which found that those graduates of nonelite law schools who work at Am Law 100 and 200 firms are happier than their colleagues from top-tier schools, and they tend to stick around longer too...
The First Global Firm Owned by Minority Women
Posted on September 03, 2009Two former BigLaw lawyers have teamed up to form what they say is the "first female and minority-owned multi-office global law practice" in the United States. We will have to take them at their word on that, unless someone comes forward to point us to an earlier firm that fits this description...
Work-Life Balance: So Last August?
Posted on September 03, 2009Ah, the heady days of a year ago. It was a time when lawyers believed they could have it all -- economic success and a personal life to boot. A lot has changed in the intervening year, little for the better. With the economy still in the tank and many law firms still struggling, has the legal profession lost sight of its quest for that elusive prize, work-life balance? At Adam Smith, Esq...
Radical Idea for Med-Mal Cases: Apologize
Posted on September 03, 2009If love means never having to say you're sorry, a medical mistake means never daring to say it. Fear of a lawsuit keeps doctors and other medical professionals from ever admitting they messed up. But as Associated Press writer David N. Goodman reports, a Michigan hospital is defying the conventional wisdom, admitting mistakes and offering compensation well before patients file lawsuits...
Choice of College Major Sways LSAT Score
Posted on September 03, 2009Did you know that your choice of undergraduate major may have contributed to how well or poorly you scored on the Law School Admission Test? A new study finds that the highest LSAT scores are achieved by students who major in physics/math, economics and philosophy/theology...
Law School Starts to Provide Real Education on Realities of Legal Job Market
Posted on September 02, 2009Over on The New York Times DealBook blog, former Wall Street Journal Law Blog author Dan Slater takes the American Bar Association and law schools to task for failing to put a cap on school admissions at a time when law firms are slashing jobs, cutting salaries and canceling summer programs...
Running SueEasy Turned Out to Be Not So Easy
Posted on September 02, 2009Remember SueEasy.com? It's the lawyer/client matching Web site service with a twist: It allowed potential litigants to publicly post grievances and wait for responses from lawyers with offers to represent them, and also enabled users to search for class actions to join in with other litigants...
Tort Reform Spurs More Lawsuits in Oklahoma, for Now
Posted on September 02, 2009It seems that new tort reform legislation in Oklahoma, which takes effect Nov. 1, is having the opposite of its intended effect -- at least in the short term. As The Oklahoman reports, Oklahoma City-based law firm Merritt & Associates recently circulated an e-mail to other law firms in the state, warning: "Danger! Tort reform legislation effective November 1...
Animal Law Practices Grow as 'Animal Companions' Gain Acceptance
Posted on September 02, 2009The concept of animal companions, or pets as family members, is being taken seriously -- in legislation as well as in the courts. Already growing animal law legal specialties include animal custody in divorces, estate planning for animals and prosecution for domestic violence against family pets...
Study Shows Masculine Name Can Better Odds of Success in the Legal Field
Posted on September 02, 2009Looking to improve your odds of finding a job in the legal profession these days? If you're a woman, perhaps a name change might do the trick. The Vancouver Sun reports on a study by the American Law and Economics Review that shows "females with masculine names fare far better in legal careers than females with feminine names...
Bad Laws Make Good Cases
Posted on September 01, 2009In the news this week are two stories linked only by the fact that both involve ill-advised pieces of legislation and suggest well-advised legal challenges. In Kentucky, when the General Assembly passed a law creating the state's Office of Homeland Security, it apparently did not want to take any chances with any power -- whether foreign or higher -- that might influence the state's security...
How to Become a Law Professor
Posted on September 01, 2009Being a law professor always struck me as a good gig. Sure, it doesn't always pay as well as the private sector. But you get summers off and all the torts you can eat. Best of all, the rat race of the billable hour is replaced with the slower pace of study and scholarship...
Law Student's Video Wins Him $10K
Posted on September 01, 2009Law student Branigan Robertson of Chapman University School of Law headed back to school last week with $10,000 less tuition to worry about. Chapman won the grand prize scholarship for the video he produced about his inspiration for going to law school...
Mass. Courts Decide Against Sponsored Law Clerks
Posted on September 01, 2009Earlier this summer, we told you about an unusual proposal out of Massachusetts for making productive use of all those deferred law firm associates sitting around wondering what to do with themselves. The chief administrative justice of the state's trial courts, Robert A...
Immigration Lawyer Was in U.S. Illegally
Posted on September 01, 2009If experience is the best teacher, then Denver immigration lawyer Ravi Kanwal certainly knew his stuff when it came to representing illegal aliens. You see, Kanwal was himself in the United States unlawfully. Problem is, he never told anyone about his status...
Lawyers Responsible for a Key Internet Milestone: Spam
Posted on August 31, 2009Later this week the Internet will celebrate its 30th birthday, and to mark the occasion the Associated Press rounds up some of the key milestones in Web history. Not surprisingly, engineers and scientists are primarily responsible for the technological developments that helped the Internet grow from a primitive interconnection between two computers into a global, publicly accessible system...
Got Milk? Get Fired
Posted on August 31, 2009The WSJ Juggle Blog reports on an Ohio Supreme Court decision finding that a company that fired a female employee who took unscheduled breaks from work to pump breast milk did not violate Ohio's pregnancy discrimination or sex discrimination laws. The facts, as summarized in the post: [LaNissa Allen] was fired after taking unscheduled breaks from work to pump milk...
Will Bar Associations Review Facebook for Applicants' Fitness?
Posted on August 31, 2009Maybe it's just as well that most bar associations remain in the dark about Facebook and other social media. Via Above the Law, comes news from True/Slant that: The Florida Bar Examiners, the group that decides who gets to become a lawyer in Florida, is considering forcing some wannabe lawyers to be subjected to a thorough social networking investigation prior to their being knighted esquires...
Fewer Newspapers Fighting for Open Access
Posted on August 31, 2009The New York Times reports on yet another of the consequence of the tough economic situation for the newspaper industry: Fewer newspapers are fighting to open court proceedings. Without newspapers to fight the access battle, the burden falls to the public and litigants themselves...
In a Downturn, Who Gets Priority?
Posted on August 28, 2009There are three lawyers in a lifeboat built for two: a partner, a third year associate and a new grad. The partner stays because it is his boat. Who gets the remaining seat? Though this hypothetical sounds like the beginning of a really bad lawyer joke, it also depicts a reality that law firms now face in the downturn...
ABA Takes on the FTC
Posted on August 28, 2009Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission once again delayed enforcement of its "Red Flags Rule," which requires creditors and financial institutions more time to develop and implement written identity theft prevention programs. As discussed here, the FTC considers lawyers to be creditors and therefore subject to the red flag rules because they extend credit to clients by rendering services first and issuing fees after the work is completed...
How Many Twitter Followers Does Your Lawyer Have?
Posted on August 28, 2009On Twitter, one very misleading metric remains the overwhelming focus of users: How many followers do you have? On the surface, this number would appear to be a reasonable way to quickly gauge whether a new Twitter user you have encountered is worth following: 5,000 other people find this person interesting enough to follow, you might say to yourself, so I will too...
New AIG CEO Expands Definition of 'Work From Home' -- to Croatia
Posted on August 28, 2009It's the year 2009. Bloggers often work from home and, increasingly, lawyers are seeking out flexible arrangements that will allow them to work from home, too. BlackBerrys, iPhones, laptops, inexpensive fax and copy machines, forwarded telephone numbers and high-speed Internet access make working remotely easier than ever...
Souter Seals His Secrets, but Rabble Guesses Them Anyway
Posted on August 27, 2009Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter is donating his personal and professional papers to the New Hampshire Historical Society, reports The National Law Journal's Tony Mauro. But in a move that adds yet another epithet to the long list of his eccentricities, the D...
Birthers, Lawyers, Billables and Obama
Posted on August 27, 2009We're a little late in addressing the "birther" movement, but the unending controversy over Obama's birth certificate has generated so much legal work that, try as we might, we couldn't ignore it anymore. A recent thread in the right-wing blogosphere has it that law firm Perkins Coie has billed Obama's lobbying organization more than a million dollars while trying to suppress lawsuits over Obama's eligibility to be president, an issue that has long been considered settled by the courts but continues to simmer on the Internet...
Was Armed Intruder a Law Prof?
Posted on August 26, 2009When a man was arrested Friday after carrying weapons into the University of Louisville Law School library, the school's announcement identified the man, Thomas H. Irwin, as a former university student and contract employee. But the announcement neglected to say what appears to be the case -- that Irwin is a lawyer who formerly taught at the law school...
¡Viva Al Nye the Lawyer Guy!
Posted on August 26, 2009In Maine, he is known simply as Al Nye the Lawyer Guy. But in Cuba, he will forever be remembered as "el abogado norteamericano Al Nye." With a few brief remarks on his blog last week, Portland, Maine, family lawyer, Rotary Club member and Red Sox fan Alan R...
Legal Rebels With a Cause
Posted on August 26, 2009The ABA Journal officially kicked off its Legal Rebels project yesterday, posting the first seven profiles of the 50 legal innovators it plans to feature. As Carolyn Elefant first wrote here last month, the project will profile lawyers, paralegals and other legal professionals who are "remaking the profession" through innovation and perhaps also grit...
Ted Kennedy, RIP
Posted on August 26, 2009Ted Kennedy died last night. He was a great man and a great representative of the virtues and selflessness of the legal profession. He fought for others ahead of himself and for justice ahead of self-interest.
Justice Is Served?
Posted on August 26, 2009The wheels of justice grind on: Mother-in-law sues comedian. Apparently, Sunda Croonquist's mother-in-law can't take a joke. The comedian's routine includes frequent jokes about her mother-in-law. Now, the mother-in-law is hoping to have the last laugh with a lawsuit filed in federal court in New Jersey...
Mobile Devices Significantly Expand the 40-Hour Work Week
Posted on August 25, 2009A few weeks ago I posted about two recent lawsuits by employees seeking overtime pay for responding to work messages on company-issued smart phones after hours. These types of lawsuits are on the rise, not only because of technology advancements, but also the present recessionary climate, with layoffs forcing employers to squeeze more work out of fewer people...
From Small Tweets, Big Firm Clients Grow
Posted on August 25, 2009Many large firm lawyers are hopping aboard the Twitter bandwagon, (as well as those of other social media sites) and realizing big time benefits from tiny, 140-character tweets, reports the San Jose Business Journal. However, it bears noting that most of the large firm lawyers finding business on Twitter represent startups or emerging technology developers who tend to rely heavily on social media...
Lawyers Beware: Judges May Be Watching You on Social Media
Posted on August 25, 2009There's an interesting article this week in Texas Lawyer about how judges are using social media. On one level, having judges who are familiar with social media can be helpful in dealing with certain issues that may arise at trial, like tweeting jurors or electronic discovery involving sites like Twitter and Flickr...
After Security Warnings, a Recap on RECAP
Posted on August 25, 2009Last week, I wrote about RECAP, a Firefox-based software plug-in that automatically sends documents downloaded by a user through PACER to an online Internet repository where they are made available to the public. Though RECAP doesn't appear to violate any of PACER's terms and conditions of use, some federal courts are warning lawyers who have installed RECAP to exercise caution in use...
Live From Washington: ILTA '09
Posted on August 24, 2009If you can't get yourself to ILTA, ILTA is getting itself to you. The International Legal Technology Association is holding its annual meeting this week near Washington, D.C. True to its character, it is enabling those who cannot attend in person to participate virtually...
Half of Blawgs Fail in First Year
Posted on August 24, 2009Launch a legal blog today and there is a pretty good chance you will not still be blogging a year from now -- maybe not even four months from now. That is the conclusion -- admittedly unscientific -- arrived at by Mark Herrmann at the blog Drug and Device Law after considering the life expectancy of a newborn legal blog...
Legal Research Revisionism
Posted on August 24, 2009What happens in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania stays in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. That could be the new motto for that court, based on a story by Shannon P. Duffy in The Legal Intelligencer that is drawing a lot of interest among legal bloggers...
Blawg Review Cuts Through the Pink Tape
Posted on August 24, 2009With the nation's lawyer-in-chief officially out on vacation this week, there may not be a single lawyer in the United States left working this last week of August. So too in the U.K., where the anonymous family lawyer who writes the blog Pink Tape reports that 90 percent of sensible lawyers are off on holiday...
Fla. Lawyer Aims to Build 'Safari Law' Practice, Bag Big Game
Posted on August 21, 2009On the hunt for a new practice area? Florida lawyer Ethan Andrew Way is trying to blaze a trail in "safari law," according to the Tallahasee Democrat. Way came up with the idea for his new specialization after learning that a friend with whom he'd hunted was having trouble recovering his hunting trophies home from Namibia...
Lawyers Viewed Negatively by Most Americans
Posted on August 21, 2009I've long known that many people don't like lawyers, but I have to confess, I was surprised to learn just how many. According to a recent Gallup poll (H/T ABA Journal News), a scant 25 percent of Americans have a positive view of the legal field. Only three industries ranked lower: real estate, automobile and oil and gas...
Summarize This Case, Professor: Slacks v. Suits
Posted on August 21, 2009The blawgosphere is replete with posts about how lawyers should or shouldn't dress. But where's the guidance for a law professor in need of advice on appropriate attire? Professor Bennett Capers took matters into his own hands at PrawfsBlawg, asking readers what he should wear on the first day of class: Given the importance of this first impression, am I the only one that obsesses at the start of the school year about what to wear on the first day of class, down to what color tie to wear? And I'm curious...
New Niche: Tell-Alls by Courtroom Sketch Artists
Posted on August 20, 2009If you watched the NewsHour on PBS last week, you might have caught Jim Lehrer's interview with courtroom sketch artist William J. Hennessy Jr. If you missed it, no problem, because the transcript is now posted at the Online NewsHour. Hennessy was also recently featured in a post at The Blog of Legal Times...
Down to Yasgur's ... Blawg?
Posted on August 20, 2009As you no doubt know unless you live under a rock, this week marked the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. And as you no doubt also know, Woodstock was not in Woodstock, N.Y., but on the dairy farm of Max Yasgur in Bethel. Yasgur appears in the 1970 documentary about the event, proclaiming, "The important thing that you've proven to the world ...
Law Prof Tied to Pot Bust
Posted on August 20, 2009A married pair of prominent Massachusetts lawyers -- one a professor at Suffolk University Law School -- have been tied by their son to his business growing and selling marijuana. Jonathon Cook, 20, allegedly told police in Natick, Mass., that his lawyer parents knew he was selling drugs out of their home and that his stepfather helped him build a room to grow marijuana and bought some of it himself...
Our Linked-In Judiciary
Posted on August 20, 2009"Your Honor, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." Connect with a judge on LinkedIn? I have not done it. But an increasing number of judges are creating public profiles on the professional networking site. Among them are federal circuit, district and bankruptcy judges and state appellate and trial judges...
Free E-Mail Services: Safe or Not?
Posted on August 19, 2009Last week, I asked whether lawyers make a poor impression on clients when using free e-mail addresses like Gmail or Yahoo. This week, there's a more serious debate brewing in the blogosphere over e-mail, specifically, whether free e-mail services are unsafe at any speed...
Why Lawyers Hate E-Discovery
Posted on August 19, 2009Via EDD Update, I was directed to an epic post by lawyer and electronic discovery guru Ralph Losey, entitled Plato's Cave: Why most lawyers love paper and hate e-discovery and what this means for legal education. Losey begins with the allegory of Plato's Cave, the story of prisoners who have been held captive in a cave all of their lives...
Facebook Sued for Privacy Violation
Posted on August 19, 2009A photographer, an actress, a college student and two minors filed suit against Facebook on Monday, alleging that the site violates state privacy law and misleads members into believing that the information that they post can be accessed only by designated "friends" and not third parties, reports the Associated Press...
DOJ Political Bias Lawsuit Followup
Posted on August 19, 2009Last June, news emerged that the Department of Justice applied a political litmus test to screen candidates for its honors programs, rejecting those whose résumés or Web sites suggested liberal leanings. Eight jilted applicants have since filed a class action, alleging that DOJ improperly relied on politics in making hiring decisions and violated privacy laws by culling information from applicants' Web sites without disclosing that it had collected this information, as required by federal law...
Vault Releases 2010 Law Firm Rankings
Posted on August 18, 2009The much-vaunted Vault law firm rankings were released today for 2010. The rankings are notable because they are based entirely on associate votes. They rank firms on five characteristics -- overall prestige, departmental prestige, regional prestige, diversity and quality of life...
Patry Returns to Blogging, and to a Debate
Posted on August 18, 2009William Patry is back to blogging and already finds himself in a back-and-forth debate over whether copyright law inhibits innovation and props up antiquated business models. Patry is a prominent copyright lawyer who works as senior copyright counsel for Google and wrote a seven-volume treatise on copyright law...
Supreme Court Ruling Revives Death Penalty Debate
Posted on August 18, 2009The Supreme Court caught us off guard yesterday, issuing a potentially momentous order on a quiet August Monday when we would assume the justices would be off in their RVs or wherever. The court ordered a federal district judge to hear testimony on the claims of death row inmate Tory Anthony Davis that he did not murder a Savannah, Ga...
Lawyer Continues Fight for Man's Innocence
Posted on August 18, 2009In February, we told you about Maine lawyer Morrison Bonpasse whose book, Perfectly Innocent, had caused three jurors to doubt their 1993 conviction of Alfred W. Trenkler in connection with a 1991 bombing that killed one Boston police officer and maimed another...
After Facing the Court of Public Opinion, Judge Sharon Keller Goes on Trial
Posted on August 17, 2009"We close at five." For Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Sharon Keller, those words could end up etched on the epitaph of her career, the Texas version of "Let them eat cake." After 15 years on the bench, Keller is on the other side of the dais today in San Antonio, where she's on trial for five judicial misconduct charges stemming from her decision not to keep the CCA open after hours to accommodate the defense team for convicted killer Michael Richard, who was scheduled to be executed that night, Sept...
Are Generation Y Lawyers a Bunch of Slackers?
Posted on August 17, 2009Over at Idealawg, Stephanie West Allen plays host to a robust debate over whether Generation Y lawyers -- or "millennials," lawyers under 30 -- who seek work/life balance to the exclusion of focusing on client needs are unrealistic slackers or serious professionals with different priorities than previous generations...
Take Back the Law!
Posted on August 17, 2009PACER, the federal government's system for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, was originally intended to make court filings more accessible to litigants and the public at large. Now, roughly a decade later, Carl Malamud and others argue that PACER actually deters access by holding public documents hostage behind an 8-cents-a-page fee wall...
Patent Denials on the Rise
Posted on August 17, 2009Inventors shouldn't count on a patent as a ticket out of the recession. Even though the number of patent applications is on the rise, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been rejecting them at an unprecedented rate over the past few years. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the PTO denied more than 59 percent of patents filed in the quarter that ended June 30 -- that's up significantly from the 35 percent rejection rate that prevailed between 1975 and 2004...
Lawyers Prefer Coke
Posted on August 14, 2009Lawyers, it seems, prefer coke. And we refer not to soft drinks, but to drugs. As between cocaine and marijuana, occupations show a clear divide in their drug of choice. For lawyers, the choice is cocaine. Over the past week, Richard Florida has written a series of posts for The Atlantic in which he and two colleagues slice and dice data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health to create a picture of the relationship between drug use and various political, economic and psychological characteristics of states...
The Reinvention of Legal Research
Posted on August 14, 2009At The Huffington Post, Peter Schwartz writes that we are in the midst of "the radical transformation of the legal publishing marketplace," a transformation, he contends, that will no longer support the two largest legal publishers, West and LexisNexis...
5th Circuit Disses John Edwards T-Shirt
Posted on August 14, 2009I presume Paul Palmer's parents thought they were taking a stand for free speech when they brought him the T-shirt that bore the slogan, "John Edwards for President '08." Palmer, then a sophomore at Waxahachie High School in Texas, had gone to school that morning with a different T-shirt, one that said simply, "San Diego...
Disgraced, Disbarred Attorney Found Dead
Posted on August 14, 2009In Minnesota legal circles, a newspaper once wrote of him, David Moskal was "known for several remarkable achievements, including the fastest disbarment in the state's history." Moskal rose rapidly from No. 1 in his class at William Mitchell College of Law to become one of Minnesota's highest-flying personal injury lawyers, earning millions and profiled in the magazine Minnesota Law & Politics as one of the state's "Tort Kings...
Two Visions of the Future Law Firm
Posted on August 13, 2009What will we see in the law firm of the future? It is a question Richard Susskind considered more than a decade ago in his book, "The Future of Law," and again in last year's book, "The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services." With the economy what it is, Susskind is far from alone in considering this question, as two recently published articles underscore...
The World's 10 Best Court Web Sites
Posted on August 13, 2009For the 11th year running, Justice Served announced its annual awards for the Top 10 Court Websites in the world. Justice Served is a consulting firm that provides services and training to courts in management and technology. It looked at thousands of court Web sites and evaluated them based on criteria that included their functionality, ease of use and appearance...
Fordham Bans Reed Smith Recruiters
Posted on August 13, 2009In what reporter Gina Passarella in The Legal Intelligencer calls an example of the current economic climate's "uncharted waters" and "choppy tides," Fordham Law School yesterday took the highly unusual and perhaps even unprecedented step of banning the international law firm Reed Smith, the 16th-ranked firm on this year's Am Law 100, from interviewing on campus for five years...
Can an E-Mail Address Make a Negative Impression?
Posted on August 12, 2009Used to be that lawyers worried about the cache that their physical mail address would convey. For example, here in the D.C. area, a "K" Street or Pennsylvania Avenue address carries white-shoe prestige while an address on 5th Street near the D.C. Superior Court house suggests a practicing criminal lawyer or consumer-oriented practice...
Microsoft Barred From Selling Word
Posted on August 12, 2009A Texas federal court judge granted an injunction against Microsoft, barring the company from selling some of its Word word-processing software because it violates a Canadian company's patent related to XML (extensible markup language), reports The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other media sources...
How Much Should You Specialize?
Posted on August 12, 2009There's an interesting opinion piece at Legal Week on the growing importance of specialization, by former law firm trainee Dominic Webb. Although the piece discusses lawyers in U.K. firms, it is equally relevant to American firms as well. Webb says that today's large commercial law firms are "rammed full of specialists...
Center on Global Legal Profession Launched at University of Indiana
Posted on August 12, 2009Law schools are accustomed to teaching students about precedent and what's been done before, rather than helping them to identify existing trends and figure out how to move forward. But the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law's new Center on Global Legal Profession will break fresh ground, by "focusing on the unprecedented challenges lawyers are facing around the world and develop research and training materials to assist current and future attorneys in their understanding of international legal systems...
Economy Driving More Work/Life Balance at Law Firms
Posted on August 11, 2009Perhaps there's an upside to the downturn after all. As this article, from Working Mother magazine describes, law firms are more willing to accommodate flexible schedules these days -- not necessarily out of noble motives, but because it's financially expedient to do so...
A Courtroom With a View
Posted on August 11, 2009Unlike federal district court judges, federal magistrates don't have lifetime tenure. But one lucky federal magistrate gets an even better perk -- a courtroom with a view. The New York Times reports on what's perhaps one of the greatest job openings in the legal profession these days: a federal magistrate position at a tiny federal courthouse in Yosemite National Park, with an annual salary of $160,000...
Does Working on the Phone but off the Clock Require Overtime Pay?
Posted on August 11, 2009These days, leaving the office doesn't necessarily mean leaving work behind. Between e-mail and smartphones, workers are finding themselves engaged in work long after they've punched out of the office. But should taking calls or returning e-mail after hours be considered activity that is off-the-clock or paid? That's the question at the heart of a lawsuit recently filed by employees of T-Mobile, who allege that they should have been paid for responding to work messages after hours...
Is It Lawful to Use Twitter for Emergency Messages?
Posted on August 11, 2009We already know what the law has to say about shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. But can you shout "fire" on a crowded Twitter? TechRadium, a Texas-based emergency alert provider, says no. As The National Law Journal reports, TechRadium is suing Twitter for alleged patent infringement for allowing municipalities, companies and government agencies to use its site as an emergency notification system...
Update: Prison for Judge Turned Pimp
Posted on August 10, 2009Last September, we told you about the retired New York Supreme Court judge who found an unusual way to keep himself busy in his retirement years -- recruiting prostitutes to service members of the fraternal group the Royal Order of Jesters. At the time, the former judge, Ronald H...
Picking a Law School? There's an App for That
Posted on August 10, 2009Choosing among law schools just got a little bit more convenient for any potential law student with an iPhone. There is now an iPhone application that ranks the 100 best law schools in the United States and provides capsule profiles of each of the ranked schools...
So, Is She the First Hispanic Justice?
Posted on August 10, 2009Even as Sonia Sotomayor takes her seat as the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, there remain those who question whether she is, indeed, the court's first Hispanic. Just this weekend, on a legal listserv I follow, someone asked, What about Justice Benjamin Cardozo? Wasn't he Hispanic? The question of Cardozo's heritage was floated even before Sotomayor was nominated...
White House Web Site Omits U.S. Attorney Nominees
Posted on August 10, 2009When the Senate on Friday confirmed President Obama's first U.S. attorney nominees, no one could accuse it of having acted hastily. It was nearly three months ago that President Obama formally nominated the six for the posts. The confirmations were seen as having broken through a logjam in the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation pipeline...
Sotomayor Confirmation to Bring Another Kind of First
Posted on August 07, 2009As you've probably already heard, yesterday, the Senate confirmed the nomination of 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. The Senate's 68-31 vote was split largely along party lines, with Democrats unanimously supporting Sotomayor along with nine Republicans...
Should You Work as a Paralegal if You Can't Find a Job as a Lawyer?
Posted on August 07, 2009With associate positions hard to come by, new graduates -- desperate to find a paying job in the legal profession -- are applying for work as paralegals, legal secretaries and law librarians, according to Long Island Business News. The story sites one new grad, Jessica Sparacino, who secured a job as a paralegal at Jackson Lewis, but that was only because she'd been working in that position through law school...
Lawyer Leaves Law for Life on 'Avenue Q'
Posted on August 07, 2009Who would have thought that a law degree could ever help with a creative career in the music industry? After all, the only notes that lawyers ever write are footnotes or case notes, neither of which is very lyrical. Yet Jeff Marx says his legal training helped him get his start in a music career that culminated in a Tony Award for the Broadway musical "Avenue Q," as this Bitter Lawyer profile points out...
Social Media as CLE?
Posted on August 07, 2009As I posted several months ago, social media continues to transform CLE, both bringing down the costs (by allowing for class delivery through webinars) and making classes more interactive. But can social media serve as a source of education even without an underlying webinar or class? Over at Three Geeks and a Law Blog, Toby Brown suggests that bar associations consider giving CLE credit to lawyers who participate in social media environments...
A New Low in Ambulance Chasing
Posted on August 06, 2009Lawyers are commonly portrayed as ambulance chasers but it appears some don't even have the dignity to stop when the ambulance arrives at the hospital. The FBI in Miami says a lawyer there bought stolen hospital records and used them to solicit clients, later kicking back a percentage of any lawsuit proceeds to the man who sold the records...
And Now, a Viral Video for Divorce Lawyers
Posted on August 06, 2009If you haven't seen Jill and Kevin's wedding dance video, you've either been in a self-induced post-bar exam coma or off on vacation on a remote island with no Internet access. Yes, the video went viral, as no one, it seemed, could resist watching the about-to-be-hitched couple and their wedding party/posse boogie down the aisle in a break -- or a break dance -- from the traditional wedding processional...
Tough Times for Legal Services
Posted on August 06, 2009Today's Boston Globe describes the dramatic drop in funding that is forcing legal aid programs across Massachusetts to lay off lawyers, cut back office hours and turn away a growing number of people who need legal representation. The problem, of course, is not confined to Massachusetts...
To All My Adoring Fans ...
Posted on August 06, 2009Truth is, I don't know whether I have any adoring fans -- or even merely lukewarm fans. Why don't I? Well, because I haven't set up one of those Facebook fan pages. If you're on Facebook, you know what I'm talking about, because you no doubt receive the same steady stream of invitations to become a fan of X lawyer or Y law firm...
Centenarian Lawyer Wins Oldest Worker Award
Posted on August 05, 2009There's no work/life balance for centenarian Texas lawyer Jack Borden, who today is honored as "America?s Outstanding Oldest Worker for 2009." As Borden told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, his work at his law practice is his life, as well as his life-saver: If I were to go home and sit down, I wouldn't live another year," [Borden] said...
Recovering Stolen Web Domains Can Prove Challenging
Posted on August 05, 2009Marc Ostrofsky is the victim of a crime: His property was stolen, and authorities know where it is. But 30 months later, Ostrofsky still hasn't been able to recover it. That's because the property was a domain name, and as the Houston Chronicle describes, the laws governing recovery of stolen names have not evolved quickly enough to keep pace with technology...
Dewey, Cheatem & Howe Makes Appearance in Loan Fraud Case
Posted on August 05, 2009"Do we cheat them, and how!" may have been the motto of the two former Mitsubishi dealership employees recently sentenced to prison for a massive fraud in which unsophisticated customers with poor credit were extended usurious car loans they had no hope of repaying...
Tenenbaum Wonders Where to Spend Donations
Posted on August 04, 2009A funny thing happened this weekend after a federal jury in Boston decided that Joel Tenenbaum should pay $675,000 to several record companies for illegally downloading and distributing 30 songs. People spontaneously started sending him money and a campaign spread on Twitter urging others to donate to Tenenbaum's cause...
A Turbulent Year for E-Discovery
Posted on August 04, 2009Within the electronic-discovery industry, the annual Socha-Gelbmann survey is as much anticipated as the Academy Awards are within the film industry. Every year since 2003, George Socha and Tom Gelbmann have conducted their survey of the e-discovery market, gathering information from providers, consumers and other sources and then slicing and dicing the data...
The Fall of the House of Lords
Posted on August 04, 2009In Britain last week, an unusual 600-year-long tradition came to an end as the House of Lords decided its final case. True to form, it went out not with a whimper, but with a bang. The House of Lords has served as the United Kingdom's supreme court of appeal, its highest court, since 1399...
Lawyer Disciplined Over Blog Posts
Posted on August 04, 2009A California lawyer has been suspended from law practice, in part over comments about a trial he posted to his blog. But the blog comments in this case came about in an unusual way. The lawyer was a juror in a felony trial and had not disclosed that he was an attorney...
Small Business Owner Takes Pro Se Sling to Goliath, and Wins
Posted on August 03, 2009It's unusual for a solo to prevail in a battle against a deep-pocketed company like Microsoft. And it's rarer still when that solo isn't a lawyer at all, but a solo business owner. Yet as The Connecticut Law Tribune reports, Kent Johnson, the sole owner of Compatible Computers, did just that: He stood up to accusations of computer piracy and trademark infringement in a lawsuit Microsoft filed against his company, and prevailed...
Political Speech in an Internet Age
Posted on August 03, 2009Back in November 2008, President Obama rode to victory at least in part due to his campaign's ability to effectively harness the power of the Internet and social media. Yet nine months later, many state and local political candidates are stymied from exploiting the Internet in their campaigns due to archaic campaign rules that haven't kept pace with technology, according to The Wall Street Journal...
An Extra Helping of Blawg Review #223
Posted on August 03, 2009For nearly four and a half years now -- 223 weeks, to be specific -- the weekly carnival of law blogs known as Blawg Review has been going strong. That impressive streak was nearly broken last week, but thanks to a last-minute substitution we now have not one legal blog news roundup today, but two: Blawg Review #223 (Sphincter Rules edition), and Blawg Review #223 (Caribana edition)...
Law Prof Proposes Tax on Texting to Curb Calamities
Posted on August 03, 2009Texting while driving seems so inherently stupid that I find it difficult to believe that a federal law is necessary to ban the practice. After all, as far as I know, there's no law specifically prohibiting driving while reading a newspaper, so I'm not sure why a special rule should be needed for texting...
For Tenenbaum, It's All Over But the Damages
Posted on July 31, 2009Following up on my post earlier this week about the music-downloading trial of Joel Tenenbaum underway in federal court in Boston, there has been a major development. Late last night, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said she would order a directed verdict against Tenenbaum on his liability for copyright infringement...
Israeli Group Honored for Legal Innovation
Posted on July 31, 2009The College of Law Practice Management this week named Israel's New Family Organization as winner of its 2009 InnovAction Award. This year for the first time, the COLPM also named the winner of an Honorable Mention, the New York-based legal services provider Practical Law Company...
At ABA, Whole Lotta Tweeting Going On
Posted on July 31, 2009The American Bar Association annual meeting is underway in Chicago, where it runs through Tuesday. You need not be anywhere near the Windy City to follow what is happening there, thanks to an array of Twitter-ers and bloggers who are in attendance. These include three "official" Twitter feeds: ABAChicago, the official feed for the annual meeting...
The Top-Rated Lawyers in Corporate Compliance
Posted on July 31, 2009As a think-tank that studies best practices in business ethics and corporate responsibility, the Ethisphere Institute likes to do good for those who do good by shining a spotlight on them. In past posts here, I've written about its list of the 100 most influential people in business ethics, among whom were 19 lawyers, and its list of the world's most ethical companies, which highlighted the roles played by key in-house counsel...
Made-Up Lawyers Try Real World Networking
Posted on July 31, 2009Among the lawyers flocking to contribute their tweets to the microblogging site Twitter are the two name partners in the law firm Bitcher & Prickman, Beatrice Bitcher and Richard Prickman. Those who follow their tweets may well have raised an eyebrow or two over some of what they say there...
Litigants in Bronx Court Have Clothes Encounter With Judge
Posted on July 30, 2009A Bronx Supreme Court judge reprimanded several litigants for showing up to court in slovenly or casual attire, reports the New York Daily News. According to the story, Bronx Judge Joseph Dawson admonished a man wearing a T-shirt and shorts, asserting "I'm not saying you have to wear a suit ...
Economic Recession May Be Kryptonite for BigLaw
Posted on July 30, 2009Today's prediction of the end of BigLaw (and in the past few months there have been many) comes from Douglas McCollam in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal. McCollam summarizes the evidence of demise -- declining profits for partners and the massive layoffs -- and notes that in contrast to days of yore when lawyers found a way to make money in boom times or bust, the prolonged recession combined with the unsustainable growth of law firms has forced them up against a wall: When times were good, lawyers earned enormous fees engineering mergers and takeovers...
Thursday Legal News Link Roundup
Posted on July 30, 2009-- As if it weren't bad enough that Stroock & Stroock & Lavan's typo in a contract for a developer may cost its client $100 million, it now seems that Stroock's malpractice insurance may not cover the damages. [New York Post via Above the Law] -- Will the blawgosphere's pervasive criticism of the 2nd Circuit's decision in Dorozhko v...
Court Hears Challenges to Louisiana Lawyer Advertising Rules
Posted on July 30, 2009Yesterday, a federal district court in Louisiana held oral argument on First Amendment challenges to Louisiana's proposed advertising rules filed by a group of attorneys, reports The Associated Press. If the article's summary of oral argument is any indication, the state seems poised to lose this case...
Cheerleader Sues School Over Facebook Snooping
Posted on July 29, 2009Early in the 2007 school year at Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss., cheerleading coach Tommie Hill demanded that each member of the cheerleading squad give him the passwords to their Facebook accounts. No sooner did the students hand over their passwords than most deleted their accounts...
Ropes & Gray Wins Lien Against Patents
Posted on July 29, 2009The Boston law firm Ropes & Gray has won a key victory in an attempt to collect unpaid legal fees and has set new precedent in the process. In a case of first impression, Massachusetts' highest court ruled this week that the firm is entitled to an attorney's lien on patents and patent applications, as well as on the proceeds from the sales of those patents...
Lawyer's Ad Tacky, Perhaps, but Unethical?
Posted on July 29, 2009Is it ethical for a lawyer to solicit a rape victim by leaving a leaflet on her windshield? That is the question to be decided by New Jersey's Committee on Attorney Advertising, according to the New Jersey Law Journal. It seems beyond debate that such a solicitation would be in bad taste, but distasteful is not necessarily synonymous with unethical...
Nesson Tries the 'Sins of a Generation' Defense
Posted on July 29, 2009Observers who attended yesterday's start of the music-downloading trial of Joel Tenenbaum seemed to be scratching their heads in bewilderment over the defense. Admittedly, Tenenbaum's defense lawyer, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, has his hands somewhat tied, given that Tenenbaum admitted in his deposition to downloading the songs and given the 11th-hour ruling by U...
Is the Economy Turning Around for Law Firms?
Posted on July 28, 2009Larry Bodine has some positive news for law firms: Recovery may be just around the corner. Bodine writes that a new forecast by First Research Inc. shows 3 percent growth is on the way for law firms, and firm layoffs are dwindling. Bodine writes that layoffs have slowed since April and May, when more than 1,000 people were laid off each month, and have dipped further this summer...
U.K. Law Society Warns Students Away From a Legal Career
Posted on July 28, 2009Concerned about the shrinking number of available jobs in the legal profession, the Law Society of England and Wales is warning potential law students to proceed with caution before signing up for law school, advising that they may want to consider alternative careers...
The AAJ Explains Its Media Ban
Posted on July 28, 2009In response to my post, The AAJ's Misguided Media Ban, I received an e-mail from Ray De Lorenzi, the AAJ's associate director of communications, who I mentioned in the post. He invited me to republish his e-mail here, so here it is: Robert- I saw your blog item and wanted to clarify a few things: First, my statement that AAJ has never allowed media at our convention was overly broad...
Starting a Law Firm Using Craigslist
Posted on July 28, 2009Back in the olden days, when lawyers sought to start or expand a law practice they'd place a pricey advertisement in a hard-copy legal trade publication or retain a placement firm as a matchmaker. Lawyers would have to be fairly committed to expanding their practice, given the upfront costs involved in finding a potential partner...
Gates-gate: Caller Disputes Account
Posted on July 27, 2009The woman who called the police in Cambridge, Mass., to report a possible break-in at the home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is now talking to the public -- through her attorney, at least. The woman, Lucia Whalen, has hired high-profile lawyer and TV commentator Wendy Murphy (pictured)...
The Future of the Law Library (and How to Stop It)
Posted on July 27, 2009Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain, author of the book, "The Future of the Internet -- and How to Stop It," was the keynote speaker yesterday kicking off the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in Washington, D.C. I was not there to hear his speech, but Georgetown Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet was and she reported on it on her blog, Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log...
At Last We Know: 'Hotel' Is Generic
Posted on July 27, 2009Attention all ye who think the legal system has run amok: It took six years, two appeals and who-knows-how-many lawyers to arrive at the legal conclusion that the word "hotel" is generic. In fact, the word is "a prima facie case of genericness," said the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit...
The AAJ's Misguided Media Ban
Posted on July 27, 2009When news media showed up this weekend to cover House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech at the annual convention of the American Association for Justice in San Francisco, they were turned away. Ray De Lorenzi, the AAJ's associate director of communications, said the event was open only to members of the national plaintiff-lawyers' group, according to Legal Newsline...
Watching the Blawgs: Lesbian Sex and Other Legal Links
Posted on July 27, 2009Other posts worth your attention today: The lawyer who blogs anonymously at Mommy on the Floor explains how lesbian sex works -- in Haiku no less. Blawg Review #222 is hosted by Duncan Bucknell Company. Feminist Law Professors wonders why the April issue of The George Washington Law Review includes not a single female author...
Bitter Lawyer Quizzes Elizabeth Wurtzel
Posted on July 24, 2009A few months ago, author-turned-lawyer Elizabeth Wurtzel stirred up some controversy with an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing that perhaps time spent working at BigLaw was just one big waste. Now Bitter Lawyer throws a few questions Wurtzel's way in hopes of catching a little more controversy...
Another Example of the Cover-Up Being Worse Than the Crime
Posted on July 24, 2009In politics, the cover-up is generally worse than the crime. The same is true in the practice of law, where a lawyer's efforts to cover up a not-so-horrible act of neglect eventually landed him in even more hot water. Michael Frisch, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law, posts about an example of this phenomenon at the Legal Profession Blog...
Is Marking Up Contract Lawyer Costs Worse When Plaintiffs Lawyers Do It?
Posted on July 24, 2009The practice of law firms marking up the cost of contract lawyers has been around for ages. Nearly two years ago, I posted that bar rules allowing firms to mark up the cost of U.S.-based contract lawyers without disclosure gave firms incentive to treat contract lawyers as profit centers, and discouraged them from offshoring document review, because in that situation firms would be required to disclose their markup to clients...
ABA Journal Names Top 25 Greatest Legal Shows
Posted on July 24, 2009The jury is back from its flat-panel bedecked deliberation room, and the verdict for the greatest legal television show of all time is... "L.A. Law," according to a panel of 12 "experts" (including nine lawyers) selected by the ABA Journal. The rest of the list shows a mixed affinity for the classic (#2 -- "Perry Mason"), the perennial (#4 -- "Law & Order," not to be confused with its spinoffs, two of which also make the list) and the cartoonish (#16 -- "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law")...
The Joke's on Yoo: Law Prof Pranked
Posted on July 23, 2009As an attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the administration of President George W. Bush, John Yoo helped write the so-called torture memos, justifying the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" against "enemy combatants...
A First Amendment Right to Play Online Games?
Posted on July 23, 2009A California man who suffers from agoraphobia is suing Sony after it banned him from participating in multiplayer games on its PlayStation Network. The man, Erik Estavillo, claims Sony has violated his right to free speech by removing his only form of socialization...
Gates-gate: What's the Law Say?
Posted on July 23, 2009As if the controversy surrounding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates wasn't sufficiently swirling through the media and the blogsophere, the president of the United States had to weigh in, saying during a press conference last night that Cambridge police "acted stupidly" when they put Gates in handcuffs even after he showed proof that he lived in the home where police had come to investigate a report of a burglary...
The End of Compelled Consumer Arbitration?
Posted on July 23, 2009Even the Manhattan Institute-sponsored blog PointofLaw.com is conceding the future looks bleak for mandatory consumer arbitration. Three major developments this week, capped by a congressional hearing yesterday, throw into question the fairness of the process and the neutrality of at least one group of supposed neutrals...
Lawyer Proves the Other Side's Case in a Disciplinary Proceeding
Posted on July 22, 2009Over at my home blog, My Shingle, I've posted on an interesting disciplinary matter unfolding in Colorado. According to the Denver Post, back in 2007 attorney Mark Brennan won a substantial verdict for his client in an employment matter in federal court, only to have it snatched away by the judge as sanction for Brennan's inappropriate conduct during the trial...
Can Lawyers Be Rebels?
Posted on July 22, 2009Has the revolution been co-opted? That was my first thought when I read that the ABA Journal, one of the most mainstream of all legal industry publications, is sponsoring the Legal Rebels project in an effort to remake the legal profession. So who are the legal rebels? According to Ed Adams, ABA Journal editor-in-chief, the rebels encompass: Dozens of lawyers nationwide [who] aren't waiting for change...
ABA to Take On the FTC Over Red Flag Regulations
Posted on July 22, 2009With the Aug. 1 effective date for the Federal Trade Commission's "Red Flags Rule" on identity theft fast approaching, the ABA is girding for battle, reports the Blog of the Legal Times. That's because the FTC continues to refuse to exempt lawyers from the new regulations, which are designed to ensure that all entities that act as "creditors" implement certain procedures to safeguard customer and client data...
Doctors Don't Like Ratings Systems Any More Than Lawyers
Posted on July 22, 2009Doctors and lawyers may go head to head when it comes to the debate over medical malpractice, but they stand united in one regard: Neither profession is all that receptive toward client or patient ratings systems. But whereas lawyers responded to Avvo's proposed rating system with lawsuits alleging violations of consumer protection laws, doctors are using intimidation...
Economy Hits GC Pay, Too
Posted on July 21, 2009In good times or bad, general counsel compensation has tended to drift upward, notes the introduction to Corporate Counsel magazine's 2009 GC Compensation Survey. But this year, even GC were not immune to market forces, the survey finds. While some indexes of GC pay rose, the basic trend was nearly flat, it concludes...
Misbehaving Lawyers
Posted on July 21, 2009In England, a solicitor is a lawyer. In La Jolla, Calif., a lawyer is alleged to be a solicitor, not in the legal sense, but in the decidedly illegal sense. Lawyer Steven R. Liss, 53, has been arrested on suspicion of trying to hire someone to kill his wife, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports...
Top Eight Reasons Not to Go to Law School
Posted on July 21, 2009As far as I can tell from reading his blog, H. Luiz is currently in law school. That does not mean, however, that he is happy there (even if "happy law student" is an oxymoron). Luiz has compiled a list of the top eight reasons not to go to law school...
Web Video Series Shows Drama in the Courts
Posted on July 21, 2009Attention Silver Gavel Awards judges: I have your next award winner. If the purpose of these ABA awards is to recognize those in the media who have been exemplary in helping to foster public understanding of the legal system, then give Ron Sylvester his due...
Tom Watson's Lessons for Lawyers
Posted on July 21, 2009In the Boston area where I live, we pounce on beautiful days like someone wandering the desert does a sudden oasis. But on the particularly bright and sunny Sunday that just passed, I could not tear myself away from the TV, mesmerized as I was by the drama of 59-year-old golfer Tom Watson's drive toward possible victory in the British Open...
In-House GCs Can't Afford to Manage Outside Counsel
Posted on July 20, 2009As a general matter, companies bring in outside help when they're too short-staffed to handle matters in-house. But corporate legal departments are so understaffed these days they can't even hire reinforcements or outsource the work because they don't have the time to manage outside firms, reports The National Law Journal...
Can 'Food Addiction' Be Fodder for Lawsuits?
Posted on July 20, 2009There's a really interesting new post by Jane Genova over at Law And More predicting a possible resurrection of the obesity class action lawsuits against fast food companies. The first round of lawsuits never gained traction. Judges dismissed the suits claiming that fast food products are inherently dangerous, finding that plaintiffs could not prove that eating fast food caused their poor health...
Blogging Forces Change in Law Firm Layoff Policies
Posted on July 20, 2009Companies are fast learning that in an Internet Age, there's no such thing as a "confidential" memo. As the Wall Street Journal explains today (and as has been previously discussed here by The National Law Journal), employees are leaking confidential company information about layoffs to blogs and Internet news sites nearly as quickly as those memos are issued...
Blawg Review #221 Gets Complex
Posted on July 20, 2009You wouldn't expect a simple Blawg Review from a site with a name like The Complex Litigator, and this week's Blawg Review #221 doesn't disappoint. It's anything but a simple summary of this week's past posts. Covering a wide swath of the blogosphere, this edition of the weekly "blog carnival" includes topics like the potential for Europe to adopt class action litigation; enforcement of contracts in China from the China Law Blog; the impact on health care providers of the FTC's latest red flag rules to combatt identity theft, posted at HealthBlawg (and also important for lawyers to understand); and a roundup of posts on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, including a link to Volokh blogger Ilya Somin who gave testimony on Sotomayor's position on property rights...
Judge OKs Anonymous Comments, Blogger Won't Allow Them
Posted on July 20, 2009There are a couple of interesting new posts around the blogosphere concerning anonymous online commenters. The first, over at Volokh, discusses a recent case out of Tennessee, State v. Cobbins, where a judge denied defendants' motion to require a media outlet to disable a portion of its Web site enabling Web users to post comments (mostly anonymous) about the pending case...
Were Prime BigLaw Twitter Usernames 'Twitterjacked?'
Posted on July 17, 2009Back in November 2008, a couple months after I joined Twitter, it was clear to me that at some point down the road big law firms were going to discover Twitter, too. I assumed that for consistency and branding, they would likely want to use their internet domain names as their Twitter username, and took some time one morning to see whether BigLaw had locked up their logical Twitter usernames...
Friday Law Link Roundup
Posted on July 17, 2009-- How do you best a patent troll? Get all your richest friends together and buy up all the bridges. [via Legal Pad] -- So the Sotomayor confirmation hearings weren't exactly a summer thrill ride, but C-SPAN, believe it or not, does have more exciting fare...
Second Cities, Standing Out and Other Advice for Law Students Seeking Jobs
Posted on July 16, 2009Though the pace of law firm layoffs may have abated since Black Thurday back in February (with 800 jobs lost in a single day), the aftershocks keep coming. Law firms have been deferring start dates for new associates to avoid outright downsizing, and now at least one firm -- Morgan Lewis & Bockius -- is canceling its summer program to avoid having two classes of first-year associates start in 2010...
Lawyer Disbarred for Hiding Bags Full of Cash
Posted on July 16, 2009It may not be clear whether a lawyer who cashes a client check for $1,000 should be disbarred. But what about a lawyer who takes bags full of cash left on a judge's chair, then conceals the money from the IRS? That bizarre fact pattern lead to the legal defenestration of Seattle lawyer Mark Vanderveen, whose disbarment was just affirmed by Washington State's highest court in an 8-1 ruling, according to the Seattle Times...
Twitter Hires First General Counsel, Hacker Puts Him to Work
Posted on July 16, 2009Last Friday, Twitter named Alexander Macgillivray as its first General Counsel -- apparently not a moment too soon. Just a few days later, reports the BBC, Twitter was in touch with its legal counsel trying to assess the fallout after hundreds of its internal documents accessed by a hacker were published on the popular TechCrunch blog...
Wikipedia Threatened for Putting National Portrait Gallery Pictures Online
Posted on July 16, 2009A picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth a lawsuit? Wikipedia administrator Derrick Coetzee is about to find out. As reported by paidContent, the National Portrait Gallery in London sent Coetzee a legal notice demanding that he remove more than 3,000 photographs from Wikipedia that Coetzee had downloaded from the Gallery's database...
Good Lawyerin', Texas Style
Posted on July 15, 2009Our friends at Tex Parte bring us news of a good ol' fashioned Texas lawyer shout-out, courtesy an A&E reality TV show called "After the First 48." The new show documents what happens in a Texas capital murder case in the days after a suspect is arrested -- following a series of events chronicled in "The First 48...
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Newest Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee
Posted on July 15, 2009The outcome of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings are a foregone conclusion. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said as much on Monday, barring "a meltdown" from the "wise Latina" on the 2nd Circuit. So what's the point of watching a week's worth of senatorial grandstanding? Aside from the chance to catch occasional outburst from a protester or three in the gallery -- which, again, follow fairly predictable lines -- it's the opportunity to see the newest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in action...
Eight-Month Jail Sentence for Facebook Post
Posted on July 14, 2009It's one thing to be fired for using Facebook. It's quite another to be jailed for it. According to the Reporters Without Borders Web site, 69-year-old human rights activist Khedija Arfaoui is facing an eight-month jail sentence imposed by a court in Tunisia for posting a message on Facebook referring to rumors about children being kidnapped in the country for their organs...
Recession Forces Lawyers to the Right
Posted on July 14, 2009Recessionary times demand desperate measures, and for some lawyers (as well as other professionals), that means a move to the right. I don't mean right as in Republican. The "right" I'm talking about is the bold, creative side of the brain that typically doesn't get much of a workout by analytically minded, left-brained lawyers...
Sotomayor Roundup, Day Two
Posted on July 14, 2009As these Google news search results show, coverage of the Sotomayor hearings has been almost unrelenting. Yesterday's session was largely devoted to introductory remarks from the senators on the judiciary committee. Now, day two of the Sotomayor hearings is just about complete, with the post mortems from this morning's session rolling in...
Clients Tell Law Firms to 'Show Me the Money'
Posted on July 14, 2009In this economic downturn, corporate clients aren't just demanding lower fees from law firms. Companies are looking to their lawyers and other professional service providers for assistance in cutting costs, increasing revenues and revamping their business models, reports Larry Bodine...
How Much Trouble Can One Tweet Cause?
Posted on July 13, 2009Twitter limits each tweet to 140 characters. Pretty hard to get in too much hot water with that kind of word limit, right? Well, Jean Anleu has found otherwise. In May, authorities in Guatemala arrested and charged Anleu after he sent a 96-character tweet urging depositors to withdraw funds from a bank involved in a political-murder scandal...
Global Counsel Names Award Winners
Posted on July 13, 2009Winners have been announced in the third annual Global Counsel Awards, an international competition to honor outstanding in-house lawyers and legal departments. The awards are intended to recognize lawyers "for demonstrable achievements across the full spectrum of in-house responsibility, not simply those who have acted on high-profile transactions...
Collins Convicted, but Was He Guilty?
Posted on July 13, 2009A Manhattan jury late Friday afternoon found Mayer Brown partner Joseph P. Collins guilty of conspiracy and four other charges in connection with a massive fraud at now-bankrupt Refco Inc., the New York Law Journal reports. Mr. Collins, who testified in his own defense that he was kept in the dark about more than $2...
The Sotomayor Hearings, Online and on Twitter
Posted on July 13, 2009To paraphrase a tweet last night from CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen, imagine what the confirmation process will be like when the vacant seat really is a court changer. Even though no one seems to think that Sonia Sotomayor would alter the balance of the Supreme Court if confirmed, and even though there appears little doubt that she will be confirmed, her confirmation hearings should be interesting to watch as they get underway today...
U.S. News to Rank Law Firms
Posted on July 10, 2009Is U.S. News & World Report some kind of glutton for punishment? We've posted here previously about the various criticisms that U.S. News' law school rankings have generated, to the point that they've spawned a competitor rating system, Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings...
Friday Legal News Link Roundup
Posted on July 10, 2009Economy still in decline: Though stock prices may indicate otherwise, bankruptcy filings show that the economy has not recovered just yet, at least in California. BankruptcyProf Blog reports that over the course of June, "the Central District of California saw 9,578 total filings, compared to 8,965 in May, 8,398 in April, 8,518 in March, 6,967 in February and 5,999 in January...
How Does Your Blog Rate?
Posted on July 10, 2009What makes a law blog influential? ELawMarketing's Joshua Fruchter offers some ideas over at Lawyer Casting, summarizing some of the metrics used by MarketingSherpa, a marketing research firm. Although "eyeballs" (i.e., unique visitors and page views) are significant, there are other, more meaningful ways to measure popularity and influence...
Why Was Law Dean Let Off?
Posted on July 09, 2009We noted here Monday the abrupt resignation of Mark Sargent as dean of Villanova University School of Law. His resignation was later linked to his involvement in a prostitution investigation. State police said he had been seen leaving a house of prostitution during a raid last November...
The Demise of the Legal Blogsophere
Posted on July 09, 2009Has the legal blogosphere gone to pot? Mike Cernovich at the blog Crime & Federalism seems to think so. He sees it as overrun by shallow marketing and exclusive cliques. He makes good points. His post is inspired by one at another blog, Apt. 11D, that considers how blogging has changed over the past six years...
Circuit Judge 'Honored' for Muzzling Speech
Posted on July 09, 2009Juan Torruella, judge of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, earned a dubious honor this week. He was named a recipient of a Muzzle Award, a recognition given out annually by The Boston Phoenix to "those who've brought dishonor to themselves by trampling on the rights of free speech and personal liberties in New England...
Transsexual Loses Libel Suit Against NY Post
Posted on July 09, 2009In 2007, transsexual Ava Cordero was the sweetheart of the gossip pages -- and the gossip bloggers -- when her high-profile New York lawyer boyfriend William J. Unroch sued the even higher profile billionaire money manager Jeffrey Epstein alleging that he pressured the then-16-year-old into sex in exchange for promises that he would help her get modeling work...
Does the 'Dorothy Factor' Dominate at Top Law Firms?
Posted on July 08, 2009There's an interesting column by Orrick partner Patricia Gillette up at The Am Law Daily. Gilette asks whether the failure of women to self-promote accounts for their under-representation in the upper ranks of top law firms. She uses Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz to analogize: She?s probably not the first person to come to mind if I asked you to name a female leader...
New Jersey Blogger Not Protected by Shield Law
Posted on July 08, 2009Bloggers may be gaining respect as citizen reporters or commentators, but they still don't have all of the legal protections that apply to journalists. As The New Jersey Law Journal (via Law.com) reports, Monmouth County, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio ruled that blogger Shellee Hale is not covered by New Jersey's reporter shield laws and must disclose the source of comments posted on Oprano...
More Legal Issues When Working in the Cloud
Posted on July 08, 2009With the number of virtual law firms on the rise, expect cloud computing to become more pervasive. After all, because virtual firms do not share office space, it's the most efficient tool for enabling individual lawyers within a virtual firm to share files, prepare joint bills or access common documents...
Why the Biggest Firms Don't Blog
Posted on July 07, 2009"You don't have to say much to set off an avalanche in the blogosphere," observes James M. Beck, counsel in the Philadelphia office of Dechert, in a post yesterday at the blog Drug and Device Law, which he co-authors with Mark Herrmann, a partner in the Chicago office of Jones Day...
The Law Dean and the Prostitute
Posted on July 07, 2009When Mark Sargent, dean of Villanova University School of Law, abruptly resigned last week, lips were sealed. The university issued a statement saying that he had resigned for personal and medical reasons and that Associate Dean Doris DelTosto Brogan would fill in as acting dean...
Lawyer-Turned-Publisher Calls in the Lawyers
Posted on July 07, 2009Out of deference to the newspaper's history-making role in exposing the Watergate break-in, many observers are avoiding attaching a "-gate" suffix to this week's scandal at The Washington Post. Others can't resist the temptation, and one label that has been bandied about is Weymouthgate, for Katharine Weymouth, the former lawyer who last year became the newspaper's publisher and now finds herself the center of unwelcome attention...
Dual Q&As Deconstruct the Grace Case
Posted on July 07, 2009Whether by coincidence or design, two of the defense lawyers in the recent acquittal of chemical company W.R. Grace and three of its former executives appear in separate Q&A interviews this week discussing their successes. This was the case in which federal prosecutors alleged that the defendants conspired to expose the residents of Libby, Mont...
Monday Law Link Roundup
Posted on July 06, 2009-- The Austin-American Statesman profiles local lawyer Gregory Coleman, who argued twice before the Supreme Court this session in two of the highest-profile cases this year -- eight days apart. [via Above the Law] -- Newsweek columnist George Will questions the High Court's 8-1 decision in one of Coleman's cases, hoping it won't be 1972 forever...
My Law Blog Can Beat Up Your Law Blog
Posted on July 06, 2009We here at Legal Blog Watch always enjoy finding new niche law blogs, even if we don't know much about the particular niche they cover. Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe's Embassy Law? Interesting (and helpful for all those lawyers Obama keeps picking for ambassadorships)...
Halfway Through the Year in Law Firm Layoffs
Posted on July 06, 2009Last week, former Wall Street Journal Law Blog editor Dan Slater proposed that we take a more favorable view toward law firm layoffs. The glut of BigLaw associates was bad for both clients and the lawyers themselves, he argued, and a great culling will be better for us all in the long run...
Are the BigLaw Layoffs a Good Thing?
Posted on July 02, 2009Dan Slater, the former lead author of the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, has a controversial new column at the New York Times Deal Book in which he ponders whether all of the BigLaw layoffs just might be a good thing after all. Slater writes: The legal media, in its rush to side with the fallen, has often cast the layoff wave as the result of endemic firm mismanagement finally coming home to roost...
Michael Jackson's Will Released, but Who Wrote It?
Posted on July 02, 2009Last week, I wrote about some of the potential medical malpractice issues that Michael Jackson's death might raise. This week, the legal issues associated with Jackson's recently released will are driving the discussion. The New York Times summarizes the provisions of Jackson's five-page will, dated July 7, 2002...
Law Firm Sued for Using Ill-Gotten Evidence From Spyware
Posted on July 02, 2009Let's say that you're a divorce attorney and your client brings you damning e-mails that will help her case. Before you decide to use those e-mails at trial, you'd better make sure that they weren't procured through the use of illegal spyware. Otherwise, as Sharon Nelson of Ride the Lightning cautions, you might find yourself the subject of a $2 million lawsuit like the lawyers at Chattanooga, Tenn...
Applicant Denied Bar Admission for Too Much Debt
Posted on July 02, 2009Seems that University of California Hastings College of Law graduate Robert Bowman is in a bit of a catch-22, courtesy of the New York State bar. As The New York Times reports, Bowman owes roughly $400,000 in student loans. But Bowman doesn't stand a chance of ever repaying those loans now that he's been denied admission to the New York bar, because five appellate judges viewed Bowman's hefty debt and inability to repay it as evidence of a "lack of general character and fitness requisite for an attorney...
World's Oldest Blawg Turns 10
Posted on July 01, 2009Two years ago, I made an attempt here to identify the first legal blogger ever. After examining the archives of some of the longest-running legal bloggers I knew of, I concluded it was Walter Olson, who launched his blog, Overlawyered, on July 1, 1999...
For Environmental Law, 'Worst Term Ever'
Posted on July 01, 2009Everyone's doing it -- wrapping up the Supreme Court term, that is. In the New York Times, Adam Liptak says it was a good year for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who emerged as a canny strategist, thanks in part to the swing vote of Justice Anthony M...
Firms Keep Up Good Work, Even in Bad Times
Posted on July 01, 2009Fears that a down economy would mean a downturn in pro bono work by the nation's largest law firms appear to be unfounded. To the contrary, the annual Pro Bono Report from The American Lawyer finds that the nation's 200 highest grossing firms devoted more hours to pro bono this year than ever before...
West, Lexis Offer Help for Hard Times
Posted on July 01, 2009Two major legal publishers announced initiatives this week to help laid-off lawyers keep their heads above water and make the transition to new jobs. Coincidentally or not, both West and LexisNexis announced their initiatives on the same day. West's initiative is a two-pronged effort built around two new Web sites...
Yoko Ono Wins Fight Over Lennon Footage
Posted on July 01, 2009Yoko Ono has won her legal fight to claim ownership of 10 hours of rare, black-and-white footage of John Lennon videotaped at the couple's London estate in 1970. In federal court in Boston, U.S. District Judge Rya W. Zobel has ruled that Ono was the rightful copyright owner of the footage...
Judge Posner's Proposal: Save a Newspaper, Kill a Blog
Posted on June 30, 2009Sure, the newspaper industry is in trouble. But not even old-guard media companies have proposed as extreme a remedy as what Judge Richard Posner recommends. In a recent blog post, Posner proposed barring online links to copyrighted materials without the consent of the copyright owners as a way to help revive the failing newspaper business...
Law Firms Not Serious About Change, Say CLOs
Posted on June 30, 2009Law firms may be cutting salaries or creating apprentice programs, but are they really serious about change? Only 5 percent of chief legal officers at corporations believe that firms are committed to innovation, according to a new survey by Altman Weil, reports Larry Bodine...
Commentary on Madoff's 150-Year Sentence
Posted on June 30, 2009Yesterday, federal judge Denny Chin sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years in prison -- more than a life sentence. Though Madoff certainly wasn't popular (as blogger Scott Greenfield notes, not a single person sent the judge a letter in support of Madoff during sentencing), a 150-year sentence is still highly unusual...
Lawyer Tweets Departure From Twitter
Posted on June 30, 2009And so, the Twitter wars continue. At the beginning of the month, Larry Bodine took the first shot across the bow, denouncing Twitter as an ineffective tool for lawyer marketing. But Adrian Dayton, hosting yesterday's Blawg Review #218, sees it differently, recounting his own "I found a client on Twitter" story and referencing other similar successes at LexBlog...
Will Practice Make Perfect Lawyers?
Posted on June 30, 2009With the economy down, law firms have less work. That means they've got more time -- or at least, slightly more appetite -- for training new associates. As the National Law Journal reports, a number of firms -- most recently, 659-lawyer firm Howrey -- are moving toward an apprenticeship model, with new associates spending time attending classes and shadowing partners on client matters...
Elsewhere in the Legal Blogosphere ...
Posted on June 29, 2009Among legal news from around the blogosphere today: In a lawsuit by "A Civil Action" lawyer Jan Schlictmann seeking $9 million in legal fees, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has tossed a motion to dismiss based on the state anti-SLAPP statute. MinnLawyer blog posts video interviews with the deans of the four Minnesota law schools, discussing such topics as law students' economic prospects, law school rankings and the future of legal education...
A Little Bit Twitter, a Little Bit Morality
Posted on June 29, 2009Over more than 200 weekly issues of Blawg Review, the one consistency is that each has a theme. But after reading several times through Adrian Dayton's Blawg Review #218, I found myself unsure whether his theme is Twitter or morality. The answer, I finally concluded, is equal bits of both...
When Immigration Lawyers Make Stuff Up
Posted on June 29, 2009From opposite U.S. coasts come disturbingly parallel stories of immigration lawyers allegedly resorting to fraud to win legal residency for untold numbers of undocumented immigrants. While one case just concluded, the other is just coming to light, leaving the legal status of dozens of the lawyer's clients in limbo...
Court Decides Ricci, Overrules Sotomayor
Posted on June 29, 2009Today is Justice David Souter's last day on the job, and in an indication, perhaps, of how little the court's composition is likely to change if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as his replacement, he today sided with her position in a much-anticipated Title VII case, Ricci v...
Where are the Lawyers With Michael Jackson Stories?
Posted on June 29, 2009On the day that Michael Jackson died, lawyer Brian Oxman seemed to achieve cable news ubiquity. The self-described Jackson family attorney could be seen and heard on multiple channels, saying he warned that Jackson was overusing prescription drugs. Oxman had been an on-again, off-again lawyer for Jackson for some 20 years...
China Suspends 1,000 Lawyers
Posted on June 26, 2009When I posted about the disbarment threats to lawyers in Beijing, only 20 faced a risk of losing their livelihoods. Turns out that the situation is far worse, with the Beijing Administration of Judicial Lawyers suspending the licenses of over 1,000 lawyers and 90 law firms for failing to pass a newly concocted registration exam, reports New York-based New Tang Dynasty Television...
Michael Jackson's Death and Malpractice Issues
Posted on June 26, 2009Michael Jackson's death could potentially raise medical malpractice and criminal liability issues, writes Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog. With speculation that prescription medications may have contributed to Jackson's death, Turkewitz explores some of the issues implicated...
Virtual Law Firms Going Viral
Posted on June 26, 2009Nearly a year ago, I posted here about the launch of Virtual Law Partners, an 18-member corporate and transactional virtual firm of "elite" lawyers. Though some observers expressed doubt about the viability of the VLP model, today the firm has nearly 40 lawyers...
First Amendment Film Is Father/Daughter First
Posted on June 25, 2009Who better to narrate a documentary about the First Amendment than Martin Garbus? Garbus, after all, is a lawyer who has defended such outspoken figures as Nelson Mandela and Lenny Bruce. Fortune Magazine called him "one of the nation's premier First Amendment attorneys" and both Time and Business Week have called him "legendary" as a trial lawyer...
Online Law Grad Leaps Another Hurdle
Posted on June 25, 2009Remember Ross E. Mitchell? He is the graduate of the wholly online Concord Law School who made history last November by becoming the first graduate of an online, unaccredited law school to win permission to take the bar exam in a state outside California...
Company Slashes Workers While Boosting Lawyer's Pay
Posted on June 25, 2009Boston-based clothing retailer Talbots is imposing major cuts throughout its workforce -- everywhere, that is, except in the C-suite, where the company's CEO and its top legal executive are receiving sizable boosts to their incomes. Earlier this month, the company cut 325 jobs -- some 20 percent of its workforce...
A Double Helping of Ridiculous Lawsuits
Posted on June 25, 2009Lawyer haters and tort reformers, this is your lucky day. We have for you not one, but two separate lists of the most ridiculous lawsuits ever filed. Even better, there is surprisingly little overlap between them. Thus, from one top-10 list and another top-11 list, we net a grand total of the 18 most ridiculous lawsuits ever...
Craigslist Offers Used Furniture, Casual Encounters and Lawyers
Posted on June 24, 2009Craigslist must be turning the nearly defunct Yellow Pages green with envy. Despite its recent trouble with some lawyers, according to the July 2009 ABA Journal, hundreds of solo and small firm practitioners are turning to the online classifieds site as a low-cost, guerilla technique to advertise their services...
Law Student Sues to Enforce Lawyer's $1 Million TV Challenge
Posted on June 24, 2009With legal employment prospects on the decline, a new lawyer's got to find a way to make a buck somehow. In the case of South Texas College of Law graduate Dustin Kolodziej, he decided to play detective. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Kolodiziej took up a challenge issued by Orlando attorney Cheney Mason on nation television, offering $1 million to anyone who could prove that his client gunned down four people within the time frame alleged by the prosecution...
For West Virginia Lawyer, Blogging Isn't Just a Sport, It's a New Career
Posted on June 24, 2009Remember the good old days when blogging opened the door to a writing career for lawyers like Melissa Lafsky of Opinonistas, or Jeremy Blachman, the Harvard law student who created the Anonymous Lawyer blog, which lead to a book deal? Well, it's been a while, but now there's another lawyer-turns-blogger-turns-professional-writer Cinderella story, this one about Clarksburg, W...
Client Dumps Divorce Lawyer on Twitter
Posted on June 24, 2009It's bad enough being dumped by a client. But imagine being publicly jilted on Twitter in front of your client's 19,305 followers. That's what happened to Atlanta, Ga.-based celebrity attorney Randall Kessler, who was representing Tameka Foster-Raymond in a divorce proceeding initiated by her soon-to-be ex, R&B singer Usher...
Amid Controversy, DePaul Names Interim Dean
Posted on June 23, 2009The latest news to come out of DePaul University College of Law is that it has named a new dean, Illinois Appellate Court Judge Warren D. Wolfson. But that merely begs the question: What happened to the former dean, Glen Weissenberger? It is a question many students, faculty, alumni and bloggers are asking in the wake of Weissenberger's hasty dismissal last week by University Provost Helmut Epp...
PACER Is Out of Pace, Petition Says
Posted on June 23, 2009Anyone who uses PACER knows that it has failed to keep pace with the Web 2.0 world. Its technology is outmoded and so is its cost structure. Now, some fed-up law librarians have launched a petition drive to ask the federal courts to enhance the system's authenticity, usability and availability...
Contest Gives Law Students Shot at $10K
Posted on June 23, 2009If you are in law school, you could probably use an extra $10,000 right about now. Well, if you have a video camera or know where to borrow one, here is your chance to win that much money or one of five $1,500 honorable mentions. All you have to do is make a brief video that describes your inspiration for going to law school...
Five Uses for a Kindle in a Law Practice
Posted on June 22, 2009OK, so I realize that most of you are probably coveting a Kindle, Amazon.com's digital book device. But you haven't yet figured out how to justify its cost as a business expense when you're planning on using it to read novels on the beach, right? Thankfully, Justin Rebello of the Wisconsin Law Journal gives you five ways that you can use the Kindle for your law office...
The Way of the Mastodon, Take Two
Posted on June 22, 2009Patrick Lamb, who blogs at In Search of Perfect Client Service, reminds us that it was roughly two years ago when Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon's post, "The Way of the Mastodon," rocked the legal blogosphere. If you don't recall, Dillon's post cautioned law firms that: [T]he epoch of the current law firm model - which derives its profitability from growing scale and raising hourly rates - will soon be over...
Student Loan Relief, or Merely Deferral of the Problem?
Posted on June 22, 2009Recent law graduates may now have something else to celebrate besides receiving their juris doctorates. The National Law Journal reports that a new federal program enacted as part of the College Cost Reduction & Access Act goes into effect July 1, which offers loan forgiveness for public interest employees and includes an income-based repayment option for all borrowers...
Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights Act
Posted on June 22, 2009By an 8-1 ruling in Northwest Austin Munic. Util. Dist. v. Holder, the Supreme Court today declined to address the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, keeping the law alive for a future challenge, reports Tony Mauro at The National Law Journal...
Biglaw Continues Its Slow Creep Towards Blogs
Posted on June 19, 2009The number of AmLaw 200 law firms with blogs more than doubled since 2007, but they still make up less than half of the nation's largest firms. This week, LexBlog released its periodic State of the AmLaw Blogosphere report. It found that 82 of these firms now have blogs...
1.92 Million Reasons Not to Download Music
Posted on June 19, 2009Stunned. That is my reaction to the news that a Minnesota jury has ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay $1.92 million to the music industry for downloading music. That is $80,000 per song for each of the 24 songs she is said to have downloaded. The woman's reaction: "Good luck trying to get it from me...
GAO: Coast Guard Judges Fair to Mariners
Posted on June 19, 2009The U.S. General Accounting Office this week released the findings of its review of the U.S. Coast Guard's administrative law judge program. The GAO concludes that the ALJs are able to decide cases independently and free of undue influence from Coast Guard officials...
Law Firms Need to Keep an Eye on Lawyers Performing Pro Bono Work
Posted on June 19, 2009Where a law firm allows an associate to handle a matter pro bono through a legal aid organization, does the firm retain an obligation to supervise the associate? Yes, said Acting Supreme Court Justice Ellen Gesmer in a domestic relations dispute where advice provided to a pro bono client by a Skadden staff attorney was so rife with errors that it justified voiding the ensuing settlement stipulation...
Supreme Court Rejects Argument That Due Process Requires Access to DNA Testing
Posted on June 18, 2009There is no federal constitutional right to post-conviction access to DNA evidence ruled the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Third Judicial District v. Osborne. Justice Kennedy delivered the swing vote, according to the Blog of the Legal Times. As discussed at The New York Times, the Court's decision reverses a 9th Circuit ruling, which held that the defendant, Osborne, was entitled to access DNA evidence under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause, notwithstanding that his lawyer had failed to request DNA testing at trial...
How to Lose a Career Over $1,000
Posted on June 18, 2009Granted, Michael Gisriel did a bad, bad thing. Gisriel cashed a $1,000 check made out to his former clients by forging the client's name, then deposited the funds into his firm bank account. That's theft, pure and simple. But does it justify disbarment? Yes, affirmed the Maryland of Court of Appeals in Maryland Attorney Grievance Committee v...
Does Alternative Billing Mean Lawyers Can Tear Up the Time Sheet?
Posted on June 18, 2009This past week, both Philadelphia-based Saul, Ewing and Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis announced alternative fee arrangements (described here and here) for their respective clients. So does that mean that lawyers at those firms can toss their time sheets out the window, or clear those electronic billing programs off their hard drive? Maybe not...
Court Withdraws Ruling Over Judge's Conflict
Posted on June 17, 2009The Washington Supreme Court has withdrawn a landmark ruling in a public records case in response to complaints that the opinion could benefit a separate lawsuit filed by one of the justices who decided the case. The court issued a one-page order withdrawing its earlier ruling and saying that the case will be scheduled for a new round of oral arguments "in due course...
Cloak-and-Dagger Justice
Posted on June 17, 2009Perhaps it was a dark and stormy night when Scott W. Stucky was sworn in as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. It took place on a rain-slicked pier outside an abandoned warehouse. He wore a trenchcoat and a fedora with its brim turned down...
The One in Which Sonia Sotomayor Reverses Herself
Posted on June 17, 2009This is a tale of two class actions filed in one court, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the first, Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion that set a new standard for class certification. In the second, she joined the three-judge panel that expressly disavowed her first decision...
Shielding Doctors From Med-Mal Doesn't Help the Bottom Line on Health Care Costs
Posted on June 16, 2009In a speech yesterday at the American Medical Association's annual meeting, President Obama told doctors that his plan to reduce medical costs and increase coverage can't succeed without tackling the problem of medical malpractice liability and out-of-control jury awards...
Concerns Raised About Offshoring Legal Services to India
Posted on June 16, 2009While legal process outsourcing to India has gained traction in recent years, many firms in the United States and the U.K. still refuse to consider offshoring because of concerns over data security, reports The Times of India. Although the LPO industry grew to $225 million in revenues in 2008, that represents just 5 percent of the potential market, according to the story...
BigLaw Reluctant to Respond to Open Casting Call
Posted on June 16, 2009Large firms may be suffering in this economy, but apparently not so much that they're willing to respond to open casting calls. Last month, I posted about how Houston-based FMC Technologies turned to social media site Legal OnRamp to find innovative law firms willing to offer alternative billing arrangements...
Welcome to the Bay State, Judge Kent
Posted on June 15, 2009Massachusetts gets a dubious distinction today -- it becomes the new home of the first federal judge to go to prison since 1991. Samuel Kent, who sat as a federal district judge in Galveston, Texas, before pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, has been ordered to report by 2 p...
This Law Clerk Brought to You by ...
Posted on June 15, 2009What with all those deferred law firm associates sitting around wondering what to do with themselves, why not put them to work in the courts? Well, one obvious reason not to might be to avoid compromising judicial independence by having law firms pay the salaries of court staff...
Violent Threats to One Lawyer Did Not Forfeit Right to Another
Posted on June 15, 2009A defendant who sent a blood-smeared letter threatening to harm his court-appointed lawyer if he did not withdraw from the case did not lose his right to a new court-appointed lawyer, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has decided. While concluding that a defendant's conduct could conceivably be so serious as to forfeit the right to counsel, the court said that a judge cannot make that decision without first following certain procedural safeguards...
In U.S. Territory, a Constitutional Face-Off
Posted on June 15, 2009A lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in the U.S. Virgin Islands seeking to compel the territory's governor to forward a draft V.I. constitution to President Barack Obama. The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a face-off between the drafters of the proposed constitution and opponents who say it is at odds with the U...
Former BigLaw Attorney Dishes on Cravath
Posted on June 12, 2009Bitter Lawyer carries an interview today with Pulitzer Prize finalist Gerald Posner (no relation to the other Posner), an investigative reporter and former associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He's written books on Nazis and the global heroin trade, but what's most interesting about the interview is what Posner has to say about his life at Cravath...
Lawyers Brace as Facebook Makes Usernames Available to 200 Million Users
Posted on June 12, 2009Gentlemen, start your search engines. The race to grab your Facebook user name starts at midnight this coming Friday, reports The National Law Journal. At that time, Facebook will allow an estimated 200 million users to select their "usernames," which can include a trademark, brand name or personal name...
Washington Post Sues to Disqualify WSJ From Publishing Legal Notices
Posted on June 12, 2009Even in the Internet Age, most courts require litigants in probate, foreclosure or other legal proceedings to provide notice in newspapers of "general circulation." So with commercial ad revenues on the decline, legal notices remain one of the few dependable sources of cash for newspapers -- so much so that at least one newspaper is willing to go to court to protect its legal-notice publication turf...
U.K. Lawyers Get the Message: 1-800-U-R-Fired
Posted on June 12, 2009Imagine dialing into your voicemail and hearing a message that you've been terminated. That's how 14 trainee solicitors learned they wouldn't be receiving permanent offers from London-based global law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, reports The Daily Mail...
Minow Named Dean of Harvard Law
Posted on June 11, 2009Harvard Law School announced today that it has named Martha Minow as dean to replace Elena Kagan, who left to join the Obama administration as solicitor general. A member of the Harvard Law faculty since 1981, Minow is described in the announcement as a "distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from international human rights to equality and inequality, from religion and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation, from family law and education law to the privatization of military, schooling, and other governmental activities...
Your Fiancée Can Get You Fired
Posted on June 11, 2009Your employer cannot fire you because you pursue your rights under Title VII. That is unlawful retaliation. But can you get fired because someone close to you -- to wit, your fiancée -- filed a Title VII claim? That is the unique issue decided this week by the 6th U...
Spence: I Am Famous Because I Am Selfish
Posted on June 11, 2009Gerry Spence is nothing if not interesting -- other than sometimes too enamored of himself. We can deduce that much simply from his preference for suit coats made of fringed buckskin. But the latest blog post from this Wyoming trial lawyer is more interesting than most, if only for its ability to suggest so much about the man in so few words...
A Casting Call for Sotomayor
Posted on June 11, 2009In the world of theater, to encourage someone to "break a leg" is to wish them good luck. Supporters of Sonia Sotomayor can only hope that proves true in the theater that is the Supreme Court confirmation process, after her stumble Monday at La Guardia airport in New York left her with a broken ankle, crutches and a cast...
Lawyer Tapped as First FOIA Ombudsman
Posted on June 11, 2009An office created by Congress in 2007 to provide policy guidance and mediation services for Freedom of Information Act activities throughout the federal government finally has a director -- a lawyer with substantial experience in promoting open government...
From Prosecutor to Pimp
Posted on June 11, 2009It's no more Mr. Nice Guy for a former assistant Hennepin County attorney in Minneapolis busted for running a prostitution ring for a group of well-to-do older men known as "The Minnesota Nice Guys." Police allege that the attorney, John St. Marie, has been arranging prostitutes for the group since shortly after retiring from the county attorney's office in 2003...
Threatening Letters Do Little to Deter Illegal Downloads
Posted on June 10, 2009Turns out that those threatening lawyer nastygrams aren't all that effective when it comes to deterring illegal software downloads. According to U.K. magazine Web User, a recent study conducted by U.K.-based media law firm Wiggin and Entertainment Media Research found that only one-third of surfers would stop downloading copyright-protected content from the Web if their ISP sent them a warning letter...
D.C. Lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to Serve as Pay Czar
Posted on June 10, 2009Cutting the pay of executives who head the corporations that received bailout money is a thankless job, but the Obama Administration has determined that someone's got to do it. And that someone is is none other than D.C. lawyer and mediator Kenneth Feinberg, who today was appointed "Executive Pay Czar" by President Obama, according to The New York Times...
Newbie Lawyer Ready to Take on the RIAA
Posted on June 10, 2009Back in May, Kiwi Camara, Harvard Law School's youngest admittee, and a relatively new grad with his own firm, Camara & Sibley, stepped in at the last hour to represent Jammie Thomas in the latest chapter of her epic battle with the Recording Industry Association of America...
Should Bar Exams Test Legal Research Skills?
Posted on June 10, 2009Should the bar exam test prospective lawyers on their legal research skills? Joe Hodnicki considers the question over at the Law Librarian Blog. He writes that several prominent law school librarians have advocated for inclusion of a legal research component on the bar exam for a long time...
The 'Freeconomics' of Free Labor
Posted on June 10, 2009I've posted previously about the growing phenomenon of lawyers working for free, either to build their résumés in hopes of finding a new job or to bide their time while waiting for their law firms to call them back to work after a deferral period. But is free labor always a benefit to the companies that receive it? Jill Priluck examines both sides of the "gift economy" In this interesting piece at Slate's The Big Money...
Lawyers Fail in Campaigns for Harvard Overseers
Posted on June 09, 2009Lawyers Harvey A. Silverglate (pictured) and Robert L. Freedman were unable to garner enough votes to win seats on Harvard University's Board of Overseers, one of two bodies that govern the prestigious university. Both Silverglate, a Cambridge, Mass., civil liberties lawyer, and Freedman, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Dechert, had hoped to win seats on the board and push for what they believe are needed reforms in Harvard's governance...
In London, Partner Profits Plummet
Posted on June 09, 2009Partner pay plummeted by up to 36 percent at four London law firms, Bloomberg.com reports -- and that's the good news. Law firms that are first to report their profits are the most confident about their positions, Tony Williams, the former managing partner of Clifford Chance and the founder of Jomati Consultants, told Bloomberg...
Another New Law School, Sort Of
Posted on June 09, 2009The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is branching out. It is launching the nation's first college dedicated exclusively to the teaching of history, including American legal history. To be called the American College of History and Legal Studies, the college will open its doors in August 2010 in Salem, N...
There's Something Fishy About Blawg Review #215
Posted on June 08, 2009This week my home blog, MyShingle.com, hosts a marine-themed Blawg Review #215 in honor of the first official World Oceans Day, June 8, 2009. I've covered a couple of hot topics from around the blogosphere, including the propriety of outing an anonymous blogger, whether law firms whose sites maintain zombie images of associates after they've departed could face liability for the intentional tort of "misappropriation of likeness" and the need, if any for a "Get a Life" conference for lawyers...
Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling in Judicial Bias Case
Posted on June 08, 2009The Supreme Court issued a landmark 5-4 decision today in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co., holding that due process requires a state judge to recuse himself from a case involving the financial interests of a party who has made substantial donations to the judge's campaign for the bench...
Law Firms Probed in Mortgage Foreclosure Cases
Posted on June 08, 2009To date, it's been primarily overreaching, greedy mortgage companies that have played the role of the villains in the national mortgage foreclosure crisis. But now, at least in Connecticut, it appears that law firms may be implicated as well. The Hartford Courant reports that State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has sent letters to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as a third mortgage company to find out why they repeatedly retained the same two law firms to handle all of their foreclosure proceedings in Connecticut...
Watching the Blawgs, Friday Edition
Posted on June 05, 2009News from around the blogosphere this Friday morning: Big spender spends more. In January, we described James Sokolove as legal advertising's biggest spender. Well, he just got even bigger -- to the tune of $25 million this year. Times really are tough...
Lawyer Readies His Own Touch PC
Posted on June 05, 2009Last year, lawyer Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, blogged about his frustration over the lack of a "dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web." If no one else was going to build such a device, he declared, he would -- with a little help from his friends and readers...
The Best Dressed Male Lawyers
Posted on June 05, 2009On Monday, Esquire magazine will announce the "fan favorite" in online voting in its Best Dressed Real Man contest. No fake men are allowed to compete, apparently, but lawyers are. Among the 25 semifinalists are a law professor, two practicing lawyers and a paralegal...
A Uniquely Morbid Bankruptcy Filing
Posted on June 05, 2009Bankruptcy court is the final resting place for the corpses of many a failed business. But the bankruptcy court in Boston has now become the final resting place for nine actual human corpses. When the Mansfield, Mass., company Innovative Spinal Technologies went belly up last month and filed for protection under Chapter 7 of the federal bankruptcy code, it listed among its assets nine cadavers, reports The Sun Chronicle, a newspaper in Attleboro, Mass...
Do Tech Company Agreements Not to Poach Violate Antitrust Laws?
Posted on June 04, 2009For those who work in Silicon Valley, it seems that most high-tech companies are perpetually engaged in a talent war for top engineers, marketers and executives. So why is the Department of Justice investigating prominent technology and biotech companies, including Google and Apple, for antitrust violations associated with their hiring practices? According to The New York Times, despite outward appearances, there's apparently a "gentleman's understanding" in Silicon Valley not to poach their competitors' employees...
Wisconsin Court-Appointed Lawyers Seeking Higher Pay
Posted on June 04, 2009At a time when lawyers are taking pay cuts of $100,000, it's almost unseemly for some lawyers to be asking for a raise. That is, unless those lawyers handle court-appointed criminal work for $40 an hour and are seeking to place their salaries on par with those of lawyers who handle court appointed work in other states...
Unemployed Lawyer Finds Job, Briefly, on Reality TV
Posted on June 04, 2009Here's another opportunity for unemployed lawyers who can't find a job at Legal Aid, even for free, and who can't afford to party seven nights a week. Why not consider a stint on a reality TV show, like New York Law School grad Stephen Reich? This local news story covers Reich's 15 minutes of fame on the most recent season of "The Bachelorette," which premiered May 18...
More Reasons for Lawyers Not to Use Twitter
Posted on June 04, 2009Microblogging service Twitter has its share of evangelists, but law firm marketing guru Larry Bodine sure isn't one of them. Two weeks back, Bodine gave Twitter the bird, concluding that it wasn't an effective tool for law firm marketing. Bodine's post spawned an outpouring of criticism (summarized here) from Twitter fans who defended its benefits as a supplement to other marketing efforts and as an effective way to build a brand...
Another M.D. Blogs His Malpractice Trial
Posted on June 03, 2009Remember Flea? He was the Boston-area pediatrician who anonymously blogged his own medical-malpractice trial, only to be unmasked in open court. Well, now another M.D. is scratching the itch to blog his med-mal trial, as Erik Turkewitz notes at New...
Handicapping Bilski
Posted on June 03, 2009Patent lawyers can barely control their excitement -- or anxiety -- in the wake of this week's news that the Supreme Court has agreed to review In re Bilski, the Federal Circuit's October en banc opinion that is seen as...
Advice for Summer Associates
Posted on June 03, 2009At Counsel to Counsel, Stephen Seckler posts his advice to this year's crop of summer associates. What surprised me most about his article is to discover that any firms are actually hiring summer associates. Let's hope these associates are getting...
Lawyer's Indictment Makes It Three for Three
Posted on June 03, 2009With the indictment yesterday of lawyer Salvatore F. DiMasi, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House who resigned in January, the state earns the dubious distinction of being three for three -- the third consecutive Massachusetts speaker to be indicted...
Even Law Firms Get Bankruptcy Bills
Posted on June 02, 2009It's too bad that now-defunct, San Francisco-based law firm Heller Erhman couldn't have hired itself as counsel for its own bankruptcy. If it had, the firm could have collected $1.8 million in fees that is now going to other law...
Mayer Brown's Latest Perk: A $100,000 Pay Cut
Posted on June 02, 2009Talk about lawyers being risk-averse. Associates at Mayer Brown, headquartered in Chicago, are agreeing to accept pay cuts of $100,000 for an extra year of job security, reports the Chicago Tribune. Instead of offering the traditional severance packages or deferred...
Pre-Paid Legal Remains a Good Investment
Posted on June 02, 2009Demand for high-priced legal services may be down, but consumers are still purchasing plans from Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc. According to the Pre-Paid Web site, a plan costs about $26 per month and gives members access to professional legal counsel....
Federal Judge Resigns, Effective in June 2010
Posted on June 02, 2009In recent months, we've become all too familiar with the concept of deferred start dates -- as long as six months to a year for many new associates. But deferred retirement dates, like the one proposed today by convicted U.S....
All Things Sotomayor: Weekend Roundup
Posted on June 01, 2009Continuing coverage. The National Law Journal has launched a new online section, The Choice, with continuing coverage of the confirmation process. Law clerk speaks. Former law clerk to Sotomayor, Jenny Rivera, now law professor at CUNY School of Law, and...
Facebook Friend Earns Judge a Reprimand
Posted on June 01, 2009Opposing counsel are sitting with the judge in his chambers during a child-custody trial when the lawyer for the husband brings up Facebook. The other lawyer says she is a non-user, but the judge quickly agrees to "friend" the lawyer...
Monday Morning Blawg Wrap
Posted on June 01, 2009Checking in on this first day of June: Posts for the calendar impaired. Never mind that we are still a month away from 2009's halfway point, 3 Geeks and Law Blog has compiled a list of the must-read blog posts...
20 Years Later, Police Reopen Lawyer's 'Cold Case'
Posted on June 01, 2009On June 1, 1989, Karen Edwards, a 34-year-old assistant Pinellas County, Fla., attorney on a two-week vacation, arrived in Boston to take in the city's historical sites. Concerned about her safety in a strange city, she brought a cooler of...
Bankruptcy Lawyers: Parasitic or Productive?
Posted on May 29, 2009Back in the day when top bankruptcy lawyers could still be had for a mere $850 an hour, I posted about the exorbitant fees generated in large, corporate bankruptcy cases and asked why so few challenged legal fees recovered through...
Does Your Law Firm Have a Wikipedia Page?
Posted on May 29, 2009If you thought a Wikipedia page was only for the really famous or really accomplished, think again. These days, many law firms are staking out a presence on the collaborative online encyclopedia. And as the U.K.'s Law Society Gazette suggests,...
Law Firm Sues Google for Right to Its Name
Posted on May 29, 2009How'd you like to advertise for your competitor? The New Haven, Conn.-based personal injury law firm of Stratton Faxon wasn't too keen on the idea. It's suing Google for selling the firm's name as a keyword ad to the site...
Should E-Mail Be Taxed?
Posted on May 29, 2009One would think that the idea of taxing e-mails wouldn't find much support among lawyers. After all, large law firms must send out thousands of e-mails a day, while even a solo like myself can easily dispatch two dozen or...
Legal Blog Watch Gets a Face-Lift
Posted on May 29, 2009As loyal Legal Blog Watch readers have surely noticed, there's something a bit different about us this week. What's that, you say? You couldn't tell? Don't be coy -- click through from your Google Reader and take a look. After...
And Now, Our Report From Cannes
Posted on May 28, 2009What with blogging and twittering and all, we weren't able to make it to Cannes this year for the annual gathering of the film world's glitterati. One Texas lawyer did find the time to attend, and where Texas lawyers go,...
Sotomayor: The Second 24 Hours
Posted on May 28, 2009My partner-in-blog Carolyn Elefant did a great job yesterday rounding up the first 24 hours' reaction among bloggers and pundits to President Obama's nomination of 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Needless to say, the tsunami of...
A Titillating Tell-All Book for Small-Firm Lawyers
Posted on May 28, 2009So there's another BigLaw tell-all making the circuit. First there was lawyer-turned-sex-novelist Deidre Dare, whose erotic stories about a fictional BigLaw lawyer's party life in Moscow were said to be based on her real-life experiences there as a lawyer with...
In Praise of Self-Laudatory Lawyer Ads
Posted on May 28, 2009Bans on self-laudatory lawyer ads are paternalistic, overly broad and elitist -- not to mention unconstitutional. That is the argument made by Nat S. Stern, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, in a newly published research paper,....
The First 24 Hours: A Sotomayor Roundup
Posted on May 27, 2009It's been a little over 24 hours since President Obama announced his first nomination for the United States Supreme court, 2nd Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor. And while one day may scarcely give Judge Sotomayor enough time to prepare for the...
Human Rights Lawyers Threatened in China
Posted on May 27, 2009Nearly 20 lawyers in China stand in jeopardy of losing their livelihood, reports The New York Times. But in contrast to the scores of unemployed American lawyers who are victims of the economy, the lawyers in China are victims of...
GPS: A Divorce Lawyer's Best Friend
Posted on May 27, 2009Let's say that you're a divorce lawyer and you want to help your client figure out whether her spouse is cheating. You could hire an investigator -- but that could get pricey. Or you could try to get your hands...
The Posse List Reports on the State of Contract Lawyering
Posted on May 27, 2009BigLaw attorneys have their own annual report in the form of The Am Law 100. But analysis of profits per partner and law firm revenues aren't much use for contract attorneys, who want to know where they can find the...
Supreme Court Reverses Suspect's Right
Posted on May 26, 2009With all eyes focused today on the new nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and how she might change its future balance, the court as it is currently constituted let slip a zinger, reversing a 23-year-old precedent that forbade...
The Legal Twitterverse Loses a Shining Star
Posted on May 26, 2009Twitter users have come to expect it to be a first-line source for major, world-changing news. Earthquakes rocking China. Shootings roiling Mumbai. Many people first learned of these events by way of tweets on Twitter. For many of us, such...
So It's Sotomayor
Posted on May 26, 2009If the Supreme Court were Churchill Downs, I'd be heading over to the pay window right now, having put my money on 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be President Obama's nominee to replace Justice David...
David vs. Goliath, as Told By David
Posted on May 26, 2009Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's defense of alleged file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum against a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America has been nothing if not controversial. This is the man, after all, who tape-recorded a telephone conference with...
Chew on This: $10.6M for Chaw
Posted on May 22, 2009In a victory sure to be hailed by professional baseball players everywhere, a Massachusetts judge is expected to give his approval today to a $10.65 million settlement of a class action lawsuit involving smokeless tobacco, the Boston Herald reports. Notably,...
The Best Weapon Against Pirates? Lawyers.
Posted on May 22, 2009Call it Blackbeard meets Blackacre. In the early part of the 18th century, in the glory days of peg-legged, hook-handed pirates, it was not naval prowess that sunk their ships so much as the threat of lawyers nipping at their...
When the FCC Visits, It Doesn't Bother to Knock
Posted on May 22, 2009If you have a wireless router, a cellphone or a cordless phone in your office or home, the Federal Communications Commission says it has the right to walk right in without a warrant at any time of the day or...
Friday Oddities
Posted on May 22, 2009Is it that these things happen more frequently as the week rolls on or that I'm more in the mood to read them? 'Coldcocked' By Woman in Bar-Seat Spat, Fla. Lawyer Mulls Lawsuit. What would be really embarrassing for this...
More on Legal Issues Related to Twitter and Other Social Media
Posted on May 21, 2009Who ever thought that a 140 character tweet could get you into so much trouble? If you haven't given the issue thought, fear not -- San Francisco-based Howard Rice Nemerovski Cannady Falk & Rabkin has done the work for you,...
Law Firm Sets Up Niche Practice to Dispute Other Lawyers' Fees
Posted on May 21, 2009Manchester, England-based law firm Boote Edgar Esterkin has figured out a novel way to generate more revenue. Instead of charging clients more for the firm's services, Boote Edgar has created a new practice specialty going after other law firms for...
Lawyer on the Lam With Her Clients
Posted on May 21, 2009It seems that Minnesota mom Colleen Hauser and her lawyer, Susan Daya prefer flight over fight -- fighting cancer, that is. The pair took to the road along with Hauser's cancer-stricken 13-yea-old son in defiance of a court ruling by...
Bloggers May Be Shielded in New York
Posted on May 21, 2009Bloggers in New York may soon be treated on par with other journalists, at least when it comes to receiving protection under New York State's shield laws, reports the New York Times City Blog. Shield laws protect journalists from being...
Craigslist Sues and AG Backs Off
Posted on May 20, 2009Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster announced on his blog this morning that he has filed a lawsuit against South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster over his repeated threats to file criminal charges against the company. "Mr. McMaster?s repeated threats of criminal...
Study: British Lawyers Get No Respect
Posted on May 20, 2009Legal and other professionals play vital roles in supporting Britain's economic, political and social structures. Yet they don't get the respect they deserve, from either the government or the general public. That is the conclusion of a research report released...
Juror du Jour: Boredom His Downfall
Posted on May 20, 2009Lesson to jurors: You can run, but you can't hide. Witness this item from today's news: A Hillsboro, Ore., man who left jury duty after lunch because he was "extremely bored" was due back at the courthouse Tuesday to be...
Court OKs Service of Summons on Facebook
Posted on May 20, 2009In the latest twist involving the interface of law and social media, a court in New Zealand has given lawyers the go-ahead to serve process on a defendant in Britain by way of the social-networking site Facebook. A High Court...
It's Official: Nominee Is a Hispanic Woman
Posted on May 20, 2009For all you out there who have been making short lists and debating the relative merits of the potential nominees, the wait is over. The nominee's name has been announced and, if approved, the female lawyer who has been selected...
Are Younger Workers More Vulnerable to Layoffs?
Posted on May 19, 2009With a slumping economy forcing more companies to lay off employees, you might think that it's the higher-paid, older workers who are bearing the brunt of the terminations. But as Jane Genova points out at Law and More, millennials are...
Can You Ask Clients for Business?
Posted on May 19, 2009Can -- and should -- lawyers ask prospective clients for business? That's the question Roy Ginsburg tackles today over at The Lawyerist. Ginsburg begins by noting that most states' ethics rules prohibit direct solicitation of business from prospective clients...
What Is the Million Dollar Advocates Forum?
Posted on May 19, 2009Have you ever heard of, or been invited to join the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and wondered exactly what it is? So did Eric Turkewitz, who addresses that million dollar question at his New York Personal Injury Law Blog. Here's...
Corporations Turning to Social Networking to Find Lawyers
Posted on May 19, 2009Maybe social networking for lawyers isn't a waste of time after all. The Am Law Daily carries an article by Amy Miller of Corporate Counsel Magazine describing how FMC Technologies, a Houston-based manufacturer, is bypassing conventional options for updating a...
Two Blawger Transitions to Note
Posted on May 18, 2009What makes a blog worth reading? A distinctive voice. A unique topic. Smarts and savvy. Fearlessness. Those characteristics describe two legal blogs that are no more thanks to their writers moving on to other things. In writing Law Beat, Mark...
Nominees' Secrets and Secret Nominees
Posted on May 18, 2009As the watch continues for who President Obama will nominate to fill the soon-to-be vacated Supreme Court seat of Justice David Souter, two stories in today's news explore the secret sides of the candidate short list. First up is Tony...
Lawyer Urges Officials: Keep Off Facebook
Posted on May 18, 2009The law sometimes lags behind technology. One area where this is much apparent is in the law of public access. Many states' public records and open meeting laws were enacted years ago -- in some cases even before the Internet...
Group Seeks Disbarment of 'Torture Lawyers'
Posted on May 18, 2009A group of antiwar activists is filing a series of legal ethics complaints today seeking the disbarment of 12 Bush-administration lawyers for their alleged roles in condoning torture. The complaints target a sitting federal circuit judge, Jay S. Bybee; three...
Supermarket Legal Services Coming to the U.K.
Posted on May 15, 2009Five apples, a dozen eggs, a liter of milk, two wills and a lease. That's what a grocery list could might look like in supermarkets in England and Wales by the middle of 2011, according to the BBC. Under the...
Law Firm Markup of Research Costs: Annoying or Unlawful?
Posted on May 15, 2009Virtually every law firm that subscribes to commercial, computerized legal research providers like LexisNexis or Westlaw pays a flat rate for unlimited searches. Even so, the companies will ordinarily provide a breakdown of the per-minute cost of each individual search,...
For Expat Lawyers, a Return Passage to India
Posted on May 15, 2009Roughly a year ago, I posted about law firms in India boosting salaries to retain talented lawyers who might be lured by firms from abroad. But with the economy down, Indian lawyers who joined U.K. firms during the boom periods...
Rules of Conduct for Social Networking
Posted on May 14, 2009Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal gave its editorial staffers a set of rules for how to conduct themselves online and, in particular, on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The news got me to thinking about...
New York AG Appears Miffed at Craigslist
Posted on May 14, 2009The attorneys general of Illinois, Connecticut and Missouri were claiming victory yesterday in the wake of the announcement by Craigslist that it would eliminate its Erotic Services ads and replace that section of its site with a yet-to-be-named adult category...
A Milestone for This Blog's Founder
Posted on May 14, 2009Long, long, long-time readers of Legal Blog Watch will remember that its original writer -- and still its inspiring voice -- was Lisa Stone. She launched this blog way back in November 2004 and in February 2006 handed over its...
Law Firm 'Pyramid' Sees Thinning at Base
Posted on May 14, 2009Take a pyramid, squeeze in its base, and what are you left with? A diamond. The model will no doubt need polishing, but the diamond may come to better represent the structure of law firm staffing than the pyramid, suggests...
More Commentary on How to Judge a Justice
Posted on May 13, 2009As suspense grows over the naming of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, so too does discussion in the blogosphere about how to judge the future Justice. For all the talk of nominating a woman, a recent Gallup poll shows that...
Philadelphia Law Firms Making 'Market Corrections'
Posted on May 13, 2009Yesterday, The Am Law Daily reported that large law firms don't expect to make any radical changes in response to the economic downturn. Instead, firms are making modest "market corrections" such as cutting attorneys (both associates and partners), and relying...
Study Shows Female Lawyers Willing to Leave Firms to Get a Life
Posted on May 13, 2009Female lawyers are willing to leave law firms to get a life, concluded a recent study by Rutgers University's Center for Women and Work, "Legal Talent at the Crossroads: Why Women Lawyers Leave Firms and Why They Choose to Stay."...
Recession Sends Lawyers Into the Clouds
Posted on May 13, 2009For years, the legal profession lagged behind other industries in adopting cloud computing technologies, which encompass a range of services -- platforms, infrastructure and software -- delivered over the Internet, instead of residing on local computers...
Gitmo Litigation: More Kafka Than Kafka
Posted on May 12, 2009This Sunday magazine piece from The Chicago Tribune, The Guantanamo Labyrinth, by Tom Hundley, is the best description I've read of what it is like to be a lawyer representing a Guantanamo detainee. The story focuses on Candace Gorman, a...
Booty Vids Haunt Supreme Court Hopefuls
Posted on May 12, 2009We're not saying that any of the upstanding members of the legal profession who are rumored to be under consideration for the Supreme Court ever made booty videos -- come to think of it, we hope and pray they did...
ABA Announces 2009 Silver Gavel Awards
Posted on May 12, 2009The top federal public defender in Oregon and a former actor on The Sopranos who became a lawyer are among the winners of this year's Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts from the American Bar Association. The awards...
Law Firm Partner Isn't An Adequate Substitute for Defendant's First Choice of Lawyer
Posted on May 11, 2009A criminal defendant can't be forced to settle for representation by his lawyer's partner when the lawyer he hired is unavailable for trial, ruled the Maryland Court of Appeals in Miguel Gonzales v. State of Maryland. As the Maryland Daily...
The True Toll of Unemployment
Posted on May 11, 2009These days, losing a law firm job doesn't necessarily mean a complete loss of income with most firms offering some kind of severance -- either two to five months worth of salary, or several months of pre-termination notice. Still, financial...
On-Campus Online Notoriety Continues to Haunt Graduates
Posted on May 11, 2009Remember the saga of attorney Shakespear Feyissa He's the Washington state lawyer whose never-prosecuted arrest for attempted sexual assault and ensuing suspension from college continues to shadow him 10 years later because coverage of the incident remained search-engine-accessible in his...
Why Not Doctor a Stalled Legal Career With a Nursing Degree?
Posted on May 11, 2009Last week, Above the Law readers discussed whether returning to school for an LLM degree is a good option for laid off lawyers. Most commenters agreed that in today's economy, an LLM is a waste of both money and time....
Friday Blawgosphere Buzz
Posted on May 08, 2009Here is a round-up of what legal bloggers are buzzing about on this Friday before Mother's Day: Are You Fit for Solo Practice? Stephen Seckler hones in on an essential quality of every entrepreneur. Study Projects Growth in Corporate Legal...
A Year Later, Lawyer Remains Missing
Posted on May 08, 2009It has been more than a year since lawyer Elizabeth Calvert and her husband John disappeared from Hilton Head, S.C., where they lived part time on their yacht, and police still are not sure what happened to them. The couple...
Law Profs Urge Non-Judge for Souter Seat
Posted on May 08, 2009Two former Supreme Court law clerks who are now highly regarded law professors and Supreme Court scholars are urging President Obama to to fill retiring Justice David Souter's seat with someone who will bring to the court a different set...
Lawyer/Escort Unhappy with Exposure
Posted on May 08, 2009A Rhode Island escort told police that a man who called her for an appointment attacked her at knife point when she arrived at his apartment last week, according to The Providence Journal. Not the kind of item we usually...
Do We Need Ethics Rules on Ex Parte Blogging?
Posted on May 07, 2009With postings on legal blogs now offering prompt, detailed and readily accessible analysis of Supreme Court cases, is it time to re-evaluate the ethical standards that govern the interplay between lawyers, the Internet, and the Court? That's the money question...
Representing Illinois Governors In Prosecutions Isn't High Paying Work
Posted on May 07, 2009Defending a former Illinois governor in a criminal prosecution may seem like a terrific high-profile gig, but don't expect to get rich off of it. According to the Chicago Sun-Times blog, lawyers representing ex-governor Rod Blagojevich have agreed to give...
Bar Complaints Rather Than Criminal Prosecution Likely for Bush Lawyers
Posted on May 07, 2009It's unlikely that former Bush administration lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee will face criminal prosecution for approving the legality of harsh interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects, reports The Washington Post. Instead, sources say that a forthcoming Justice Department investigative...
Potential Confidentiality Perils of Twitter
Posted on May 07, 2009This Washington Post piece about a low-level editorial assistant who inadvertently spilled the beans on Twitter about the start date of a Virginia gubernatorial candidate's television campaign doesn't involve a lawyer, but holds cautionary lessons nonetheless...
Folos: Commencement Speakers and Webby Awards
Posted on May 06, 2009We noted here last month that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was on tap to speak at this year's Boston College Law School commencement and reported earlier on UNC School of Law's déjà-vu-ish choice of former U.S. Attorney General...
Diversity, Redefined, Yields Intriguing Results
Posted on May 06, 2009What is the measure of diversity within a law firm? The obvious approach is to look at the raw percentage of minorities within a firm. And that, in past years, has been how The Minority Law Journal calculated its annual...
Quashing Nomination Rumors, via Twitter
Posted on May 06, 2009One name that frequently makes the pundits' short lists as a potential nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court is that of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. The Harvard Law School grad is said to be a close friend...
Lawyer in Need of a Job? Head to North Dakota
Posted on May 06, 2009If I were a lawyer in need of a job, the last place I would look would be Washington, D.C. Washington has the dubious distinction of having the densest population of lawyers of any jurisdiction in the United States. When...
What's a Celebrity Lawyer?
Posted on May 05, 2009The New York Daily News reports that "celebrity lawyer" Gloria Allred has filed a lawsuit against "Octomom" Nadya Suleman on behalf of former child actor and child labor advocate Paul Petersen, urging the court to appoint a guardian for Suleman's...
Bar Finds Lawyer Can't Use Third Party to 'Friend' Witness Online
Posted on May 05, 2009As I discussed here last month, information posted on a Facebook profile -- whether public or private -- is potentially discoverable. But as Doug Cornelius writes at Social Media Today, that doesn't mean lawyers can attempt to access those Facebook...
The Online Debate Over Judge Sotomayor
Posted on May 05, 2009There once was a time when Supreme Court nominees faced scrutiny only from a Senate confirmation panel. And while the confirmation process proved troublesome for one Justice, for most others the procedure was still fairly benign. But fast-forward to 21st...
Pregnancy Discimination Laws: Do They Hurt Women More Than They Help?
Posted on May 05, 2009The Pregnancy Discrimination Act makes it illegal to fire, or not hire, a woman because she is pregnant. But when companies need to make tough choices during the recession, some are wondering whether the Pregnancy Discrimination Act actually hurts women...
Obama Talks With Senators About Souter Retirement
Posted on May 04, 2009In an effort to ensure that the confirmation process runs smoothly for Justice David Souter's replacement at the Supreme Court, President Obama has already started contacting senators who will play a key role in the confirmation process, reports The BLT...
Is Law Firm Downsizing Impacting Corporate Clients?
Posted on May 04, 2009Despite the fact that most law firms are laying off associates because business is down, could they be taking cuts too far? In other words, is there a chance that the massive layoffs could be harming service to clients? That's...
Legal Consequences of Social Media
Posted on May 04, 2009Social media-related lawsuits are on the rise, reports The Ottawa Citizen. Some of the suits are fairly high-profile, such as the action by Austin, Texas-based designer Dawn Simorangkir accusing rocker Courtney Love of defamation via Twitter. But there are plenty...
Is Social Media Worthwhile for Lawyers?
Posted on May 04, 2009Here at Legal Blog Watch, my colleague Bob Ambrogi and I like to stay ahead of the curve. We strive to tip our readers off to the latest and greatest social media tools for lawyers. But after seeing this recent...
Facebook Lawyer Explores Run for Calif. AG
Posted on May 01, 2009Two-hundred million is not a bad constituency on which to base a run for elective office. That is the number of active members of the social networking site Facebook. Granted, not all of them are in California -- or even...
Handicapping Souter's Replacement
Posted on May 01, 2009Short lists abound. With yesterday's news that Justice David H. Souter will retire after this term, speculation turned immediately to his replacement. Of course, only one person's list matters. But bloggers, journalists and pundits won't be stopped from considering the...
A Curmudgeon Considers Law Day
Posted on May 01, 2009As regular readers of this blog know, Carolyn Elefant and I co-author this blog, each posting on alternate days. Today was supposed to be Carolyn's day, but when she found herself facing a tight filing deadline, I offered to swap...
A Noteworthy Blog From an Unlikely Lawyer
Posted on April 30, 2009We here at Legal Blog Watch are always on the lookout for new blogs from high-profile lawyers and law firms. But one recently launched blog written by a long-time lawyer strikes us as particularly noteworthy, if for no other reason...
How to Really Get in an Adversary's Face
Posted on April 30, 2009Any lawyer in any city or town can always point to that one local lawyer who is a real pain in the you-know-what. But what is one to do about such a lawyer? We are lawyers, after all, bound by...
Judge's Suicide Leaves Only Questions
Posted on April 30, 2009The Facebook page for Judge Francis J. D'Eramo shows a man with a vibrant smile and many friends. But with the judge's apparent suicide this week, his family is asking those friends to make his Facebook page a memorial for...
Was Lawyer Fired in Cover-Up of Client's Child Porn?
Posted on April 30, 2009A former associate with Hinckley, Allen & Snyder in Boston claims he was fired from the firm after refusing to destroy child pornography found on a client's computer hard drive. This week, the former associate, Kevin M. Plante, won a...
No Surprise: Profits Per Partner Decline for 2008
Posted on April 29, 2009At this time last year we observed that 2007 was a banner year for partner profits, but asked whether the feast was a prelude to a famine. It turns out that the answer is yes. According to the results of...
Why Lawyers Rule the U.S. and What It Says About Our Culture
Posted on April 29, 2009As far back as the 1830s, French historian Alexis de Toqueville observed the prevalence of lawyers in America's ruling elite. Now, a century and a half later, nothing's changed. If anything, lawyers holding public office are more prominent than ever....
Judge Tosses Discrimination Suit Against Columbia for Lack of Mens' Studies Program
Posted on April 29, 2009Last August, I posted about lawyer Roy Den Hollander's lawsuit against Columbia University, charging that the school had "thrown its influence and prestige into violating the rights of men by offering a women's studies program but no men's studies program...
Waste of Taxpayer Dollars on Misdemeanors Is Criminal, New Study Says
Posted on April 29, 2009Prosecution of petty misdemeanor cases such as curfew violations or turnstile jumping is robbing taxpayers of millions of dollars each year, concludes the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in its latest report, "Minor Crimes, Massive Waste...
Free Speech at Core of Apple Suit
Posted on April 28, 2009Something seems rotten when a company like Apple threatens legal action to shut down public discussions of its products. This week, the recipient of such a threat made a preemptive strike, filing a lawsuit in a federal court in California...
Deidre Makes Good on Her Dare to Sue
Posted on April 28, 2009Lawyer-turned-sex-novelist Deidre Dare vowed she would not take her firing lying down. Now she has made good on that vow. The U.S. lawyer has sued London firm Allen & Overy for £3.45 million over its discharge of her from its...
Real Judges for Fantasy Sports Cases
Posted on April 28, 2009On first glance, the decision of the court sounds eminently authoritative: "This dispute involves whether the Commissioner of the Hampshire Baseball League was within his rights to allow one of its teams, the Cedarburg Tigers, to submit a late bid...
Magistrate Quits Over Twitter Posts
Posted on April 28, 2009A magistrate in the English town of Telford maintains he did nothing wrong when he mentioned cases in posts to Twitter. Even so, he resigned from the bench after a fellow magistrate discovered the tweets and complained. Steve Molyneux --...
A Second Wind for Second Life, and Its Lawyers
Posted on April 27, 2009It's been more than a year since I last posted about lawyers using Second Life and for a while I thought the site might be on the decline, not just for lawyers, but for all users. Apparently I was mistaken...
The Benefits of Video Conferencing
Posted on April 27, 2009Over at the Law Department Management blog, Rees Morrison shares some reasons why law firms should consider video conferencing, particularly in a down economy where clients are looking for ways to cut fat out of the budget. For starters, video...
Felon Teaches CLE on Criminal Sentencing
Posted on April 27, 2009Granted, first-hand experience is an important quality in a continuing legal education instructor, but it's possible to go too far. That was the case at a recent Milwaukee CLE program where 50 lawyers were treated to a program on criminal...
Does the Bar Need Policies on Web 2.0?
Posted on April 27, 2009A Connecticut Law Blog author Ryan McKeen has a problem: He's a stickler for rules. Ordinarily a love of rules isn't a problem for lawyers, who thrive on analyzing, dissecting and generally finding ways to follow (or lawfully circumvent) rules,...
Quoteable Quotes from the World of Law
Posted on April 24, 2009The news today seems chock full of notable quotes: "It is axiomatic that 'Judge' and 'Stripper' showing up in a headline is never a good thing, especially if you happen to be the 'Judge.'" Tampa Tribune columnist Daniel Ruth on...
File-Sharing Judge Accused of Conflicts
Posted on April 24, 2009The Swedish judge who last week sentenced four men to prison in the high-profile Pirate Bay file-sharing case is being accused by the lawyer for one of the four of having conflicts of interest that should compel a new trial....
Cameras in Courts: Bad News, Good News
Posted on April 24, 2009I took a few days off last week and was disappointed to return and find that the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a decision barring the webcasting of a hearing in a recording industry file-sharing case pending...
The World's Most Ethical Companies
Posted on April 24, 2009The Ethisphere Institute -- a think-tank that ponders best practices in business ethics and corporate responsibility -- recently came out with its 2009 list of the World?s Most Ethical Companies. The list recognizes enterprises that promote ethical business standards and...
Ohio Supreme Court Asks Lawyers to Pitch Its Web Site
Posted on April 23, 2009Courts don't often encourage advertising by the legal profession. But the Supreme Court of Ohio may be an exception. As this article reports, the Ohio Supreme Court justices are urging members of the bar to actively promote the court's Web...
Lawyer Arrested for Evicting Her Own Children -- From Her Car
Posted on April 23, 2009Talk about Kafka-esque. That's what Sunday must have felt like for high-powered Kaye Scholer partner Madlyn Primoff, who spent the night in lock-up after being arrested for kicking her bickering 10- and 12-year-old daughters out of her car in downtown...
The End of Law Schools?
Posted on April 23, 2009We've heard a good deal about legal futurist Richard Susskind's predictions for the future of the legal profession. But what about the future of legal education? Turns out that Susskind has some thoughts on that topic too, which he shared...
Law Firm Replacing Itself With Free Term Sheet Generator
Posted on April 23, 2009At a time when law firms are scrambling to hang on to every piece of paid business that they can, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is giving away services for free. According to CenterNetworks, the firm has...
Incisive Media's Twitter Scorecard
Posted on April 22, 2009Ashton Kutcher, who recently passed 1 million followers on Twitter, has no fear of losing his standing to anyone in legal publishing. Still, it is interesting to note this Bill's blog post from William L. Pollak, CEO of legal publisher...
Hoping to Revitalize Legal Scholarship
Posted on April 22, 2009Is legal scholarship on its death bed? The current and former editors of several law reviews suggest it is and they believe they have a way to revitalize it. In what they are calling an unprecedented online collaboration, seven of...
Law Professor Wins Pulitzer Prize
Posted on April 22, 2009The 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history was awarded this week to Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of law at New York Law School. Gordon-Reed won the $10,000 prize for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which the prize...
Law Blogger Runs Marathon, Finds Beer and Kisses
Posted on April 22, 2009I missed watching the running of the 113th Boston Marathon this year. For many years, standing along the marathon route was a rite of spring for me. I went to Boston College Law School, just down the street from the...
Help Wanted: MoFo CMO
Posted on April 22, 2009At a time when some law firms are paring back their marketing departments, at least one firm is hiring. The international law firm Morrison & Foerster has posted a help-wanted ad for a chief marketing officer at the Web site...
Can Using E-Mail Place Lawyers at Risk of Ethics Violations?
Posted on April 21, 2009Generally distrustful of new technology, the legal profession has -- for at least a decade -- embraced e-mail as a secure means for communicating with clients. Indeed, even the ABA thinks nothing of letting lawyers have unencrypted e-mail communications with...
How Will the Law Firm of the Future Look?
Posted on April 21, 2009From ongoing associate layoffs to cuts in partner pay to jiltings by major corporate clients, the future of BigLaw seems bleak indeed. So what better way to spring BigLaw attorneys from all of the doom and gloom than to appeal...
Will Bush Lawyers Face Jail Time for Legal Advice on Torture?
Posted on April 21, 2009By now, most agree that John Yoo and other former Justice Department attorneys gave the Bush administration shoddy advice on the legality of torturing suspected terrorists. But was their advice criminal? As Bloomberg reports, President Obama is now saying that...
Bloggers Don't Outnumber Lawyers, Yet
Posted on April 21, 2009Though blogging came on the scene just a decade ago, a recent survey claims that 452,000 people say blogging serves as their primary source of revenue, according to a recent Wall Street Journal story, posted in its entirety at Media...
Lawyer Owes Ethics Duty to Non-Client
Posted on April 20, 2009Hat tip to the blog The Ethical Quandary for pointing out this potential ethical pitfall. The D.C. Bar Legal Ethics Committee has issued an opinion finding that a lawyer owes a duty to maintain the confidences of someone who never...
Webby Awards Announces Nominees for Law
Posted on April 20, 2009Nominees were announced last week for the 13th annual Webby Awards, called by The New York Times the "Oscars of the Internet." The awards honor excellence in Web sites in more than 100 categories -- among them, law. The awards...
The Things Lawyers Do to Get Disbarred
Posted on April 20, 2009I am an unabashed fan of Legal Profession Blog for its never-ceases-to-amaze chronicles of lawyer discipline from around the country. It's not that I take some perverse joy in seeing lawyers get disciplined -- I don't. It is just that...
Friday Law Link Roundup
Posted on April 17, 2009-- The U.S. News law school rankings will be published next week, on April 23, unless they're leaked early (like last year). Last week, law professor and prolific blawger Brian Leiter wrote an open letter to law bloggers asking them...
We Caught a Pirate, Now What?
Posted on April 17, 2009We've been hearing about those pesky Somali pirates for some time, but now that the United States has actually caught one red-handed, we're going to have to start dusting off old laws to figure out what to do with these...
No Spanish Inquisition After All, and No American One Either
Posted on April 16, 2009On Tuesday we relayed a story from The Daily Beast claiming that "The Bush Six" -- the Bush administration lawyers accused of greenlighting the use of torture in America's war on terror -- were about to be indicted by Spanish...
Legal Blog Watch Is Looking for Guest Bloggers
Posted on April 16, 2009Legal Blog Watch has been humming along since 2004 (we're almost ancient in blawg years!) with only a handful of authors churning out daily reports on the latest issues and ideas in the legal blogosphere. For much of that time,...
Alleged Fraudster Used Law Firms to Cover His Tracks
Posted on April 16, 2009The Wall Street Journal went whaling on Thursday, and it looks like it speared a big one (even if the paper missed Moby Dick himself). A fascinating front-page story digs into the details of Private Equity Management Group CEO Danny...
Law Firms Liable for Defective Process Servers
Posted on April 15, 2009United Press International reports that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed criminal charges against American Legal Process of Long Island, a process service company that failed to provide notice of debt-related lawsuits to consumers. As a result, consumers...
Online Social Networking Tied to Lower GPA, Ohio Study Says
Posted on April 15, 2009It probably comes as no surprise, but Facebook use has a negative impact on academic performance, according to a recent study done by The Ohio State University, which comes courtesy of John Wallbillich of the Wired GC. According to the...
Northwestern Bridges the Gap for Unemployed Law Grads
Posted on April 15, 2009In a down economy, law schools are having a tough time helping students find employment. Ever resourceful, Northwestern Law School (which last year proposed a two-year JD program) has found a way to assist students and alumni while they're on...
'Bush Six' Lawyers Await Their Spanish Inquisition
Posted on April 14, 2009New York lawyer, law professor and American Lawyer contributor Scott Horton brings us an update on the Spanish case against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other former Bush Administration officials over their role in the so-called "torture memo"...
El Rushbo Opines on the Lawyers of Silicone Valley
Posted on April 14, 2009It's not that we avoid the purely scandalous stories here at Legal Blog Watch, but the dictates of good taste and editorial relevance sometimes keep us from mentioning certain stories about lawyers out there in the vastness of the Internet....
Blawg Review #207 -- All the News That Fits
Posted on April 13, 2009Perhaps if today's traditional newspapers took a virtual page from Jordan Furlong at Law 21, they wouldn't find themselves in such a sorry state. Furlong's Blawg Review #207 is structured to resemble your local newspaper, complete with sections like News,...
Patent Application Filings Decline, but Why?
Posted on April 13, 2009Isn't innovation supposed to be recession-proof? Apparently not, at least if the number of patent filings for fiscal year 2009 is any indication. According to Dennis Crouch at Patently-O, original utility application patent filings have slowed in 2009...
What Would You Do With $80,000?
Posted on April 13, 2009What would you do if your law firm handed you $80,000 and said that you could do whatever you wanted for the year? Would you turn down the cash and stay put at your law firm job, earning triple that...
Juries Threatened by Sinking Economy
Posted on April 13, 2009The economy is making it harder for the courts to find willing jurors, reports the Connecticut Law Tribune. Increasingly, prospective jurors are expressing concern that taking too much time off from work for jury duty might mean losing their jobs....
Disbarred for Yelling at Law Clerk
Posted on April 10, 2009Be kind to a judge's law clerk. That is the moral of a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision this week upholding the one-year disbarment from federal court of a lawyer who did not take kindly to the law...
Bernanke to Speak at BC Law Graduation
Posted on April 10, 2009One thing for sure about this year's commencement speaker at Boston College Law School: He is sure to be far less controversial than last year's. The BC Law school blog Eagleionline is reporting that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke...
Was Life at BigLaw Just One Big Waste?
Posted on April 09, 2009In an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, controversial author-turned-lawyer Elizbeth Wurtzel (you read that correctly, she gained fame as an author and then became a corporate lawyer) ruminates on whether time spent working at BigLaw was really just...
BigLaw Salaries Likely to Shrink, But No One Wants to Make the First Cut
Posted on April 09, 2009With layoffs on the rise, cutting associate salaries seems like a no-brainer. But as The Legal Intelligencer reports, we haven't seen mass salary cuts yet primarily because no one wants to be first. Though some firm leaders disagreed with the...
Recession Increases Bartering
Posted on April 09, 2009Bartering is making a comeback during the recession, reports The Washington Times. These days, traffic is up on Craigslist due in part to service providers willing to make a deal. For example, unemployed sales representative Rachelle Dixon helped a salon...
Technology Outpaces Reasons to Keep PACER a Fee-Based Service
Posted on April 09, 2009My colleague Bob Ambrogi has posted several times on open government advocate Carl Malamud's efforts to liberate all court documents from their password-protected chains. But how much progress are Malamud and others making toward the goal of free, open access?...
No New Trial for Juror's Tweets
Posted on April 08, 2009Remember the Twitter-loving juror who boastfully tweeted to the world at large that he and his fellow panel members has just given away $12 million? As we wrote here last month, the defendant whose pocketbook was hit in that Arkansas...
Big Business Is Dumping BigLaw
Posted on April 08, 2009After writing here Monday about Richard Susskind's predictions for the future of legal services and the importance that multisourcing will come to play, I heard from Bloomberg legal reporter Cynthia Cotts, who wrote a story this week that is right...
Is Charles Nesson Brilliant or Insane?
Posted on April 08, 2009Just last week, I happened to be talking to someone who knows Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and asked him his impression. The person described him as "brilliant," then adding after a moment, "and eccentric." It is safe to conclude...
In Other News, Jesus Draws a Hung Jury
Posted on April 08, 2009Some short takes from around the legal blogosphere: Tex Parte Blog notes the new book, "Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment." Author Mark Osler, a Baylor University law professor, says he was inspired to...
DOJ Lawyers Need Training on Rules of Evidence
Posted on April 07, 2009Send those DOJ lawyers back to law school for training on rules of evidence and Crim Law 101! According to The BLT, that was Judge Emmet Sullivan's message to government prosecutors during today's hearing on the government's motion to dismiss...
Calif. Court Rules What's MySpace Is Yours
Posted on April 07, 2009Are comments posted on a MySpace or Facebook page considered public information, freely available for publication? That's the question that a California state appeals court recently decided in a case involving a suit by a UC Berkeley student against a...
Building a Better Legal Profession, but for Whom?
Posted on April 07, 2009Nearly two years ago to the day, the law student group Building a Better Legal Profession came on the scene, intent on using its collective bargaining power and impressive top-tier law school credentials to force law firms to sign on...
Should Use of Open Wi-Fi Be Criminalized?
Posted on April 07, 2009Let's say you're out of town on a business trip and you need to check e-mail. So you fire up your laptop in search of a connection and go online. Though you may not realize it, you may just have...
The Top GCs, Here and Abroad
Posted on April 06, 2009The National Law Journal is out with its first-ever Profiles in Power, its listing of the 20 most influential general counsel in America. And in the same week that the NLJ released its list, the International Law Office announced the...
Blawg Review Toasts the Scottish
Posted on April 06, 2009No doubt you are all busy with your bagpipes and kilts for Tartan Week, a celebration of Scottish heritage by its transplants here in the United States. Joining in the festivities is Blawg Review, which has recruited lawyer and Scottish...
Techshow Feast and Famine
Posted on April 06, 2009I wrote in a separate post today to praise Richard Susskind's keynote address at ABA Techshow last week. I was not the only Law.com blogger who was at the show. My colleague in writing this blog, Carolyn Elefant, was there,...
Richard Susskind on the End of Lawyers
Posted on April 06, 2009I spent the tail end of last week at ABA Techshow in Chicago. It was a good conference in many ways. But the highlight for me was the keynote address delivered Thursday by Richard Susskind, the legal technology consultant, adviser,...
One Last Appointment With the Dictaphone Doctor
Posted on April 03, 2009Here at Legal Blog Watch we like to mark the passing into obscurity of certain trappings and technologies of the lawyer's life (for better or worse, there are always a few tradition-bound codgers who refuse to let things become completely...
Conference Watch Part 3: LMA in Maryland, M&A in New Orleans
Posted on April 02, 2009We've already talked about two legal conferences going on this week, but two more shows are taking place right now. (Is it always this busy in April or did all the conference organizers just figure lawyers didn't have anything better...
Conference Watch Part 2: ABA Tweetshow
Posted on April 02, 2009D.C. isn't the only town with a lawyer party tonight. ABA Techshow 2009 kicked off over in Chicago today. The three-day conference began with a keynote by legal IT expert Richard Susskind, who is, well, kind of a big deal....
Conference Watch Part 1: The News From NALP
Posted on April 02, 2009NALP -- the nonprofit formerly known as the National Association for Legal Placement -- is holding its Annual Education Conference in D.C. this week, and as we near the end of day two the reports so far are more or...
Martindale-Hubbell Wants You to Get Connected
Posted on April 01, 2009This week, venerable Martindale-Hubbell steps into the online social networking fray with Martindale-Hubbell Connected. M-H Connected joins an already saturated field, including big players like the ABA , with its site Legally Minded. My colleague Bob Ambrogi reviewed the ABA's...
April Fools' -- Not a Great Day for Serious Blogging
Posted on April 01, 2009As you know, my colleague Bob Ambrogi and I alternate days for posting here at Legal Blog Watch. So I was dismayed to see that once again, I'd drawn April 1, or April Fools' Day. Let's just say it's a...
Like 'Craigslist for Lawyers'
Posted on April 01, 2009The American Lawyer interviews Laurel Edgeworth, a lawyer and creator of a new Web site that's bound to be a hit with recently unemployed lawyers as well as new grads who can't find jobs: Law Clerk Connection. Working as a...
Department of Justice Changes Its Tune on D.C. Voting Rights
Posted on April 01, 2009U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top lawyer, overruled the opinions of his own lawyers within the Office of Legal Counsel on the question of the constitutionality of giving the District of Columbia voting rights in the House of...
Twitter Doesn't Stack Up for Law Librarians
Posted on March 31, 2009The folks at Law Librarian Blog wondered whether law librarians use Twitter. So they took a poll. The outcome: Most law librarians do not use Twitter for library-related purposes and have no plans to tweet anytime soon. The admittedly unscientific...
Lawyer Sues Playboy for Harassment
Posted on March 31, 2009A Chicago divorce lawyer who put up billboards around Chicago showing her in skimpy black lingerie and who then posed nude and wrote a legal advice column for Playboy is now suing Playboy for sexual harassment. Corri D. Fetman yesterday...
Love in the Age of Legal Blogs
Posted on March 31, 2009Given that this is Legal Blog Watch, we tend to watch what is happening out there in the world of legal blogs. We've seen blawgers come, blawgers go, blawgers rise in popularity and blawgers fall in popularity. But here is...
Corporate Scorecard 2009: Annus Horribilis
Posted on March 31, 2009For anyone who lived through 2008, no Latin training is required to understand the import of the phrase annus horribilis. That is the phrase used by the editors of The American Lawyer to describe the state of corporate law practice...
Another Social Media Site for the Legal Community
Posted on March 30, 2009Ho hum. Another day, another social media site for the legal community. This time, reports The Shark, it's Advanced Advocates, which bills itself as the first "worldwide collaborative platform for law students." Translated into current parlance, that's "Facebook for law...
Blawg Review #205 at Declarations and Exclusions
Posted on March 30, 2009This week, Blawg Review #205 comes to Declarations and Exclusions, and it's a multimedia extravaganza featuring English composer Gustav Holt's orchestral suite, "The Planets," as both a theme and background music. Anne Reed of Deliberations is included in the Venus...
Lawyers Flocking to Chinese Drywall Cases
Posted on March 30, 2009Another week, another new practice area. This time, the focus of attention is Chinese drywall, a possibly defective drywall product installed in houses that is spawning claims nationwide, reports Bradenton Herald.com. (See previous reports here and here...
Expert Witness in Poker Case Takes No Chances
Posted on March 30, 2009Over the past few months, courts have been addressing the question of whether games like poker or Texas Hold 'Em depend on luck or skill. The question is important because, typically, state gambling laws outlaw games based entirely on chance...
Lawyers, Dominatrix Whip Up Mortgage Scam
Posted on March 27, 2009Three Long Island lawyers stand accused of teaming up with a Manhattan dominatrix and a Manhattan fetish club to run a $50 million mortgage scam. Prosecutors allege the lawyers were part of a scheme that took out mortgages on more...
New to the Blawgosphere: Incisive's CEO
Posted on March 27, 2009When William L. Pollak, CEO of legal media giant Incisive Media's operations in North America, launched Bill's blog, his thought was that it would be read only by the company's employees. But he soon realized, as he wrote there recently,...
An Appellate Victory for Working Moms
Posted on March 27, 2009By all accounts, Laurie Chadwick had been a stellar employee in the Maine office of insurance company Wellpoint Inc. Hired in 1997, she was promoted in 1999 to the position of recovery specialist II with responsibility for pursuing overpayment claims...
First Amendment Protects Lawyer Who Asked to Tickle Kids
Posted on March 27, 2009On at least four occasions in 2008, Charles R. Douglas, a lawyer in Glen Carbon, Ill., allegedly approached parents in a local park and asked if he could tickle their kids. In one case, he asked a mother if she...
Law Student Organizing Loan Forgiveness Drive
Posted on March 26, 2009Student loan forgiveness is a familiar concept for lawyers. As I've written before, many law schools and even Congress have devised loan forgiveness programs to ease the debt burden for graduates working in low paying public interest or government jobs...
Talk About Turnover
Posted on March 26, 2009Many of us have grown immune to the daily layoff announcements. Still, we tend to forget that even before the economy tanked, law firms fired associates, many times for merit-based reasons rather than financial necessity. This advice column from The....
Law Suit Against Data Storage Company
Posted on March 26, 2009As data storage and security moves online, expect to see more lawsuits like this one, by online storage service provider Carbonite, against a storage vendor. Carbonite contends that the vendor's $3 million hardware package did not perform as specified, causing...
Going Green to Make More Green
Posted on March 26, 2009For lawyers seeking to establish or retain an edge in a green-building practice, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) makes the perfect accessory by demonstrating to clients a deep understanding of green building best practices and principles established by...
'Flipping the Bird' is Protected Speech
Posted on March 25, 2009A Pittsburgh motorist was exercising his constitutional right of free speech when he gave the finger to a police officer and another driver during an argument over a parking space. U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone ruled this week that...
WIPO Rules in Fight over 'Virtual Sex'
Posted on March 25, 2009It was the battle of the Internet porn sites at the World Intellectual Property Organization as two California companies sparred for rights to the domain name "virtualsex.com." In one corner was the company that claimed to have coined the term...
From Law School to Solo: Is it Criminal?
Posted on March 25, 2009An interesting discussion is going on among the blogosphere's criminal defense bar. The question under debate is whether someone straight out of law school should go directly into a solo criminal defense practice. New York criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield...
Privilege Withstands Client's Threats to Judge
Posted on March 25, 2009Here is a scenario that sounds like a law school exam question. It was after midnight when the client began to leave a series of six messages on the lawyer's answering machine. In the first, the client said that he...
Aren't Students Doing Cost-Benefit Analyses of Law School?
Posted on March 24, 2009Even before the economy took a turn for the worse, many law students had trouble finding employment after graduation. Recall, for example, Kirsten Wolf, the Boston University Law School grad who couldn't find a job and made it her one-woman...
Another Lucrative Practice Area: Britney Spears
Posted on March 24, 2009So, maybe your firm hasn't gotten a piece the Bernie Madoff work, which has spawned a practice area unto itself. No worries, there's always Britney Spears. Today's Los Angeles Times carries a story devoted to Spears' extensive legal team, showing...
Electronic Discovery and Facebook
Posted on March 24, 2009In responding to discovery requests, must clients disclose information posted on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other similar social media sites, even where they've blocked their accounts from public access? Absolutely, says Canadian decision Leduc v. Roman, 2009 CanLII 6838 (ON...
So Much for the End of the Billable Hour
Posted on March 24, 2009So much for the death of the billable hour. When it comes to Madoff-related litigation, lawyers across the pond are still commanding the $1,000+/hour billable rates that I'd thought were so two years ago. According to Bloomberg, clients are paying...
The Wolf Block Postmortem
Posted on March 24, 2009Looks like it's déjà vu all over again with yesterday's collapse of mid-size Philadelphia-based law firm Wolf Block. As with last year's demise of firms like Thacher Profitt, Thelen and Heller Ehrman, Wolf Block's failure, as described by The Legal...
Blawg Review Goes Above the Law
Posted on March 23, 2009What's next? Will Page Six take over Washington Week? So I wondered when I saw that the "legal tabloid" blog Above the Law had taken on responsibility for this week's Blawg Review. It was to be an installment of Blawg...
U.S. Sides with RIAA in Filesharing Case
Posted on March 23, 2009Purchase a song online and it will cost you, at most, 99 cents. Download the song via filesharing and it can cost you anywhere from $750 to $30,000. That is the range of statutory damages allowed under federal law for...
Torture in Our Nation's Prisons
Posted on March 23, 2009Setting aside Jack Bauer, the United States does not engage in torture, right? Just last night on "60 Minutes," President Obama reaffirmed that. "I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is...
U.K. Legal Publisher Shutters Journal, Awards
Posted on March 23, 2009The U.K. legal publisher Legalease Ltd. will no longer hand out annual awards in legal technology and legal marketing and will discontinue its quarterly magazine Legal Technology Journal and the magazine's Legal Technology Update e-mail alert. A notice on the...
Friday Law Link Roundup
Posted on March 20, 2009-- What's the worst part of being the other B. Madoff? It's not just the lawyer ads that pop up on Google under the headline "Madoff Ponzi Victim?" when you do a Google search for Madoff Productions, owned by Ben...
Skadden Lawyers Jump on the Start-Up Law Firm Bandwagon
Posted on March 20, 2009Two weeks back, my colleague Bob Ambrogi wrote that "solo is the new SoHo,"arguing that solo practice is fast becoming a top career option for laid-off lawyers. It seems that two Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom litigators, Andrew Sandler...
Collection Lawsuits on the Rise
Posted on March 20, 2009With the economy down, lawsuits against collection agencies in the Northern District of Alabama almost quadrupled, reports The Birmingham News. This past year, 158 lawsuits were filed against collection agencies and credit bureaus for violations of the Fair Debt Collection...
An Old-School Approach to Social Networking
Posted on March 19, 2009If you are an old-school lawyer who remains undecided about whether to belly up to social networking, then Evan Schaeffer may have just the networking recipe you've been waiting for. He was reluctant himself to try yet another network, he...
Wikipedian Justice in India's Courts
Posted on March 19, 2009Intrigued by an article in The New York Times about the increasing citation of Wikipedia by judges in the United States, Raghav Sharma wondered whether judges in India were also increasing their use of this collaboratively edited encyclopedia. Sharma, a...
Good News for Court-Appointed Lawyers
Posted on March 19, 2009Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court's 1963 decision holding that states have a constitutional obligation to provide court-appointed lawyers for indigent criminal defendants. "In our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into...
Divorce as a Networking Opportunity
Posted on March 19, 2009With social networking all the rage, the latest such site to launch seeks to unite the worldwide community of spurned spouses. Divorce Network launched yesterday as a social networking platform for anyone affected by, contemplating or going through a divorce...
BigLaw Partners Duke It Out Over the Billable Hour
Posted on March 18, 2009Back in January Cravath Swaine & Moore head partner Evan Chesler fired the legal profession's equivalent of the shot heard round the world when he called for the end of the billable hour. Now, U.K.-based publication The Lawyer is reporting...
Should Empathy Be a Standard for Judging a Judge?
Posted on March 18, 2009When it comes to evaluating nominees to the federal bench -- particularly to appellate courts and the Supreme Court -- presidents typically focus on the candidates' legal skills and intellectual acumen. And indeed, the public has come to expect stellar...
Some Lawyers Enjoying Unemployment
Posted on March 18, 2009While some newly unemployed lawyers are frantically scrambling to find any job, even if it means working for free, others are using their newfound free time and generous severance pay to party the night away, according to Charlotte, N.C.-based radio....
Some Firms Still Finding an Upside in the Downturn
Posted on March 18, 2009Over at the Law Marketing Blog, Larry Bodine writes that in spite of the economic downturn, some firms are still doing quite well, thank you very much. But how are they doing it? For that, Bodine turns to an analysis...
Twittering on the Brink of Mistrial
Posted on March 17, 2009We knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time before a juror would get caught tweeting. But twice in the same week? First came the news, reported yesterday on Law.com (via AP), that a defendant hit with...
In Search of Sunshine in Government
Posted on March 17, 2009It is Sunshine Week, a national initiative focused on the importance of open government and freedom of information. Sunshine Week is led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and its participants include the news media, civic groups, libraries, schools...
Former Law Dean is Headed to Paradise
Posted on March 17, 2009David Hall, the former dean of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston and still a professor of law there, is on his way to Paradise -- America's Paradise, that is, aka the U.S. Virgin Islands. On Saturday, the board...
Thoughts on NLJ/Legal Times Merger
Posted on March 17, 2009Several blogs commented yesterday on Incisive Media's announcement that it will merge The National Law Journal and Legal Times. Having served a stint as the NLJ's editor-in-chief, I was on the fence about expressing my opinion about the merger. However,...
Is the President Powerless to Stop AIG Bonus Payouts?
Posted on March 16, 2009Yesterday The New York Times reported that AIG, which received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money, planned to pay $165 million in bonuses to executives who worked in the AIG business unit responsible for the company's financial collapse...
Lawyers Can't Even Find Work for Free
Posted on March 16, 2009Pity poor Jeremy Dyme, a former fourth-year law firm associate. Dyme's New York firm shut its doors at the end of 2008 and he's not been able to find a job since -- even though he's ready, willing and able...
Business School Comes Under Criticism
Posted on March 16, 2009Looks like law schools aren't the only institutions of higher education to come under criticism for failing to prepare lawyers for the real world. Now, via Wired GC, comes a link to this New York Times piece that discusses whether...
Do We Pay Partners Less Than Associates? Dewey Does
Posted on March 16, 2009Even as associate layoffs at top law firms have become a near-daily occurrence, most partners have avoided the fate of their underlings. But how much longer can partners insulate themselves from the impacts of the economic downturn? Not much longer...
The First Amendment's Fair Weather Friends
Posted on March 13, 2009Kristen Juras, the University of Montana law professor who is trying to shut down a student-written sex column (see here) would do well to read an opinion piece published this week by one of the nation's preeminent First Amendment lawyers,...
Law Prof Battles Student Sex Column
Posted on March 13, 2009Just a few days ago, I was praising the University of Montana for its innovative Grace Case Project teaming law and journalism students to cover the conspiracy prosecution of W.R. Grace & Co. Now from the same school comes a...
Abolish IP Law, Save the Economy
Posted on March 13, 2009Two economists at Washington University in St. Louis say they know how to revive the economy -- and it doesn't involve a single bailout. Their proposal is to abolish patent and copyright law. These laws serve only to discourage innovation...
The Madoff Roundup
Posted on March 12, 2009Today's legal news was dominated by Bernie Madoff's entry of a guilty plea to eleven charges -- including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and making a false filing to the SEC -- all tied to his alleged...
Judge Suspended for Getting Discount Divorce in Exchange for Referrals
Posted on March 12, 2009A Minnesota judge will be benched without pay for six months for steering business to a divorce lawyer who represented the judge in his divorce proceeding and gave him a $63,503 discount off of his $108,876 bill, reports the Star...
Is It Time to Change the LSAT?
Posted on March 12, 2009Few lawyers who've taken the LSAT can identify any connection between the exam's largely theoretical questions and the actual practice of law. So it's no surprise that two professors at the University of California agree that the LSAT is a...
Federal Judge Chastens Harvard Law Prof
Posted on March 11, 2009Legal advocacy and legal education may not always be the best of bedfellows, it turns out. A Harvard law professor's efforts to combine the two while defending a file-sharing case earned him an admonishment this week from a federal judge...
Lawyer Loses Bid to Get Patent on Marketing
Posted on March 11, 2009California lawyer Scott C. Harris hoped to get the patent on marketing. But his hopes were dashed this week when the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that a marketing business is not the sort of subject matter...
Defenses Flop, but at Least They Were Creative
Posted on March 11, 2009One has to hand it to Antonio Cruzado Jr. -- or at least to his lawyer -- for being creative in his defense. Sure, he sped off in the car he'd just stolen with one Christopher Adams clinging to the...
Bruce MacEwen Explains the 'Great De-Leveraging'
Posted on March 10, 2009Bruce MacEwen's blog, Adam Smith, Esq., carries a masterpiece this week. "The Great De-Leveraging" explores whether leverage (the ratio of associates to partners) is still part of a sensible business model for law firms. It turns out the answer isn't...
Lawyers Break CrackBerry Addiction With iPhones
Posted on March 10, 2009Forget the CrackBerry addiction -- that's so late-'90s. Increasingly, lawyers are jumping ship from BlackBerrys to iPhones, reports PC World. According to the article:The iPhone's big screen, slick interface and easy-to-use touchpad makes it an enticing device...
Harrison Bergeron, Esq.
Posted on March 10, 2009Is the average intelligence of lawyers on the decline? In the U.K., The Lawyer reports on a study carried out by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at the University of Bristol that suggests lawyers have moved closer to...
Is Offshoring Document Review a Duty When It's the Cheapest Option?
Posted on March 10, 2009When offshoring document review is the cheapest option, are law firms ethically obligated to outsource the work, or at the very least inform clients of its existence? That's the question Mark Ross ponders in this column at Immigration Daily. Ross...
Heroic Lawyer of the Day
Posted on March 09, 2009Lawyers are often willing to give a hand to colleagues in need, but give a kidney? And to a lawyer who is a frequent courtroom adversary? That is exactly what Daingerfield, Texas, plaintiffs' lawyer Keith Langston did after he learned...
Another Law School, Another Trial Blog
Posted on March 09, 2009In another post today, I wrote about the University of Montana blog where law and journalism students are collaborating to cover the criminal trial against W.R. Grace. A somewhat similar effort gets underway today when students from the University of...
Has the Time Come to Tweak the CDA?
Posted on March 09, 2009One major difference between publishing online and publishing in print is that the online publisher is not legally responsible for information posted by others. For this shield from liability, publishers of blogs, online newspapers and other Web sites can thank...
Law, Journalism Students Team Up to Cover Trial
Posted on March 09, 2009Law, meet journalism. Journalism, meet law. The Grace Case Project is an innovative joint undertaking of the schools of law and journalism at the University of Montana. Students from both schools have teamed up to blog and tweet the federal...
Simpson Thacher's Loss Leader Pays Off
Posted on March 06, 2009Back in October, I posted about how Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, the law firm selected in a competitive solicitation to advise the Treasury Department on the $700 billion bailout plan after four of six firms declined to participate, had capped...
How Lawyers Are Using Social Media
Posted on March 06, 2009There's an interesting article in Chicago Lawyer describing the many ways that lawyers are using Web 2.0 applications and social media.For example, Tom Skallas, a 35-year-old partner at Holland & Knight, uses both LinkedIn and Facebook to network with individuals...
Firm Sued for Harrassment by Associate Claims She Never Worked There
Posted on March 06, 2009These days, a lawsuit by a former associate for discrimination or wrongful discharge against law firm no longer carries the same stigma it once did. Such stories seem to be increasingly common, like the suit by a black staff attorney...
Law Firm Billing Goes Back to the Future?
Posted on March 06, 2009Now that law firm layoffs are accelerating (hitting a total of 6,600 since January 2008), everyone's talking about the need for big change. In the past few months, even Cravath, Swaine & Moore head partner Evan Chesler has taken up...
Defense Lawyer Threatens Ethics Complaint Against Blogger Who Helped Her Client
Posted on March 04, 2009Biglaw Money Doesn't Go as Far as You'd Think
Posted on February 26, 2009Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein makes some interesting remarks about the impact of Obama's proposed tax increases on professionals in high-cost areas like New York City. Bernstein does the math with regard to some of his friends who,...
Got Advice for a Laid-Off Lawyer?
Posted on February 26, 2009Today's WSJ Law Blog features laid-off lawyer Dan Zoloth Dorfman, who's part of a new WSJ blog project entitled Laid Off and Looking, which follows out-of-work professionals as they look for new jobs. Dorfman, who is 60 years old, came...
Yolanda Young Airs Her Grievances in Court
Posted on February 26, 2009Remember Yolanda Young (whom we've previously written about here and here), the former Covington & Burling staff attorney who exposed what she called the "Jim Crow"-like practices of her former employer in this Huffington Post story? Now, The American Lawyer...
Are Ethics Rules or E-Shaming Deterring Distasteful Lawyer Ads?
Posted on February 26, 2009New York personal injury attorney Eric Turkewitz has concluded that ethics rules have been effective in "putting the brakes" on shameless online solicitation ads, which crop up as quickly as weeds in the wake of a mass disaster. While Turkewitz's...
Three More Legal Blogs Close Down
Posted on February 25, 2009It has seemed like a morbid week for followers of legal blogs. First came last week's post about legal bloggers throwing in the virtual towel after blogging left them feeling frustrated and depressed. Then came the news that the Wall...
Bar Group Apologizes for Past Racism
Posted on February 25, 2009During a ceremony in a Miami courthouse yesterday, lawyers formally apologized for their forbears' racism. At the Dade County Courthouse, the Dade County Bar Association hung a commemorative plaque over a once-segregated water fountain as its way of acknowledging and...
Lawyers Advance in Bids for Harvard Board
Posted on February 25, 2009"I'm pleased to announce that I have been nominated as a petition candidate for the 2009 Harvard Board of Overseers election," civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate said this week in an e-mail to his supporters. As we discussed here...
Twittering in Court, Twittering at School
Posted on February 25, 2009It may be a federal court first: A judge in Wichita, Kan., will let a newspaper reporter Twitter the trial of six accused gang members. Ron Sylvester, the Wichita Eagle reporter who we wrote about last May for his Twitter...
Online Divorce, Canadian Style
Posted on February 24, 2009I've posted previously about budget legal services for divorces, such as Divorce Deli, a restaurant-themed Web site for online divorce, and the 60 Minute Divorce, where lawyers draft and file divorce papers for a low rate while the soon-to-be-exes enjoy...
Are Female Lawyers at Risk in a Recession?
Posted on February 24, 2009Over at The Glass Hammer, Anna Collins asks whether female lawyers are at risk during a recession. They are -- as much or more than lawyers in general these days. But for some at least, that risk is counter-balanced by...
Does Failure to Advise on Deportation Risks Violate 6th Amendment?
Posted on February 24, 2009We'd probably all agree that a lawyer who erroneously tells his client that accepting a guilty plea won't subject him to deportation (when it fact it would) is careless -- such counsel is negligent or even unethical when a lawyer...
Signs of These Economic Times: A Roundup
Posted on February 24, 2009Here's a quick roundup of some of the signs of these economic times for lawyers: -- Homeowners' association dues are drying up as more homes go into foreclosure, according to a survey by Ft. Lauderdale law firm Becker & Poliakoff....
Lawyer's Book Leaves Jurors in Doubt
Posted on February 23, 2009A book by a former lawyer and occasional blogger has three jurors doubting their 1993 conviction of a man in connection with a 1991 bombing that killed one Boston police officer and maimed another. A report today in The Boston...
Levy's Last Word on BlockShopper Case
Posted on February 23, 2009We noted here earlier this month the settlement of the Goliath versus David trademark lawsuit in which international law firm Jones Day sued the small, locally focused real estate Web site BlockShopper.com. Earlier, in one of our first posts about...
Blawg Review Writes Its Own Obit
Posted on February 23, 2009Is it the beginning of the end for the legal blog? First, I wrote here last week about legal bloggers throwing in the virtual towel, their blogging labors having left them frustrated and depressed. Then came the news that the...
Wall Street Journal Cuts Law Blog Writer
Posted on February 23, 2009A typical day for me goes something like this: Wake up. Check the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Brush my teeth. Check the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Make coffee. Check the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Shower. Check the...
Global Alliance Pursues Madoff
Posted on February 20, 2009Unique problems demand unique solutions. There's no doubt that Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme was an unprecedented crime, both in terms of the dollar amount involved and the enormous scope -- the fraud impacted victims all over the world.So...
Hotel Sues Law Firm Over Canceled Retreat
Posted on February 20, 2009Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld wasn't able to give its partners a fancy retreat this year, so it's giving them something else instead: a lesson in first year contract law. As the The Am Law Daily reports, Akin Gump...
Another Social Network for Lawyers: MyLawNetwork.com
Posted on February 20, 2009Social networking sites for lawyers continue to proliferate. In 2008, we saw the emergence of Legal OnRamp, described as a collaborative site for in-house counsel and law firms. Then there was the recent launch of the American Bar Association's Legally...
Blawger's Blast Heard Around the (Toy) World
Posted on February 19, 2009No one would ever accuse Walter Olson of mincing words at his blog Overlawyered. But his particularly damning words yesterday for a New York Times editorial about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act were music to the ears of the...
When Law Schools Ignore Naughty Profs
Posted on February 19, 2009"Do you know a faculty member who propositions students?" asks Bridget J. Crawford, a Pace Law School professor, at Feminist Law Professors blog. "If you?ve spent any time in academia, my guess is that the answer is 'Yes.' Does that...
Layoff Lessons from One Who's Been There
Posted on February 19, 2009History has a way of repeating itself. As we suffer our way through the current recession, we forget that we've been through down times before and survived. Perhaps the recession of 1990 and 1991 was less dramatic than the current...
When Blawgers Throw in the Towel
Posted on February 19, 2009Even blawgers get writer's block. Any lawyer who writes a blog will tell you that there are days when drafting the simplest post seems like an Olympian feat. Some blogs run hot and cold. The author will post consistently, even...
Should Race Matter in Court Appointments?
Posted on February 18, 2009When a court appoints lawyers to represent indigent defendants, should it take race into account? Ohio solo practitioner Lafe Tolliver says yes, in this provocative column in The Toledo Journal.Tolliver explains that the county spends "millions of public taxpayer dollars"...
Mediation Comes to Prime Time
Posted on February 18, 2009Increasingly, lawyers are becoming familiar with the benefits of adding online video to a Web site. But now mediators are following suit as well. As Diane Levin points out at Mediation Channel, mediators are now using video to advertise their...
Law Review Subscriptions on the Decline
Posted on February 18, 2009Not surprisingly, law review subscriptions are on the decline, reports Joe Hodnicki, at The Law Librarian Blog -- another casualty of technology, along with the typewriter, bike messengers and law libraries. As discussed in "Law Review Circulation," a recent paper...
Facebook Changes Terms of Service, Then Changes Back
Posted on February 18, 2009Today's decision by Facebook to rescind changes to its terms of service, which would have permitted Facebook to use and retain user content for its own purposes even after users left the site, proves that even widely popular and successful...
Shorty Awards Honor Lawyers on Twitter
Posted on February 17, 2009It was not exactly a landslide, but lawyer, blogger and Twitter-er Nicole Black earned first place in the law category of the Shorty Awards, which honor the best producers of content on the microblogging site Twitter. Quite an achievement, when...
ABA Delegates' Meeting Goes Digital
Posted on February 17, 2009As the American Bar Association wrapped up its midyear meeting, its House of Delegates, its policy-making body, met into the late afternoon yesterday debating a host of critical legal issues. Even though the meeting was in my home base of...
Marry a Lawyer? Are You Crazy?
Posted on February 17, 2009Valentine's Day has come and gone, but the question psychologist Fiona Travis raises is a perpetual one: Would someone have to be crazy to marry a lawyer? "It's not that lawyers lack relationship-building skills," she writes in a post at...
A Blawg Review of Superlatives
Posted on February 17, 2009Is Blawg Review #199 the best Blawg Review ever? Well, the editor of Blawg Review says it is the best crime Blawg Review ever. He also says it is a perfect example of how to write a Blawg Review. "The...
Friday the 13th Comes a Day Early for Law Firms
Posted on February 13, 2009Don't call Bruce MacEwen, of the Adam Smith, Esq. blog, a triskaidekaphobic. As MacEwen argues, yesterday's spate of law firm layoffs (nearly 800 associates and staff nationwide, according to The Recorder) has nothing to do with bad luck, it's just...
Advice From Lawyer Lincoln
Posted on February 13, 2009A lawyer's time and advice are his stock in trade, said one of our nation's most famous lawyers, Abraham Lincoln. But in honor of President's Day, you can have the privilege of some of Lincoln's advice at no charge, courtesy...
Valentine's Day Roundup
Posted on February 13, 2009Everyone loves a love story, even lawyers. From around the blogosphere, here's a roundup of Valentine's Day-related stories:Partners in law and life: The idea of husband and wife attorneys working at the same firm is no longer unusual these days,...
Legal Podcast Roundup
Posted on February 12, 2009Legal Podcast Roundup Lawyer Denise Howell has a new installment out of her podcast, This Week in Law. Howell and her roundtable of legal commentators -- Ben Franske, Colette Vogele, Ernie Svenson, and Evan Brown -- discuss a range of...
Hard Times Ahead for Lawyers, Survey Says
Posted on February 12, 2009More than three-quarters of lawyers in Massachusetts believe they will be hard hit by the recession and that the legal field will remain rocky for some time to come. That is the conclusion of a survey published this week by...
The Seven Deadly Sins of Blawgers
Posted on February 12, 2009Legal bloggers are a sinful lot, judging by Blawg Review #198. This week's Blawg Review host, Jeremy J. Richey, author of The East Central Illinois Criminal law & DUI Weblog, looks out over the week's multitude of posts by legal...
Jones Day Settles With BlockShopper
Posted on February 12, 2009The Goliath versus David lawsuit in which international law firm Jones Day sued the small, locally focused real estate Web site BlockShopper.com, appears to have settled. BlockShopper co-founder Brian Timpone told Alison Grant, a reporter at The Plain Dealer, that...
Muzzled Lawyer Gets the Boot, Threatens Suit
Posted on February 11, 2009Deidre Dare, the provocatively named, Moscow-based U.S. lawyer who was muzzled for her writing about a fictional Moscow-based U.S. lawyer's adventures in the sack, has now herself been sacked. And she's not taking it lying down. Allen & Overy, the...
Attention Geeks: You Are Not Lawyers
Posted on February 11, 2009Apparently, there are enough geeks out there with misguided notions about the law that Paul Ohm thinks he ought to do something about it. Ohm, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, is launching a...
I Need Time to Find Myself (A New Moot Court Partner)
Posted on February 11, 2009Here it is just a few days before Valentine's Day, and all Boston College Law School 2L Meghan Meade is thinking about is how to dump a partner -- a moot court partner. But at least she wants the dumping...
Is 2011 the End of Law Firm Leverage?
Posted on February 10, 2009Over at The Am Law Daily, Paul Lippe of Legal OnRamp shares some interesting observations on the future of law practice, circa 2011. Although most experts predict that the recession will end by 2011, Lippe doesn't believe that law firms...
Japan to Crack Down on Foreign Lawyers
Posted on February 10, 2009As I posted a few months back, legal markets overseas are providing a refuge for associates to ride out the economic downturn in the United States. But for associates hoping to work in a law firm branch office in Japan,...
Oops: Law Firm Newsletter Discloses Details of Confidential Settlement
Posted on February 10, 2009Seems that people do read law firm newsletters after all, even the advertisements. According to the San Francisco legal newspaper The Recorder, Los Angeles-based Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges ran an ad in one of its business litigation newsletters...
Obama's Lawyer Picks Take Pay Cuts, Temporarily
Posted on February 10, 2009Many of the high-powered lawyers joining the Obama administration will be taking substantial pay cuts for the privilege of public service, reports the Washington Post. (See The American Lawyer's previous coverage here). But with expected salaries between $150,000 and $196,000,...
Brill's Plan to Save Journalism
Posted on February 09, 2009If not for Steve Brill, you might not be reading this post. Brill is the lawyer, journalist and entrepreneur who, in 1987, founded The American Lawyer magazine. That magazine and the company he built around it are now owned by...
Computer Worm Shuts Down Courts
Posted on February 09, 2009Municipal courts in Houston shut down operations Friday after the court's network systems were disabled by a suspected attack of the notorious Conficker worm. Court hearings were canceled and arrests for minor offenses were suspended as court and city officials...
Judges to Plead Guilty in $2.6 Million Scheme
Posted on February 09, 2009Two former presiding judges of the Luzerne County, Penn., Court of Common Pleas are scheduled to appear in federal court in Scranton this week to enter guilty pleas on charges that they took more than $2.6 million in kickbacks related...
Bards of Law II: Poetry in Theory
Posted on February 09, 2009Yehuda Berlinger has a singular obsession. He rewrites intellectual property law as verse. Berlinger is no stranger to readers of this blog. We told you about him way back in July 2006 when he first published the U.S. copyright code...
Bards of Law I: Poetry in Practice
Posted on February 09, 2009What is it about law that makes people ask, "What could be verse?" Lawyers, judges, litigants and legal scholars all are tempted at times to turn their legal prose into legal poetry. This week brings two examples. This post tells...
Law Firm Layoffs Are the New Attrition
Posted on February 06, 2009Remember the boom times a short three years ago, when a law firm's biggest problem was associate attrition? Back then, firms lost 78 percent of their associates by their fifth year of practice, with annual attrition rates of around 20...
Is Tweeting for Clients the Same as Solicitation?
Posted on February 06, 2009What's the difference between tweeting a prospective client and outright solicitation? I'm not entirely sure, but an encounter between a car accident victim and a lawyer on Twitter, described at Law Firm and Attorney SEO and Internet Marketing, came close...
Transforming CLE
Posted on February 06, 2009Over in Illinois, 587 attorneys have been removed from the state's "master roll" after failing to file the paperwork showing that they had completed the required 20 hours of continuing legal education (CLE) between July 2006 and 2008, reports the...
Late to Court, Lawyer Put in Jail
Posted on February 05, 2009An assistant attorney general in the U.S. Virgin Islands was arrested Monday and held overnight in jail for being 10 minutes late to court. On Tuesday morning, after the lawyer apologized, the judge who ordered his arrest released him from...
The Next New Thing in Law Student Blogs?
Posted on February 05, 2009At The Volokh Conspiracy last week, Orin Kerr wondered where all the law student bloggers had gone. "Back in the early days of law blogs, around 2002-04, law student blogs were a really important part of the blawgosphere," he wrote....
Profit Is the New Growth
Posted on February 05, 2009For the largest of the world's law firms, revenue has long been the barometer of success. Gross revenue is, in fact, the measure The American Lawyer applies to compile its annual listing of the Am Law 100. And by the...
The Last Word From LegalTech?
Posted on February 05, 2009Here is another chance to hear more about LegalTech New York directly from the show floor. Is it the last word on the show? No, and I'll tell you why below. Yesterday in this space, John Bringardner pointed out West's...
LTNY 2009: Dictation Software Roundup
Posted on February 04, 2009It may not be as big as other areas of technology at LegalTech, but companies selling dictation software made a solid showing at the trade show this year. Rees Morrison saw seven, and rounds up his thoughts here. As the...
LTNY 2009: Jeffrey Toobin at the Fios LegalTech Party
Posted on February 04, 2009LegalTech New York 2009 is now officially over, but in spite of the dire state of the economy, Tuesday night still saw the typical slate of conference parties. Many took place at the Hilton shortly after the sessions ended for...
LTNY 2009: Video Interviews and Predictions for the Future of Legal Technology
Posted on February 04, 2009Legal vendor West brought back its video interviews at LegalTech this year, providing a handful of reports from the show floor. Most of the interviews are with folks who fall somewhere under the West or Thomson Reuters corporate umbrella, but...
LTNY 2009: Ask EDD Vendors, What Can You Do for Me?
Posted on February 03, 2009After talking with a few e-discovery vendors at LegalTech this morning, the general consensus seems to be that while they all expect an uptick in litigation as a result of the financial crisis, it hasn't happened yet. So far, anecdotal...
LTNY 2009: Gadget Update
Posted on February 03, 2009LegalTech isn't the most gadget-focused tech conferences out there, specializing as it does in tools for practicing law -- whether that means electronic discovery services, time and billing software or how lawyers can use Twitter. Sure, every tech-savvy lawyer has...
LTNY 2009: Conference Reports From Legal Bloggers
Posted on February 03, 2009Bloggers were given free passes to attend LegalTech this year, and prime space with electrical outlets in the front row of every conference session. While there were a few problems with WiFi access, several legal bloggers have managed to post...
LTNY 2009: Blawg Review #197
Posted on February 02, 2009This presentation of Blawg Review is brought to you from LegalTech New York, where the anonymous editor of Blawg Review is attending in person along with many other tweeps and blawging lawyers who are arriving in droves in response to...
LTNY 2009: Early Reports Say Show Is Packed, in Spite of Economy
Posted on February 02, 2009The first day of LegalTech New York is typically the most hectic, as vendors scramble to finish setting up their booths in the exhibition halls, visitors wait in line to check in and get their badges and the conference tracks...
LTNY 2009: Twitter Topples Electronic Discovery
Posted on February 02, 2009It's official: Twitter has de-throned "electronic discovery" as the most buzzworthy term at LegalTech. While the ratio of EDD vendors at the show is still extremely high, much of the talk surrounding the show revolves around Twitter and its uses...
LegalTech New York 2009 Coverage on Legal Blog Watch
Posted on January 30, 2009A quick programming note: We'll be interrupting Legal Blog Watch's regularly scheduled posts Feb. 2, 3 and 4 to present our blogosphere (and this year, Twitter too) coverage of LegalTech New York 2009, Incisive Media's annual law technology blowout. As...
Bankruptcy Lawyer Advertising Spike Follows CLE Mad Dash
Posted on January 30, 2009Total Attorneys Inc., a Chicago-based company that provides services like office management and business development for solo and small firm lawyers, runs a number of practice-specific blogs -- from lemon law to DUI. The sites, which are sponsored by law...
'Economic Hell' and the Billable Hour
Posted on January 30, 2009Big firm economic hell is upon us, do not pass purgatory, do not collect $200. According to legal marketer Larry Bodine: Two leading advisors to major law firms predicted a declining demand for legal services, a 15% drop in net...
New York Lawyers in Trouble
Posted on January 29, 2009This week's news brings two stories of New York lawyers in big trouble. First, the New York Times reports on the indictment of New York lawyer Steven Rondos, for stealing over $1 million from the disabled clients for whom he...
Obama Signs Ledbetter Legislation
Posted on January 29, 2009When Lilly Ledbetter tried to file a claim for unequal pay against her employer after 19 years on the job, the Supreme Court ruled against her her, holding that her claim fell outside the 180-day statute of limitations. While Ledbetter...
Can Blogs Survive Twitter?
Posted on January 29, 2009Blogging is a conversation, Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog is fond of saying. But how can you have a conversation if others can't join in through comments? Recently, the editors of popular legal blogs The Volokh Conspiracy and Above the Law...
California Wants Malpractice Coverage for All, Except Heller
Posted on January 29, 2009For some time, law practice expert Ed Poll has been blogging about the California Bar's efforts to force lawyers to procure malpractice insurance, most recently by requiring lawyers to disclose to clients their lack of malpractice insurance. Poll's primary objection...
To Tweet or Not To Tweet?
Posted on January 28, 2009The debate continues among lawyers: Is Twitter the greatest thing since sliced bread or a complete and utter waste of time? I weighed in on the pro-Twitter side last month with my article, "Sixteen Reasons to Tweet on Twitter." Now...