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Legal News

Legal Blog Watch

Tracks the daily musings of Law.com bloggers.
By Lisa Stone

Post Frequency: 34.5/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 17:07:51

Fordham Bans Reed Smith Recruiters

Posted on August 13, 2009
In 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, 2009
Used 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, 2009
A 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, 2009
There'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...

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Center on Global Legal Profession Launched at University of Indiana

Posted on August 12, 2009
Law 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, 2009
Perhaps 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, 2009
Unlike 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, 2009
These 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, 2009
We 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, 2009
Last 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, 2009
Choosing 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, 2009
Even 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, 2009
When 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, 2009
As 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, 2009
With 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, 2009
Who 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, 2009
As 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, 2009
Lawyers 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, 2009
If 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, 2009
Today'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, 2009
Truth 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, 2009
There'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, 2009
Marc 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, 2009
A 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, 2009
Within 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, 2009
In 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, 2009
A 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, 2009
It'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, 2009
Back 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...

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