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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

Commentary on Madoff's 150-Year Sentence

Posted on June 30, 2009
Yesterday, 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, 2009
And 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, 2009
With 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, 2009
Among 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...

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A Little Bit Twitter, a Little Bit Morality

Posted on June 29, 2009
Over 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, 2009
From 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, 2009
Today 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
When 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, 2009
Michael 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, 2009
Nearly 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, 2009
Who 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, 2009
Remember 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, 2009
Boston-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, 2009
Lawyer 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, 2009
Craigslist 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, 2009
With 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, 2009
Remember 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, 2009
It'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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Anyone 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, 2009
If 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, 2009
OK, 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, 2009
Patrick 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, 2009
Recent 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, 2009
By 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Stunned. 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Where 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...

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