Archive for August 2011

Legal Technology Leadership Summit: Accepting Nominations for the Corporate Legal Technology Leadership Award

By Above the Law

Get excited, because the Legal Technology Leadership Summit is less than two weeks away. It is set to take place from September 6 – 8, on Amelia Island, Florida. You can access the full agenda here if you’d like to see the interesting programs that are in store for all Summit attendees.

It is only fitting that we would honor a leader in corporate legal technology at the Summit, so we are currently accepting nominations for the first Corporate Legal Technology Leadership Award. This award recognizes the legal department and the legal technology innovator(s) that identified a problem, championed a solution, and monitored the outcome. The individual winner of the award will receive a Dell Inspiron Duo Tablet PC + Audio Dock, as well as a plaque commemorating the award.

Corporate legal departments or the representatives of the department may submit nominations. There is no fee to enter. To submit a nomination, please complete the online form available here. Nominations must be received by August 31, 2011.

A special thanks to our generous Summit Ambassadors, who are making this event possible: Applied Discovery, Autonomy, Clearwell Systems (now a part of Symantec), Datacert, Dell, Ernst & Young, Falcon Discovery, FTI Technology, Guidance Software, Mitratech, Nextpoint, Nuix, Pangea3, Planet Data, ProSearch Strategies, QuisLex, Recommind, Robert Half eDiscovery Services, TCDI, Valora Technologies, and WestlawNext.

We would also like to thank our Law Firm Sponsors: Dorsey & Whitney, Shook Hardy & Bacon, WilmerHale, and Winston & Strawn.

Click here to register for the conference. We look forward to seeing you there.

The Aftermath of the East Coast Earthquake of 2011

By Staci Zaretsky

In the wake of the east coast earthquake of 2011, the legal world seems to be back to its regularly scheduled programming. Courts are back in session, law firms have reopened, and government agencies are fully functioning. While some got a welcome day off yesterday, others only received a temporary respite from work.

Thankfully, the damage to the capital region seems to have been limited. At first it was reported that we may have had a Leaning Tower of D.C., but it turns out that the Washington Monument is just cracked. In other monument news, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials are closed for further inspection, and the National Cathedral has sustained “mind-boggling” damage.

We received a lot of tips from our readers about their earthquake experiences, but more importantly, we have the final results from our reader poll. We now know who we can blame for moving the earth and disrupting our day. And no, it wasn’t Obama’s Fault.

Find out who is responsible, after the jump….

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Move Over Watson, Automated Document Review Has Arrived

By Above the Law


We trust machines to take our heart rate. We take out and deposit money via machines. We wear clothes sewn by machine. And now machines beat our best and brightest at chess and Jeopardy. So, why are we still doing legal document review by hand?

Numerous studies, research papers and head-to-head comparisons have proven the fallibility of manual document review [FN1], and yet the practice is still the predominant approach. Why?

Because all the research and proof has, to date, been conducted in academic, artificially constructed settings and not the real world where real litigation really takes place. Where were the last-minute changes to the specs, the wishy-washy answers, the suddenly “found” third-party documents, the porn?!

It took a smart, scrappy, tech-savvy company up in Massachusetts, with strong ties to MIT & Harvard, to become the first legal services provider to provide real-world, battle-tested, fully Automated Document Review. That’s right. Software (albeit configured and operated by humans) determining privilege, responsiveness and issues–faster, more accurately and certainly at lower cost than an army of onshore/offshore contract attorneys. Meet Valora Technologies.

Valora’s systems and processes combine a decade of legal document tagging experience with cutting edge software tools to provide defensible, custom-configured, Rules-Based Document Review.

In layman’s terms, Valora’s process understands and interprets the document review rules set out by outside counsel, in the form of a review protocol or memo. The Valora team then reconstructs the review instructions in software, as custom-configured algorithms, and runs the processes in under 48 hours. With a few iterations for accuracy, completeness and hypothesis-testing, we produce results that routinely surpass those of human review – on any shore.

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Hacksaw McDaniel Accused of Child Pornography Possession

By David Lat

Stephen McDaniel

Things just got a lot more complicated for Stephen McDaniel, the 25-year-old Mercer Law School graduate accused of killing his former neighbor and classmate, Lauren Giddings. As we mentioned last night, McDaniel has been hit with seven charges of sexual exploitation of children.

So even if McDaniel is cleared of the Giddings murder, he’s still looking at a whole host of other allegations. As you may recall, what originally landed him in the Bibb County jail were two counts of burglary (namely, filching condoms from other apartments at the Barristers Hall complex). Now he stands accused of child pornography possession, facing possible exposure of five to 20 years in prison on each charge.

At the time we originally mentioned the kiddie porn charges yesterday, we didn’t have the dirty details. Now we do.

If you have the stomach for it, keep on reading….

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Morning Docket: 08.24.11

By Staci Zaretsky

* A law firm in England, Edwards Duthie, believes that everyone is entitled to legal representation, even those who don’t believe in the rule of law. Have fun with Gaddafi; he should be a model client. [Guardian]

* An appeals court has ruled that Casey Anthony must serve her probation in Florida. It’s time for Extreme Makeover: Acquitted-of-Baby-Killing Edition. Casey would look good as a blonde. [CNN]

* Now that we know that a software program can practice law, with this settlement, is it fair to say that LegalZoom was only kinda illegally practicing law in Missouri? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Football players are suing over concussions. If the helmet on your head wasn’t warning enough that you could get a brain injury from playing the game, then I don’t know what to tell you. [Fox News]

* Don’t mess with Texas, unless you want to get hit with a trademark infringement lawsuit. I guess romance novels aren’t considered trash these days. [Austin Business Journal]

Should UCLA Law School Accept Milken’s Millions?

By David Lat

Lowell Milken: Would you accept $10 million from this man?

Ah, California. Your weather is amazing, but I don’t think I could deal with your earthquakes. The tremor we just experienced here on the East Coast has turned me into a nervous wreck.

Over at UCLA Law School, they’re experiencing some earth-shaking controversy of their own. An ultra-wealthy alumnus made it rain, with a $10 million gift to the school — but now some professors want to rain on his parade, and their objections have hit the national news media. (Apologies for the mixed precipitation metaphors.)

As we mentioned last week, UCLA law alumnus Lowell Milken made a $10 million gift to his alma mater — the largest single donation in the law school’s history. The money will be used to establish the Lowell Milken Institute for Business and Law.

Milken, Milken — that last name sounds familiar….

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.23.11

By Elie Mystal

* According to the latest allegations, Hacksaw McDaniel might be Steve the Child Sex Predator. [Macon Telegraph]

* Libyans. We’re very happy you took your country back, but could you pass a law saying something like “shooting guns in the air as a celebration is just f***ing dumb”? Thanks. [Huffington Post]

* I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that lawyers are, on average, genetically predisposed to be miserable bastards. [ABA Journal]

* Man, it has not been a good week for alleged rape victims. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Facebook + ATL = Kash’s fascination with privacy. [Not So Private Parts / Forbes]

* How screwed is the U? (Translation for non-sports fans: Miami University U. Miami is famous for breaking NCAA rules, and appears to have broken more NCAA rules.) [Legal Blitz]

* Here’s how the finance industry reacted to the quake. [Dealbreaker]

* And in the fashion industry, well, I’m just waiting for the “quake nip slip” photos to start popping up. [Fashionista]

Career Center: The Callback Interview – Why the Relaxed, Well Prepared Student Will Prevail

By Above the Law

Congratulations! After enduring several hours of OCI “speed dating,” you scored a callback interview. You have done your research, gotten “in the zone,” and it’s off to the firm reception area for a day of interviews. You’re tense — which is proof that you’re alive and that you care. You’re worried that you don’t know as much as you should — which is proof that you are not arrogant or presumptuous. You’re as focused as you were the day before final examinations began at the end of first year — because you know there is a lot on the line.

Exhale, check your breath, and make sure you reviewed the following tips, courtesy of Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball, before you set out for your interview….

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Size Matters: Gerard Depart-Two

By Valerie Katz

Who among us does not love bathroom humor? As we saw last week, Anderson Cooper loves him a joke about bodily functions. No one, however, wants to live a poop joke. And, according to a conversation that I had with two small-firm attorneys, they are doing just that.

I was at a birthday party last Saturday night for a woman with whom I used to work at my small firm. She has since left and is now working for another small firm. The party attendees were composed of mostly small-firm attorneys from several firms in Chicago (and yes, it was just as raucous as one would imagine given that guest list). As usually happens when a group of lawyers gather, we all started exchanging horror stories about work.

Some people lamented the lack of quality secretaries, some complained about outdated technology, and some whined about the face-time requirements at their firms. These gripes I had heard (and personally experienced) before.

Then my friend Tammi (not her real name) shared her tale of woe….

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Making First-Year Associates Less Useless, One Class At A Time

By Elie Mystal

One of the lasting effects of the recession has been clients wising up on the value of first-year associates (or the lack thereof). Many at large law firms knew that junior associates contributed little more than manpower during their first couple of years at a firm. But only in the crucible of the recession did clients start asking why they were paying money to finish the training of junior Biglaw associates.

Of course, being able to bill out your new labor at high billing rates is a key part of the law firm business model. Firms are already in a bind: since American law schools insist on graduating students with little to no practical skills, the kids must be trained. Training them on the client’s dime (while the law firm partners pocket a profit) is just one of the ways it has always been done.

But those who do not innovate die. Today brings news that two major law firms are going to try something different with their first-years.

The first-years will get paid their usual $160K salary. But at least at the start, they’ll have to go through more training…

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The D.C. Earthquake of 2011!

By Elie Mystal

EARTHQUAKE!!!

Okay, I’m sitting on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and I just felt the ground shake. And we’re getting reports that it was felt in Boston and Akron, Ohio.

Television news reports are saying that a 5.8 earthquake just hit Washington, D.C. We also felt it here in New York.

UPDATE (2:07 PM): The quake has been upgraded to a 5.9.

The quake was reportedly centered around Charlottesville, Virginia. The White House has been evacuated.

What’s going on at your job? Also, West Coast readers, do you have any tips? We’re not used to the ground moving out here.

UPDATES, including a reader poll, after the jump…

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Biglaw Perk Watch: The Gay Gross-Up Is All the Rage

By David Lat

Here in the great state of New York, marriage equality is the order of the day — as it is in five other states, plus D.C.. But due to the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal tax code does not recognize same-sex unions. As a result, as explained by the law firm of McCarter & English, “the Internal Revenue Code treats the value of employer-provided healthcare benefits for a civil union or domestic partner as ‘imputed income’ to the employee. This means that employees who elect domestic partner benefits must pay income tax on the value of those benefits, which is in direct contrast to employees with different-sex spouses.”

To address this inequality, a number of law firms — including McCarter & English, as of this June — have adopted what we here at Above the Law have dubbed the “gay gross-up.” This benefit consists of “a bump in income such that, post-tax, the employees are in the same position as similarly situated employees electing healthcare benefits for their opposite-sex spouses.”

In addition to McCarter, a number of prominent law firms have adopted this policy since our last report. Let’s find out which ones….

UPDATE (8/25/11): We’ve added to the list since it was originally published. See the updated list below.

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At Brigham Young, OCI Is A Laughing Matter

By Elie Mystal

As we mentioned yesterday, on-campus interview season has started at law schools all across the land. We’re happy to serve as your one-stop shopping center for all things OCI. Just send us an email (subject: “OCI”) about the things going on at your school that deserve more attention.

Today’s news is on the funny side. It appears that the wild and crazy kids from BYU Law are taking the stress of OCI in stride….

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Autonomy eDiscovery Solutions Help Legal Professionals Meet Evolving Enterprise Challenges

By Above the Law


Walking the line of tightening legal and regulatory demands while trying to rein in eDiscovery costs is no easy task. It’s turning information governance into a critical business function. In fact, businesses are legally required to know what information they have, where it is, and the actual meaning of the content. This becomes even more critical when litigation looms and information one day is evidence the next.

Fortunately, a host of solutions exist to help meet these needs—systems that can amass and organize content. But what organizations really need goes a step farther, and only Autonomy—the leader in Meaning Based Computing—understands the meaning held within your content. Unique among all vendors, Autonomy’s Meaning Based Governance (MBG) solutions understand the context and concepts held within any type of human-friendly information: documents, email, audio, video and social media interactions, regardless of format, repository type or language.

Autonomy is the first and only vendor to offer a comprehensive information governance solution for email management, document management, archiving, records management, compliance, legal hold, early case assessment, review and litigation—all on a single meaning-based platform. Powered by its Intelligent Data Operating Layer, Autonomy collects and indexes information in 1,000-plus content formats, 400 repositories, and 150- plus languages. Then Autonomy stores it in its proprietary structure, which is optimized for fast processing and intelligent search and retrieval.

George Tziahanas, Global Head for Autonomy’s Legal and Compliance Solutions, said, “Autonomy addresses the entire spectrum of the EDRM model to facilitate eDiscovery that complies with the FRCP, along with compliance, archiving, and operational information processing—all within a single solution.”

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The ‘Best Value’ Law Schools of 2011

By Staci Zaretsky

We know how much our readers love rankings, so as we mentioned in Morning Docket, the National Jurist has released the fifth annual list of the 60 Best Value law schools in its preLaw magazine. As it stands, the list remains unranked, but the final grades for the honor roll are expected in October.

The Best Value ranking typically takes into account the following criteria: in-state tuition, average student debt, the percentage of graduates employed nine months after graduation, and bar passage rates.

But this year, the National Jurist made some adjustments to its rankings methodology to account for “fairness.” It now takes into account averages for bar passage rates and post-graduation employment over the past two years. And even if a law school didn’t meet one of these important standards, the school wasn’t automatically excluded from consideration. Everyone gets a trophy in this year’s Best Value rankings.

You may be surprised at some of the law schools that made this year’s Best Value honor roll. Check and see if your school made the list, after the jump….

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The Lauren Giddings Murder Investigation: Some Updates

By David Lat

Lauren Giddings

It has been a few weeks since we last wrote at length about the investigation into the murder of Lauren Giddings. As you may recall, Giddings was a recent graduate of Mercer Law School whose decapitated torso was found on June 30 in Macon, Georgia.

A former neighbor and classmate of Giddings, Stephen M. McDaniel, 25, has been charged with her murder. McDaniel is being held at the Bibb County jail, where he has been for several weeks.

There have been a few recent developments in the case — nothing major, but still worth noting….

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Morning Docket: 08.23.11

By Staci Zaretsky

Looks like the joke is on us.

* With a recommendation for dismissal filed, Dominique Strauss-Kahn hopes to bid adieu to his rape charges and say au revoir to our country. [CNN]

* Apparently your law school can still be on the Best Value honor roll even if its bar passage rates suck abysmally. What up CUNY Law. [National Jurist]

* It’ll be awesome if Clarence Thomas speaks during the inevitable Supreme Court oral arguments on Obamacare. Ginni needs to start smacking him around so this happens. [New Yorker]

* Will Booz Allen get hit with a trifecta of gender discrimination lawsuits this summer? Yesterday marked the second one in filed in the past three weeks. [Blog of Legal Times]

* Not sure why trial lawyers are all up in arms about Rick Perry. Is the star of How to Secede from the U.S. Without Really Trying actually going to be a real contender in Election 2012? [POLITICO]

* Living in a complex full of Type A bar examinees (and repeat failures) for five years sounds like a fate worse than death. I’d rather be condemned to the Gulag. [Los Angeles Times]

Are Biglaw PPP Stats Any More Reliable Than Law School Employment Stats?

By Elie Mystal

Does anyone spy the truth?

The danger in having a for profit magazine in charge of collecting and publicizing critical information is that the magazine doesn’t have any oversight audit authority to confirm that its information is accurate.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the big scandal of the day involved the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group unit suggesting that as high as 22% of the top 50 firms have inaccurate profits per partner numbers listed in Am Law.

The WSJ Law Blog now has the story up. This all could be a simple matter of Am Law counting “partners” differently from Citi. But these are the perils of trying to wrest information out of an industry that values secrecy over transparency….

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.22.11

By David Lat
Albert Haynesworth III

Albert Haynesworth III

* Does your fledgling company need a full-time general counsel? Lance Levy lays out some considerations. [In-House Blog]

* Why is Marc Randazza “the most inappropriate man in the world”? Well, how many briefs have you filed with phallus-filled footnotes? (Say that last part ten times fast.) [Popehat]

* New England Patriots defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth pleads no contest to simple assault, averting a trial for misdemeanor sexual abuse. [ESPN]

* Looking for a job in legal academia? Get to know the members of the hiring committee! [PrawfsBlawg]

* “Federal Filing of the Day: Nebraska Man Says He Left Baylor With GPS Sewn in Armpit.” [Unfair Park / Dallas Observer]

Ashley Alexandra Dupré, Eliot Spitzer's former paramour.

* Eliot Spitzer gets hit with a libel lawsuit seeking $60 million. That’s worth how many hours of Ashley Alexandra Dupré? [New York Observer]

* Congratulations to Ted Frank and his colleagues at the Center for Class Action Fairness on their latest victory — which appears to represent “the first time the Ninth Circuit has vacated approval of a class action settlement since 2003.” [Center for Class Action Fairness]

* Elsewhere in the Ninth Circuit, justice delayed turns out to be justice denied for a prisoner who died while waiting over five years for a federal district judge to rule on his habeas petition. (The magistrate judge had already recommended granting relief.) [Los Angeles Times]

Quote of the Day: If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say…

By Staci Zaretsky

Jerome Fishkin

What kind of people search out an attorney who, um … yeah.

— Jerome Fishkin, an ethics attorney, noting that attorney Nabil Samaan’s supportive comments relating to the apparent murder-suicide of niece Madeline Layla Samaan-Fay and brother Mourad “Moni” Samaan may be detrimental to Samaan’s law practice.

(The Center for Judicial Excellence has announced it will file a complaint with the State Bar of California demanding Nabil Samaan’s disbarment.)