A tipster has pointed out an interesting Google trend to us:

A sign of the times in the legal industry that I thought you might find interesting: if you have Google’s search suggestion turned on, and begin to type in virtually any law firm’s name, one of the top suggestions that comes up is that firm’s name followed by “layoffs.”

Indeed, type in “law firm” and this is what Google suggests you might be searching for:

We played the “Google game” with a bunch of law firm names. Only one of the firms we tried was free of layoff association in Google search results.

* Change you can believe in? It looks like Obama has recruited a few “washington insiders”: 8 of the 10 top lawyers he has hired for his transition team are veterans of the Clinton administration. [Bloomberg.com]

* After his hunt yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia told a room full of big-time Texas lawyers that he disagreed with judges who used foreign law to interpret the constitution. [Houston Chronicle]

* “Protesters galvanized by a dragging death that has stirred memories of the notorious James Byrd case rallied twice outside an eastern Texas courthouse to speak out against a judicial system they consider racist.” [Associated Press]

* Are you ready for your close-up Mr. Rehnquist? The Hoover institution released files documenting Rehnquist’s first three years on the Court, years filled with land-mark cases like Roe v. Wade and United States vs. Nixon. [New York Times]

* California Attorney general is pushing the Supreme Court to decide the legality of Prop. 8. The Court could begin to act as soon as Wednesday, when they have their weekly conference. [San Jose Mercury News]

* Say it ain’t so! Washington regulators have finally opened up the doors on Belgian-based beer company InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser Busch, which monopolizes
50% of the US beer market. The merger will make InBev the largest beer company in the world. [Courthouse News Service]

* Sorry Ohio…President-elect Obama is probably going to wait a while before overhauling NAFTA. [Bloomberg.com]

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, Google reached a settlement with publishers and authors to finally bring the Dewey Decimal System into the digital age.

Most lay people think that lawyers serve an annoying, anti-common sense role in society. But every now and again lawyers perform the important function of keeping “the law” safe from the forces of the free market and human progress.

Google wants to digitize the collections of the world’s greatest libraries in order to make them searchable. This is called “progress” and desperately needs to happen. But authors and publishers also need to protect their works — and make money off of them, if possible.

This issue demanded an out of court settlement, and lawyers from Keker, Debevoise, and other firms got the job done.

Under the settlement:

Authors and publishers will get 63 percent of revenue generated by Google’s electronic book database from the sale of online books and advertising. As part of the $125 million, Google will pay $34.5 million to set up the Book Rights Registry, which will collect the money and give it to the copyright owners. Another $45 million will go to authors and publishers that had their books uploaded without permission. Plaintiffs lawyers will take home $30 million.

Mmmm … fairness: the kind of fairness that cannot often be achieved through trial. Authors and publishers get 63% of the revenue (which, when you break it down will probably come out to 2 Lincolns per title). But, much more importantly, they will get the publicity that comes when people can actually read their book that is no longer popular enough to print. Google can then go about the business of bringing the entire digital world under their imperial control. And the lawyers got paid off too.

And nobody had to come up with a ridiculous “fair use” precedent that could have crippled the rights of authors for years to come.

Yay attorneys, yay settlements.

Google to Pay $125 Million in Settlement Over Book Digitization [Law.com]
Major Universities See Promise in Google Book Search Settlement [Authors Guild]
Proposed Settlement

Google is getting into the browser wars with their new Chrome product.

As Futurelawyer points out, who needs a new browser (besides anybody who still uses IE)? But Chrome is made by Google and Google knows what they are doing so we assume the product will sell.

Take a closer look at the boilerplate Terms of Service Agreement, before you download the browser. We’re not sure if Google’s lawyers were trying to make hours or just drunk, but if they had their way, Chrome would own everything, everywhere, forever. From Valleywag:

[A]ny “content” you “submit, post or display” using the service — whether you own its copyright or not — gives Google a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” it?

Valleywag goes on to list a bunch of other ridiculous rules that you “agree” to when you click “yes” on the internet.

I love it when clients go out of their way to create jobs for IP litigators. It’s a faltering economy and everybody should be doing their part.

Update: Google has revised the ToS for Chrome. See here (via a commenter).

The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net [Valleywag]
Google Chrome - Do We Really Need A New Browser? [Futurelawyer]

* Nationwide Layoff Watch: Nannies. [Dealbreaker]

* Was Findlaw gaming Google? Bad, Findlaw, bad. [Real Lawyers Have Blogs]

* Stupid Patent Case of the Week? [Mendelson’s Musings]

* We knew him way back when: a profile of Atlanta AUSA Jon-Peter Kelly (with whom we went to high school and college). [Fulton County Daily Report]

* Blawg Review #173 — with a swimming theme. [Chicago IP Litigation Blog via Blawg Review]

The embarrassing Google hit is one of the great new fears of the modern age. If the number-one Google hit for your name is your work bio, Corporate Challenge race-time results, or nothing at all, consider yourself lucky. You could have something worse, like, “Kashmir Hill. Is that her real name or her porn screen name?” Or something much worse, like the derogatory comments that spurred the Autoadmit lawsuit.

Seattle lawyer Shakespear Feyissa is in a Google predicament. He wants a ten-year-old article removed from his college newspaper’s archives. The school administrators say sure, but the college newspaper editors are adamantly opposed. We love principled undergrads. From the Seattle Times:

While a senior at [Seattle Pacific University] 10 years ago, Feyissa was arrested on suspicion of attempted sexual assault and suspended. He was never charged, but the suspension stuck — indefinitely.

Feyissa complained that his punishment was more severe because of his race, he told the student newspaper at the time, but an investigation dismissed his claim.

He’s a lawyer now, and that article — still among the first hits for Feyissa’s name on Google — continues to hurt him personally and professionally, he said. So Feyissa, at 33, has been pressuring SPU to help clear his name.

We question his tactics. By going after the school, he has succeeded in getting the original Falcon article knocked back a few pages when Google searching his name. But due to the media coverage of his crusade, he now has tons of hits with the paragraph intro, “A decade ago Shakespear Feyissa was arrested on suspicion of attempted sexual assault.”

Read more, after the jump.

Last year, Viacom filed a $1 billion suit against Google-owned YouTube, asserting widespread copyright infringement. We predicted a smackdown, and that day has come.

Viacom filed an amended complaint [PDF] last month, saying it had found over 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted material on YouTube. In its answer [PDF], Google says YouTube responds properly when made aware of copyrighted content, and said Viacom’s suit threatens our way of life… pretty much. From the Associated Press:

A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube’s ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.

Google’s lawyers made the claim in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan as the company responded to Viacom Inc.’s latest lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to “an explosion of copyright infringement” by YouTube and others.

The back-and-forth between the companies has intensified since Viacom brought its lawsuit last year, saying it was owed damages for the unauthorized viewing of its programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, including such hits as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

It’s sad that MTV no longer has the spirit of rock-and-roll rebellion and has officially become The Man.

In Google’s corner are Wilson Sonsini, Mayer Brown, and Bartlit Beck. In Viacom’s corner are Jenner & Block and Shearman & Sterling.

Google vows not to settle, saying it will take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. Let the law firms rejoice!

Google: Viacom’s YouTube suit threatens freedom [Associated Press]
Google’s Answer To Complaint [PDF] [IP Democracy via Paid Content]
Google vows to keep fighting Viacom [Business Week]
Google Case Spells Windfall For Lawyers [Forbes]

Earlier: Coming Attractions: Viacom - YouTube - Google Smackdown

[Ed. note: We’re looking for someone to share Morning Docket duties with B. Clerker (on an alternating-week schedule). If you’d like to be considered for this position, please follow the application instructions contained in this post. The main thing that has changed between then and now is that the gig now comes with pay — a modest stipend. Thanks.]

* MSFT + YHOO = Antitrust Scrutiny. Also, the identities of the law firms advising on the mega-deal. [WSJ Law Blog; New York Times]

* The quality of mercy is not strained… except in the Office of the United States Pardon Attorney. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Hidden-camera video evidence leads to reopening of Natalee Holloway investigation in Aruba. [ABC News; AP]

* HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson accused of favoritism and retaliation in lawsuit. [Washington Post]

* Prominent conservatives Steven Calabresi and John McGinnis, on Sen. McCain and Supreme Court nominations: “the nomination of John McCain is the best option to preserve the ongoing restoration of constitutional government.” [Wall Street Journal via How Appealing]

* NFL Union president prepared for strike. [ESPN]

* Microsoft offers to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion to compete with Google. [MSNBC]

* Times reporter subpoenaed over “State of War” source. [New York Times]

* French President and supermodel girlfriend sue over pictures. [Washington Post via WSJ Law Blog]

* HLS grad Obama and YLS grad Clinton make nice, sort of, during debate. [MSNBC]

* SCOTUS stays Alabama execution, maintaining de facto moratorium on death penalty. [CNN]

* Roy Tolles and Arthur Kramer, of Munger Tolles and Kramer Levin, respectively, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

It’s Friday, just shy of 5 PM Eastern time. Where are the bonus announcements? The silence is suspicious. If you’re sitting on bonus news that we haven’t reported, please reach out to us by email (subject line: “Associate Bonus Watch”). Thanks.

* Ann Althouse: We love it when she gets medieval — or should we say me-diva? — on a hapless blogger’s a**. [Althouse]

* Jesse Sneed: The Indiana University law student, who riddled his casebooks with bullets, is going home to grandma. [Blogonaut]

* Tim Wu: These ladies aren’t the only ones in love with the high-profile prof; Google thinks he’s pretty cool, too. [BusinessWeek]

* Barry Richard: S**tstirrer extraordinaire. [National Law Journal]

* Crazy pro se lawsuit against Google, seeking $5 billion in damages, touches upon the war on terror and a Burton snowboard. And no, it wasn’t filed by Jonathan Lee Riches. [TechDirt]

* A misdemeanor count of cruelty to animals? Guess he wasn’t that good. [Denver Channel]

* Law professors get their academic gowns in a wad over the gender divide in faculty hiring. [TaxProf Blog]

* Dewey LeBoeuf? Already done it. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Debevoise & Plimpton lords it over the competition. [Times of London]

We monitor our site traffic closely. We pay attention to reader comments and emails, but our traffic stats are what we care about the most.

Our tracking software allows us to see what brings readers to ATL. Earlier today, a web surfer accessed this site by running the following Google search (for which ATL is apparently the second search result):

i went to a massage parlor yesterday in san francisco but i paid too much money. Now I’m horny as ever and I want to find a women to do it for free. Can you please help me google?

Doubtful. Maybe try Craigslist?