* How would you describe the mainstream media’s recent reporting on Citizens United? Not true, not true — and Dan Abrams explains why. [Mediaite via The Corner / Ramesh Ponnuru]
* Whether the U.S. Constitution requires marriage equality can be debated as a matter of constitutional law. But as a policy matter, is this still an open question? Even Professor John Yoo, the bane of liberals’ existence, supports same-sex marriage as a policy matter. [Ricochet]
* I support marriage equality, but I do not support glitter bombing. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye (and files a lawsuit over it). [Althouse]
* If you adopt your 42-year-old girlfriend, does that turn your sexual relationship with her into incest? Professor Terry Turnipseed — yes, that’s his real name — is on the case. [Slate]
* Professor Mark Fenster writes an interesting post in defense of boredom (triggered by Adminlawgate at Yale Law School). [PrawfsBlawg]
* Speaking of boredom and frustration, let’s talk about… e-discovery! [Inside Counsel]
* What’s a hot practice area for 2012? [Going Concern]
* Speaking of hot practice areas, are you an intellectual property or technology lawyer? If so, this development might interest you. [MarketWatch]
This week, Lateral Link Director Scott Hodes gives us some insight into the increase in lateral hirings in the Empire State of the South.
Atlanta has emerged as one of the best lateral associate markets in the country. While 2009 was slow as in most markets, 2010 signaled a comeback, and 2011 confirmed the upward trend.
Corporate and litigation positions represented the largest amount of lateral openings, which is fairly typical in large markets. Corporate positions seemed to peak in the second and third quarters, while litigation was fairly steady throughout the year. There was also a huge boom in intellectual property positions, especially in the last three quarters, followed not too far behind by labor and employment, which remained steady throughout 2011….
Continue reading “Career Center: State of the Market – Atlanta”
As mentioned previously, these State of the Market posts by Lateral Link, as compiled by Director Gary Cohen, will focus on one of the country’s largest states — Texas.
The strongest market in Texas is Houston, with some of the strongest candidates being those with corporate, capital markets, or finance experience. A close second is Dallas, and a distant third in terms of strong markets in the Lone Star State is Austin….
Continue reading “Career Center: State of the Market – Texas (Part 3)”
As mentioned previously, the next few State of the Market posts by Lateral Link, as compiled by Director Gary Cohen, will focus on one of the country’s largest states — Texas.
The strongest market in Texas is Houston, with some of the strongest candidates being those with corporate, capital markets, or finance experience. A close second is Dallas, which is also the focus of this post….
Continue reading “Career Center: State of the Market – Texas (Part 2)”
Tom Wallerstein
For some, the phrase “small law firm” implies certain stereotyped practice areas, clients, and attorneys. At its worst, the stereotype invokes unsophisticated clients and matters that are routine and uninteresting. I doubt the stereotype is wholly true anywhere. I know for sure it isn’t true in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.
I know many attorneys in small firms who have specialized, high-end practices. These specialized practices are often called boutiques, and they are perfectly suited to serve the entrepreneurial, high-tech client base that abounds in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Even in the down economy, a number of new ventures were launched in Silicon Valley. Geographically, the high-tech corridor also seems to be expanding, thanks to Twitter, Zynga, SalesForce.com, and the like setting up shop in San Francisco. You don’t even need a Visa or traditional office space to launch a startup anymore; now you can enjoy Peter Thiel’s “Visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters.”
It remains to be seen whether we’re experiencing a boom or just another bubble, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not an economist and I’m not making predictions. I am only remarking on some great practice opportunities for smaller law firms which exist here, maybe because we are fortunate to have so many imaginative, passionate, and savvy entrepreneurs working on exciting projects in so many different industries….
Continue reading “From Biglaw to Boutique: Beyond the ‘Small Law Firm’ Stereotype”
SOPA is getting pwned. Yesterday, all the uber players with their epic gear hopped on Vent and raided the SOPA base, and now the newbie Congress people who sponsored the law are running scared. As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act have “renounced” their law. The New York Times reports that Senators and Congresspeople are abandoning this thing like it was a campaign promise.
Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, all of the big internet corporations flexed their muscles — and oh, by the way, this is what it looks like when corporations use speech for speech, as opposed to pretending that anonymous corporate campaign contributions magically count as speech.
In the wake of this victory, here’s a question: Is this what we want? Yesterday, the internet used its power for good (though I fear the movie industry will strike back by making you watch full-length Kevin James movies before you can download the next Batman preview). But what if in the future “the internet” wants something bad, something that is more than the mere protection of freedom?
Continue reading “Should We Let the Internet Make Laws?”
Last week, we discussed the end of the legal recession, and we made some predictions about 2012. Many of you were interested in more information on your specific market, so today, we’re launching a new Career Center series: “State of the Market.”
Over the coming weeks, we will discuss hiring prospects in major legal markets based on analysis by Lateral Link‘s recruiting team.
We start with our nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C….
Continue reading “Career Center: State of the Market – Washington, D.C.”
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has been busy lately. First, the Southern California-based non-profit responsible for the Internet’s address system created a porn-only, top-level domain. And on January 12, ICANN will start allowing people to register top-level domains of whatever they want.
.Com, .net, and .org — your days of tyranny are over!
Leave it to government officials and businesses concerned about protecting their intellectual property online to spoil the party. Companies are worried that allowing just anything to sit at the right side of a URL address will lead to useless costs and headaches in order to protect against cybersquatters.
We’ve got the nitty.gritty after the jump….
Continue reading “Under New Internet Rules, URLs Like AboveTheLaw.YourMom Will Soon Be Available”
According to the over 900 respondents to the Career Center survey, only 16% reported working on Thanksgiving Day. That means a whopping 84% of you took the day off for feasting with family and friends. However, of these respondents, 24% said they did have to work the day after Thanksgiving, but still, that’s an impressive 60% who took full advantage of the four-day weekend.
If you’ve been following our holiday surveys this year, Thanksgiving Day is the clear winner so far. Just compare the 16% of survey respondents who worked on Thanksgiving Day with the 48% of survey respondents who worked on Labor Day, the 35% of survey respondents who worked on the Fourth of July, the 73% of respondents who worked on Presidents’ Day, and the 66% of respondents who worked on MLK Day.
The top reasons for missing out on the Thanksgiving festivities were….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Who Worked on Thanksgiving Day?”
The real Elizabeth Sky
The Internet may be infinite, but people still are constantly fighting over online real estate. It happens in the porn industry, and it happens to celebrities. Even Miami Dolphins cheerleaders have to fight for their right to party at their own website.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently ruled in a dispute between two models using the stage name Elizabeth Sky. The defendant allegedly went on a campaign across the Internet to destroy the other model’s social networking presence. Will the real Elizabeth Sky please stand up, please stand up, please stand up.…
Continue reading “Model Who Says, ‘I’m Too Sexy For This Trademark’ Loses $81K Suit”
Businesses spend a surprising amount of time and effort protecting their brand and intellectual property from cybersquatters. It often takes the threat of litigation or creative domain name registry to prevent random people from registering websites like Pepsisux.com.
So, it’s kind of funny that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is in the process of introducing a new top-level domain — .XXX — built specifically for porn websites. In doing so, it may have created a cybersquatter’s dream come true.
Eighty thousand .XXX domain names have been registered in the past few months. A new lawsuit shows that some companies are registering even though they really don’t want to. Let’s find out why….
Continue reading “Nobody Likes Porny .XXX Domain Names, Except Cybersquatters”
Nobody ever seems to believe me when I say this, but San Francisco gets chilly. It is cold most of the time. And foggy. The warmest time of year is right now, in late October. If you come to visit in July, and you stay in the city, and you will get cold.
That’s why every San Francisco tourist ever buys those cheesy sweatshirts with “San Francisco” written on them in a font that strangely resembles one of the main logos for our hugely disappointing championship-winning major-league baseball team, the Giants. Actually, it might be exactly the same logo. The baseball team is currently in a trademark dispute with the clothing company from Hayward (Oakland’s smaller, crappier neighbor to the south) over rights to the logo.
But hold on, the Giants have been using it for almost 20 years. They must have gotten the rights locked down years ago, right? Oopsies….
Continue reading “Whoops, the San Francisco Giants Forgot to Trademark Their Logo”
Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. And millions of people across the planet learned of the news on devices he invented.
You’ve probably already heard the details. The 56-year-old chairman and co-founder of Apple had been fighting pancreatic cancer since 2004. He ran one of the most successful companies in the world, a company he founded in a suburban garage. He invented the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad; at one point he owned Pixar; and he personally had more than 300 patents to his name, according to The Atlantic.
I am having a hard time thinking of any other human in recent memory who has so widely, tangibly, and positively changed the face of the world.
As Alexis Madrigal wrote, it’s strange to mourn the head of an international corporation as we would a beloved actor, musician, or head of state. But we can’t help it….
Continue reading “Notes on the Passing of Steve Jobs”
Adam Bier (sans beard)
At the Legal Technology Leadership Summit opening reception on Tuesday, I struck up a conversation with a friendly young lawyer. He won immediate social coolness points for several reasons: He has a beard. He’s from the East Bay, like me. He runs a solo practice, and he had some good stories about lawyers following unique, non-lawyerly paths (which we might mention in future posts).
Needless to say, I was surprised to walk into Thursday’s keynote discussion, “Qualcomm Revisited: When Lawyers Face Discovery Sanctions,” and discover that this attorney was actually the youngest member of the Qualcomm Six.
Adam Bier was still a self-described “baby lawyer” when he was wrongfully sanctioned in the landmark 2008 Qualcomm e-discovery case. Kashmir Hill interviewed him early last year, when the appealed sanctions were finally vacated, more than two years after they were first imposed. Bier shared his story with conference attendees, joined onstage by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Waxse and Frank Cialone of Shartsis Friese, who defended several of the outside counsel in Qualcomm.
After the jump, learn the details of Bier’s nightmare experience. Can you imagine yourself in his shoes?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: When Clients Attack”
The information age we live in can be a blessing and a curse. Few fields demonstrate this truth more persuasively than the realm of electronic discovery.
During a panel here at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit on the theft and exfiltration of intellectual property, the panelists discussed the exponential growth in information densities, the increasing importance of IP, and the challenge that evolving technology presents to the governing legal frameworks. As one panelist noted: “Technology leaps, the law creeps.”
What does rapidly changing technology mean for the e-discovery world? And what are some considerations that in-house lawyers should keep in mind when responding to e-discovery requests?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: In-House Strategies for Litigation Response”
* How would you describe the mainstream media’s recent reporting on Citizens United? Not true, not true — and Dan Abrams explains why. [Mediaite via The Corner / Ramesh Ponnuru]
