You made a fool of me… and got me in huge trouble with the feds.
For a long time, I have been a staunch advocate of putting passwords on all electronic devices — laptops, phones, tablets, etc. There’s no reason to leave your private life or sensitive business data accessible to any schmo who might have access to your phone, just because you’re too lazy to spend three seconds typing in a password. This is especially true for lawyers, given the client confidences that they handle.
At least personally, however, I’m more lax about sharing some access passwords with close friends or family. My girlfriend knows my iPhone and computer passwords. (I know hers too.) Usually I don’t stress about potentially catastrophic consequences of her knowing that information. But every once in awhile I read something that makes me seriously wonder if you can trust anybody.
My current crisis of trust arises from the prosecution of a man accused of conspiring to export millions of dollars of electronic equipment from the U.S. to Iran. Prosecutors found “incredibly blatant admissions of criminal wrongdoing and philandering” on the defendant’s iPhone. But the man says his wife — who he is currently trying to divorce — stole the phone and forged the incriminating evidence.
Talk about emasculating. Let’s read more about this not-so-happy couple.…
Continue reading “This Might Be the Most Tumultuous Divorce of All Time”
Even attorneys are signing up.
Since time immemorial (or at least since the advent of computers), PCs have ruled the law office technology world. As iPhones and iPads have become more popular, Apple products have begun encroaching on the PC’s long-standing dominance of the workplace.
But who would’ve thought that Apple would actually be taking over, even in the technophobic realm of law?
A new legal survey shows just how much attorneys love their Macs. Let’s look at the results, and maybe find some gift ideas for the holidays….
Continue reading “Survey: Attorneys Are a Bunch of Apple Fan Boys (and Girls)”
Give me a break. I 'raised' 23 foster kids.
* Members of the Occupy Wall Street brigade were allowed to continue to be dirty hippies living in a park without toilets this morning. So fresh and so clean! OMG, yippee! [Wall Street Journal]
* French prosecutors have dropped another yet another rape charge lodged against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Seriously? It looks like nothing sticks to this man except money. [CNN]
* Recognizing that it’s really hard to get someone to pick up a partner from the drunk tank when there’s a Blackberry outage, DLA Piper is thinking about switching to iPhones. [Reuters]
* RajRaj was literally the biggest target in the Galleon case, but one of his buddies was sentenced, too. On Wednesday, Michael Kimelman got 2.5 years at the luxurious Club Fed. [Daily Record]
* It took Michele Bachmann seven years to graduate from law school (whereas most graduate in three). She can get things done, but apparently only on her own time. [New York Times]
* Food fight! Things are getting really dirty in this Food Network lawsuit. Guy Fieri not only likes to cook with alcohol, but he allegedly speaks like an angry drunk behind the scenes. [City Pages]
Angelina Pivarnick
* The Westboro Baptist Church has announced — on an iPhone — that it will be picketing Steve Jobs’s funeral. And now I have an Alanis Morissette song stuck in my head. [Los Angeles Times]
* Price check on aisle seven. Price check on aisle seven for a divorce train wreck. People over in England need to be prepared for this now that supermarkets can sell legal services. [BBC News]
* Crowell & Moring has been slapped with an ethics complaint for suggesting that Appalachians suffer birth defects because they have family circles instead of family trees. [Am Law Daily]
* Se habla Español? Necesita un trabajo? Greenberg Traurig is expanding its ginormas practice with its 33rd office located in Mexico City. [Sacramento Bee]
* Doctors in Kentucky delivered a decapitated baby, but apparently did “nothing wrong.” [Insert completely inappropriate dead baby joke here.] [Courier-Journal]
* A former Jersey Shore star is suing over an alleged attack at a Hot Topic last year. This is only acceptable if the “dirty little hamster” was there to look for a Halloween costume. [New York Post]
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”
Ribs are delicious, but try not to eat your husband's.
* With about 90 vacancies in the federal court system, the Senate approved six for judgeships, including Judge John Roll’s replacement. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* $400 per wasted hour? That’s not what you’re paying your lawyer. That’s what he’s paying in sanctions for futzing around during depositions. [Daily Business Review]
* Texas Roadhouse: old farts need not apply. Apparently qualifications for working at a chain restaurant now include being young, hot, and chipper. [Los Angeles Times]
* Friendly’s used to be the place where ice cream made the meal, but now it’s the place where ice cream makes you bankrupt. That’s just sad. [Bloomberg]
* Memo to file: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, not yours. A former model is seeking parole after she chopped up, cooked, and ate her husband. [Daily Mail]
* Derrick Bell, law professor and racial advocate, RIP. [New York Times]
* Steve Jobs, creator of the iPhone, one of the most popular tools for lawyers, RIP. [Apple]
By the time we get to the iPhone7, buying one will automatically apply you to law school.
We’ve talked about the drop in law school applications. Generally, this is a good thing. Less pressure on law school tuition is a good thing for students, and it’s not like schools can’t fill out their classes.
Well, most schools. Some schools — especially schools that are not highly regarded — are feeling the sting of fewer people eager to go to law school.
And so we have the latest innovation in law school fleecing technology. Now you can apply to a law school on your iPhone. Because this is really the kind of decision you want to make as quickly as possible….
Continue reading “Law School Actively Encourages People To Apply Before They Go Home And Think”
You may want to download a class action tracking app to your iPhone
It’s always sad when two people give you the same present for Christmas — especially if it’s not a present you want. That’s the situation Apple is in this holiday season, hit with two lawsuits in federal court last week, both seeking class action certification, for helping advertisers create profiles of iPhone and iPad users.
Lalo v. Apple, first reported by Businessweek, and Freeman v. Apple, first reported by Wired, were both filed on Thursday, Dec. 23, in the Northern District of California. The first was filed by Kamber Law, the team behind the $2.4 million Quantcast “zombie cookie” settlement, and the second by three law firms, including the one that recently sued YouPorn over its “history sniffing.”
Both lawsuits are essentially copy-and-paste jobs of a recent Wall Street Journal article about how smartphones spy on their users. The WSJ report detailed how apps on iPhones and Android phones gather personal information, including location, gender, age, contacts, and a phone’s unique identifier, and then pass that information along to advertisers. The suits focus on Apple’s disclosing iPhone and iPad users’ Unique Device ID (UDID) — basically a mobile device’s social security number, which, when disclosed, can be used to profile a Machead.
Re-gifting alert: since this occurs on the Android as well, Google may want to look out for a belated class action present. “We usually take the most meritorious action first and then work our way down,” says Majed Nachawati, one of the class action attorneys in the Freeman complaint. “Google is on the radar, but we haven’t taken any action against them yet.”
Read on at Forbes.com.
Marriage: an institution so sacred that two gay guys could ruin it with their love and commitment. But someday soon we might be able to get out of this sacred tradition using our phones.
Already there’s a company offering some basic divorce information via iPhone apps. Robert Ambrogi’s Law Sites has the news:
If you’re married to your iPhone but not so sure about your spouse, then DivorceApps.com may have just what you need. It is developing a series of iPhone apps designed for people who are considering or in the process of divorce.
Brilliant. Just as the digital age is opening up new ways for divorce lawyers to be effective, technology might be able soon obviate the need for most divorce lawyers altogether…
Continue reading “Divorce Attorneys Have Competition from the iPhone”
Over the holiday weekend, reports came pouring into the ATL inbox about the most expensive iPhone app currently on the market. It costs $1,000 and is aimed at legal types, specifically those who want to be lawyers in California. From PCWorld:
BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.
According to TechCrunch, the man behind the app is Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ’06 Harvard grad. Ghaffary was just recently admitted to the California bar himself, in December 2009.
He says he came up with the BarMax app idea while studying…
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: Mike Ghaffary, the JD/MBA Behind the $1,000 Bar Exam iPhone App”
There are certain staples that tend to be recession-proof: alcohol, toilet paper, Spam. You can add smartphones to that list, reports the New York Times. Sales of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other smartphone models are projected to increase by 25% this year.
In case you’re thinking about contributing to that increase, Gizmodo has a guide to the latest and greatest models: the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, the Palm Pre, the HTC Magic, and the BlackBerry Storm. The tech savvy folks at Gizmodo compare the hardware, software, and cost of these little electronic extensions of ourselves.
Check out the Gizmodo piece for tech love poems and detailed charts. Here’s the short version:
To summarize: iPhone OS claims advantages in ease of use, its burgeoning App Store, and a respectable core feature set, but falters on multitasking and its lack of ability to install unsanctioned apps. The Pre’s WebOS is extremely slick and friendly to multitasking, but its App Catalog is light on content, and its development SDK is somewhat restrictive. Android and BlackBerry OS are both more laissez-faire, letting users install apps from whatever source they choose. Neither of their app stores is spectacular, but Android’s is markedly less anemic.
Last month, we did a post on the best iPhone apps for lawyers. If you chose to download Black’s Law Dictionary, we’d love to know if it’s worth its hefty price tag. We included some polls in that post about which smartphones you all prefer, and what’s on offer at your firms. Results after the jump.
Continue reading “The Smartest Smartphone for You”
These days, it seems like the Blackberry stranglehold on Biglaw is loosening. Purely anecdotally, we’ve been seeing many office-pale fingers making use of iPhone touch screens to check for partner e-mails over the weekends.
Let’s move beyond the anecdotal though. Which do you prefer as your Biglaw ball and chain?
If you do have an iPhone, we imagine you spend some time at the iPhone app store tricking it out. We decided to check in with Jeff Richardson, a partner at Adams & Reese in New Orleans, for some application recommendations. Richardson is such a big fan of the iPhone that he started a blog devoted to it six months ago: iPhone J.D.
Richardson’s top 10 iPhone app picks, and a couple more polls, after the jump.
Continue reading “Top Ten iPhone Apps for Biglawyers”
With cancer cured and AIDS no longer a threat, America can finally turns its attention toward that final frontier of western civilization: iPhone fart applications. For those of you unfamilar with fart applications, they are downloadable programs that make “hilarious” farting noises on command, thereby rendering real farts completely obsolete.
But where there’s gas, there’s a fire, and last Friday, the creators of iFart Mobile asked a Colorado federal court to rule that the phrase “pull my finger” was common parlance and therefore not protectible under trademark law.
By way of background, iFart previously published a press release announcing that Apple had at long last agreed to carry the “innovative” application. The release stated, somewhat disparagingly, that for many months, iPhone users were denied this critical application, as prudish Apple did not want apps asking people to “pull my finger.” However, when the creators of Pull My Finger, another iPhone fart application, got, er, wind of this press release, they threatened suit for trademark infringement.
There is perhaps no better use of the court’s time, or your time, for that matter, than reading iFart’s bag of hot air complaint. Highlights and the completely ludicrous document, after the jump.
Continue reading “iFart, You Fart: Is ‘Pull My Finger’ Trademarkable?”
Lots of interesting debate in the comments over the wild rumor that Skadden might raise starting salaries to $195,000 before the year’s end.
Some think it’s crazy talk. Others note that it might simply mark a return to Skadden’s prior practice of paying above-market base salaries, combined with smaller year-end bonuses (designed to bring total comp for Skadden associates up to market, depending upon other firms’ year-end bonuses).
Anyway, regardless of what you think about that gossip, here’s something that’s confirmed:
tipster: interesting tidbit
ATL: I’m all ears
tipster: skadden will reimburse associates for iphone purchases from their tech allowance
ATL: oh cool!
tipster: Pretty much makes skadden associates the coolest on the planet!
Here are more details on the Skadden technology allowance, from the firm website:
The firm provides up to $3,000 to attorneys for the purchase of technology equipment at the commencement of employment. After 2 years of service, the firm provides additional allowances for the purchase of approved technology equipment.
If you’re Skadden associate, go treat yourself to five iPhones. Then send the four you don’t use to your friends at ATL.
Update: Some caveats about Skadden and iPhones appear here.
Attorneys and Law Students: FAQs [Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom]
Earlier: More Wacky Rumor-Mongering: Skadden to $195K?
Waiting for the iPhone: An iWitness Account
Okay, this is kinda random. But it’s Friday, so please give us some latitude.
(Also, we have previously covered this subject, in a way that connected it to the legal world. So there.)
As you all know, today is I-Day: the first day that Apple’s coveted iPhone will be available for sale to the general public. At 6 PM, Apple and AT&T stores will open their doors, and the masses will flood in. Long lines have already formed in different cities around the country.
We were just IM’ing with one ATL reader standing outside an AT&T store waiting for his iPhone. If you’re curious, you can read portions of our exchange after the jump.
Continue reading “Waiting for the iPhone: An iWitness Account”
