Lexis-Nexis

Bar Admission ‘Anniversary’ Plaques? Don’t Be That Guy

By

Oh my, I can’t believe a major legal publisher is selling cheap-looking plaques for hilariously useless achievements. Actually, I can totally believe it.

I’ve never bought into the idea that lawyers need “credibility trophies.” Lawyers who festoon their offices with scores of plaques come across as desperate. Lots of plaques commemorate dubious achievements, and any colleague or client given a few minutes to examine the decoration will discover this and wonder, “Why did he/she hang this?” But sadly, much of the profession ascribes to the “plaques for plaques’ sake” mentality.

If an office must be adorned with memorabilia of legal achievement, frame the law school diploma, bar admission certificate(s), and any major achievements like being president of the bar association or something. These provide all the indicia of achievement a lawyer needs.

And nothing says “plaques for plaques’ sake” like a redundant plaque. Like a plaque that says, “If you didn’t notice the diploma on the other wall, this certifies that he REALLY did go to Harvard.”

But these plaques exist, and we’ve got pictures…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Bar Admission ‘Anniversary’ Plaques? Don’t Be That Guy”

20 Comments

Yo! ATL Raps

By

Mahbod Moghadam of Rap Genius

F. Scott Fitzgerald once opined that there were “no second acts in American lives.” Similarly, Biz Markie once opined “’cause we all pick our boogers sometime every day.” If you’re already lost, allow me to explain. This is the story of a former Biglaw attorney and his second act. He and his friends started a website devoted to rap lyrics. The website annotates rap lyrics, and it’s this system of annotation that the founders of the website hope will take over the web (including legal research). The website was recently funded by venture capitalists, and the resulting hype has ping-ponged across the web at a pace so rapid that you’d be excused if you made like Steinski and wondered, “What does it all mean?” (affiliate link).

The interviews that have fed the myriad profiles of the site’s founders have been nothing short of entertaining. Just last week, Gawker was prompted to write a guide to the site, rapgenius.com, which managed to sound both condescending and wildly equivocating and which did nothing but illuminate the author’s squeamishness. This promises to not be like that. I don’t know if Rap Genius is going to be Wikipedia or Pets.com.

What I do know is that a Biglaw dropout just ganked $15 million from Marc Andreessen and wants to edge out Westlaw and Lexis (good luck with that).

Keep reading to find out where he went to law school and what firm he worked at. And if you want to see his shirtless YouTube diss track (no homo)….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Yo! ATL Raps”

16 Comments

Size Matters: Billing Sucks, But Small-Firm Lawyers Need To Do It Better

By

In my humble opinion, there is nothing worse than billing time. Just think of the feeling you get when you’ve spent a day doing a million random tasks in your sad beige office, and you have no ten-minute entries to account for that day (i.e., you get no credit for a day spent at work doing work things). Not only is billing a pain, the practice of accounting for your time is even worse. While I was no better at it when I was at my Biglaw firm than at the small firm, the former had some software that would send me mean emails if I did not get my hours in on time. Oh, and there were scarier partners that would come after if me if I had a delinquent time report.

At the small firm, on the other hand, I was instructed to fill out time entries by hand, give them to my assistant to type into a billing program, review the print-out of the hours inputted by my assistant, and then send them off to the partner to review and approve.

I was less efficient at billing at the small firm than at my Biglaw firm. Not only did I lose precious ten-minute increments working with my assistant to bill hours, but I also worked on a minimum of four matters, and switching between matters meant less efficiency. And I suppose there are other things people do at small firms that they cannot bill for — like go get business or something?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Size Matters: Billing Sucks, But Small-Firm Lawyers Need To Do It Better”

13 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 04.26.12

By

* Paul Clement is a beast, is basically what it comes down to. [The Daily Beast]

* This is probably the grossest, most pornographic employment discrimination/sexual harassment/defamation lawsuit I’ve seen. Maybe fans of 50 Shades of Grey (affiliate link) might find it compelling. The writing in the lawsuit is probably better… [Courthouse News]

* Predictive coding is good. Now it’s bad. Now it’s good. Make up your mind! [Law Technology News]

* A touching obituary about a first-year Reed Smith associate who recently took his own life. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

* Elie was on Fox News late last night (video embed after the jump). He brought the funny. [Red Eye]

* If you ever get in trouble for tweeting or blogging about jury duty, Davis Oscar Markus is the guy to call. [Miami Herald]

* LexisNexis recently unveiled its new, ginormous legal e-book library. It’s just like a normal law library, except you don’t have to ask the pesky law librarian for help. [LexisNexis]

(Embedded Elie, after the jump.)

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Non-Sequiturs: 04.26.12″

14 Comments

Lawyers Sue Westlaw, Lexis-Nexis for Copyright Infringement

By

Where would lawyers be without open (and absurdly expensive) access to Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis for legal research? They’d have to trudge down to the closest law library and read real books made of paper. They’d have to head over to the courthouse and pull actual files with non-electronic documents inside of them. In a time where legal texts are used solely for decorative bookshelf purposes, that is just too much to ask.

But that is the behavior that two lawyers would expect of their professional colleagues. As we mentioned in Morning Docket, they claim that the legal database providers have been engaging in “unabashed wholesale copying of thousands of copyright-protected works created by, and owned by, the attorneys and law firms who authored them.”

Do they have any chance of winning their class action copyright suit?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Lawyers Sue Westlaw, Lexis-Nexis for Copyright Infringement”

245 Comments

Morning Docket: 02.23.12

By

Casey Anthony is pissed.

* And now another reason for lawyers to hate other lawyers (even more than they already do): Westlaw and LexisNexis are being sued for copyright infringement for selling access to publicly filed legal documents. [WSJ Law Blog]

* MGA Entertainment’s antitrust suit against Mattel has been dismissed. In celebration, attorneys from Quinn Emanuel will buy themselves hot pink convertibles while singing that “Barbie Girl” song. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Yesterday in the Golinski case, a federal judge ruled that the definition of marriage under DOMA is unconstitutional. Come on, even a Bush II appointee knows what’s up. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]

* After finally realizing that he was a lawyer and not an agent — and that his most infamous client wasn’t worth as much as he thought — Jose Baez dropped Casey Anthony like a bad habit. [Miami Herald]

* Former University of Virginia lax player George W. Huguely V was found guilty of second degree murder in the death of Yeardley Love. UVA students are instructed to pop their collars at half-staff. [Bloomberg]

9 Comments

Law School Students Go Insane Over LexisNexis’s Online Promotion

By

The great thing about free stuff is that it is free. Nobody cares what kind of plastic junk they’re getting as long as it’s free. Why do sports fans go nuts over t-shirt cannons, even though the shirts are ugly as hell and always XXL? Duh, because they’re free.

To me, it seems logical that no one has any right to complain when free stuff is taken away, or when it turns out to be a major letdown.

If you want a crummy T-shirt so badly, go buy one. If you want to go to Starbucks, don’t complain that your aunt Maggie didn’t give you a big enough gift card for Christmas. Just go buy your coffee.

Judging from a recent LexisNexis online promotion geared toward law students, though, it seems I might be in the minority. On its Facebook page, Lexis has been advertising “challenges” for law students. Supposedly, the first 1,000 students to complete each challenge win 1,000 “Lexis points,” which are similar to credit card rewards points.

Tragically, some computer problems caused students to have trouble accessing and submitting their answers earlier this week. A tidal wave of law school students became enraged and took to Lexis’s Facebook with their fury. Woe to he who angers law students….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Law School Students Go Insane Over LexisNexis’s Online Promotion”

26 Comments

All This Techno-Ignorance Will Make Your Head Explode

By

'How do I get these stupid marks to disappear from my document?'

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written about some über expensive and embarrassing examples of lawyers making technological mistakes.

Those stories involved sexily scandalous blunders, but they were relatively extreme scenarios. (If turning over thousands of privileged documents happens regularly at your firm, may God help you.)

More frequently, firm employees deal with little technological snafus that are just annoying, pointless, and a waste of time. In a world where attorneys might literally be working themselves to death, every second of the day counts. It’s when people can’t handle mundane, seriously easy computer tasks that daily tasks become inefficient and infuriating.

Keep reading for some true stories of the technologically challenged….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “All This Techno-Ignorance Will Make Your Head Explode”

36 Comments

Fear and Loathing in LegalTech

By

Daniel de Juan, a sales engineer from Mitratech, summed up perfectly what LegalTech was like for me this year: “Being at LegalTech is almost like being at a casino, in the sense that you lose all track of time.”

Two years ago, I found the conference to be pretty intimidating, and that was when the conference was much smaller due to the weak economy. Last year, LegalTech New York was much bigger, and I found it slightly overwhelming. This year, due to some bad planning on my part, I came home from LegalTech utterly exhausted.

It seems I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. After a quick search on the Internet, I have seen only a few things written up about the conference, so I’m guessing many people went through the same experience. (For example, I spoke with members of The Posse List on the first night, and they told me that they were gearing up to do 36 interviews during the two and a half day conference — so it must have been a whirlwind for them as well.)

That said, here are some musings from my adventure last week….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Fear and Loathing in LegalTech”

30 Comments

No More Asian Angels For Loyal Lexis Users

By

Asian Angels withdrawn canceled.jpgLast week, we reported on a questionable offering in the Lexis-Nexis Rewards Program store: an “Asian Angels” calendar.
Shortly after our post went up, the calendar came down. It seems that legal research companies respond well to media coverage.
But the calendar, despite being quickly withdrawn from the Lexis swag offerings, still incurred the ire of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at UC Berkeley.
Read their response, plus a statement from Lexis, below.

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “No More Asian Angels For Loyal Lexis Users”

65 Comments
Page 1 of 212