Here at Above the Law, we regularly cover benchslaps: judges laying the smackdown on poorly performing attorneys. But what about when it’s the judge who says, “I’ve made a tiny huge mistake”?
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh made a significant technological blunder in a patent case between two of Silicon Valley’s heaviest hitters. Yet her mistake is almost quaint. It harkens back to an earlier, simpler time –– like, pre-2006. When legal technology was a bit more primitive, and, more specifically, when the legal profession was still learning to master PDF files.
So, what did she do? Let’s just say she couldn’t keep a secret….
The responses from this week’s Career Center Survey on Biglaw bonus predictions suggest that many of you are optimistic about the potential for bigger year-end bonuses. We hope you are right… but do you really want to put all of your eggs in one basket? Keep your options open by becoming a Lateral Link member and receiving daily updates on new job openings. When Lateral Link recruiters find you a new Biglaw job, you’ll receive a $10,000 signing bonus.
Ready to get started? Check out today’s Job of the Week below, which is one of over 1,000 active openings available through Lateral Link.
Position: IP Litigation Associate
Description: The Dallas office of a prestigious international law firm is seeking a patent litigation associate with 3-6 years of IP experience and a background in electrical engineering, computer science, or physics. Stellar academics required.
Location: Dallas, TX
If you are currently a Lateral Link member, please see position #10114. Not a member? Sign up for free at www.laterallink.com to access hundreds of law firm and in-house jobs, and to work with a recruiter in your market.
To learn more about the Texas legal industry, contact Sara Gail, Lateral Link’s newest Associate Director in Texas, at sgail@laterallink.com. Prior to joining Lateral Link, Sara worked as an associate in the White Collar, Antitrust, and Securities Litigation group at Haynes and Boone LLP, and as an associate at Cooper & Scully, P.C. Sara holds a J.D., cum laude, from the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University.
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 Qualcomme-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?
The normally tepid e-discovery world felt a little extra heat of competition yesterday. Recommind, one of the larger e-discovery vendors, announced Wednesday that it was issued a patent on predictive coding (which Gabe Acevedo, writing in these pages, named the Big Legal Technology Buzzword of 2011).
In a nutshell, predictive coding is a relatively new technology that allows large chunks of document review to be automated, a.k.a. done mostly by computers, with less need for human management.
Some of Recommind’s competitors were not happy about the news. See how they responded (grumpily), and check out what Recommind’s General Counsel had to say about what this means for everyone who uses e-discovery products….
* Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer tapped the brakes on the Insane Train yesterday, vetoing one measure that would allow guns at schools and another that would require presidential candidates to prove they weren’t Kenyan immigrants hellbent on the destruction of Lee Greenwood. [TucsonSentinel.com]
* Microsoft went before the Supreme Court yesterday to argue that patents should be easier to challenge. Sotomayor spent the entire oral argument asking the Microsoft attorney how she could fit more Miami Sound Machine on her Zune. [Reuters]
* Customer accounts have been frozen following the indictment of online poker companies. Bloomberg decided this was the perfect time to upload their stock poker photo, featuring the caption “A royal flush, circa 1950.” [Bloomberg]
* And here’s a rundown of the potential attorneys and firms who will work the defense side in said p-p-p-poker case. [Am Law Daily]
* The Taco Bell soylent beef lawsuit was dropped yesterday. Posting will be light today while Elie makes a run for the border. [NPR]
* Yo, Mr. Dopeman, you think you’re slick. You sold crack to my sister and now she’s sick. But if she happens to die because of your drug, federal judges will have a difficult time sentencing you. Oof, that N.W.A. lyric took a weird turn, didn’t it? [New York Times]
* The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by five Uyghurs being detained in Guantanamo Bay. On a related note, I just wasted a good ten minutes listening to this pronunciation of Uyghur. [CNN]
* Match.com will begin cross-checking users against sex offender registries after being sued. Whatever, juggalove.com is more my speed anyway. [WSJ Law Blog]
On Tuesday, Ropes & Gray was sued in Manhattan federal court by a former partner, Patricia A. Martone. Martone’s lawsuit claims age discrimination, sex discrimination, retaliation, and interference with protected retirement benefits in violation of ERISA (the basis for federal jurisdiction in the S.D.N.Y.).
As you might expect from an ex-Ropes partner, Martone has some high-powered counsel: Anne Vladeck, one of New York’s top labor and employment lawyers, widely regarded as the queen of employment discrimination law. Vladeck famously (and successfully) represented Anucha Browne Sanders in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Isiah Thomas and the Knicks.
Patricia Martone is a veteran intellectual-property litigatrix, a specialist in patent litigation, with almost 40 years of practice under her belt. She made partner at Fish & Neave, the well-known patent law firm, in 1983, and then became a Ropes partner in 2005, when Ropes absorbed Fish. She’s now a partner at Morrison & Foerster, which she joined in October 2010.
Why did she leave Ropes? Let’s have a look at Patricia Martone, and her lawsuit….
* Awesome diary of a rich wife trying to cut back on expenses. [Going Concern]
* Justice Elena Kagan — who currently lives in D.C., and apparently plans to stay there — was called for jury duty by the District. She wasn’t seated, since we don’t let supremely qualified people sit on juries. [ABC News]
* Bros at George Washington have been charged with being bros. Given what I think about bullying, you can imagine how little tolerance I have for anti-hazing laws. [Jezebel]
* Real prison time for a virtual bully. [WSJ Law Blog]
I’m a jobless 3L with waning hope (shocking). I want to practice patent law in some capacity, but I majored in mathematics and only gained patent bar eligibility through an 8 hour engineering exam last April. Apparently I’m not a hedonist these days. Anyway, by the time I got my passing results on the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering exam), the summer Chicago Patent Firm Festival application deadline had lapsed.
I’m now considering going back to school to get a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. Do you think it would injure my (non-existent) law career to take a couple years away from the law in order to educate myself further in eventual pursuit of patent aspirations?? (And to give myself a back up career, let’s be serious).
– Patently Nerdy
Dear Patently Nerdy,
I stared at the sentence “Apparently I’m not a hedonist these days,” wondering what that meant and if it was final confirmation that I had lost cognitive abilities after the concussion, but I concluded that that sentence makes no sense and that you were trying to say “I’m a glutton for punishment.”
Today was the last day of the Supreme Court term (and also the last day on the Court for Justice John Paul Stevens). The SCOTUS handed down four blockbuster opinions — on the same day that the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan are starting. Coincidence?
In alphabetical order, the four cases are (click on each case name to access the ScotusWiki page):
Bilski v. Kappos (patent law): “Whether a ‘process’ must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transform a particular article into a different state or thing (‘machine-or-transformation’ test), to be eligible for patenting….”
Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (First Amendment right of association): “Whether a public university law school may deny school funding and other benefits to a religious student organization because the group requires its officers and voting members to agree with its core religious viewpoints.”
Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (separation of powers): “Whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is consistent with separation-of-powers principles — as the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is in turn overseen by the President — or contrary to the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, as the PCAOB members are appointed by the SEC.”
McDonald v. City of Chicago (guns / Second Amendment incorporation): the applicability of the Second Amendment to state and local governments.
How were these cases resolved? Find out, after the jump.
We often get excited about the Job of the Week, but this one is particularly delicious. If we were junior litigators, we’d do 100 trips up and down the Santa Monica stairs just to apply to this spot (which is convenient, since they are nearby).
A top-notch boutique firm, overlooking the ocean, with no billable hours and a compensation package that could be two to three times market…. What’s the catch? You have to have graduated from the top of your class at a top 10 law school. This position is a Lateral Link exclusive, so if you are interested in being considered for it, contact the good folks over at Lateral Link. Position: IP Litigation Associate Location: Santa Monica, CA Description: An IP litigation boutique seeks an attorney with 1 to 3 years of experience. The successful candidate would be expected to quickly develop the skill and experience needed to run his or her own cases, draft and argue key motions, take depositions, manage client relationships, handle settlement negotiations, and participate in arbitration and trial.
Compensation will depend in part on experience level but will be market-competitive and consist of a base salary and firm-revenue-based bonus. There is no cap on the upside. Compensation may surpass market rates by a multiple of 2-3 times, depending on firm revenues. A clerkship bonus is also available.
Requirements and a link to the full listing, after the jump.
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Here at Above the Law, we regularly cover benchslaps: judges laying the smackdown on poorly performing attorneys. But what about when it’s the judge who says, “I’ve made a tiny huge mistake”?
