Twitter for us is like a parliament, but not the kind of parliament that exists in this region. It’s a true parliament, where people from all political sides meet and speak freely.
– Faisal Abdullah, a Saudi Arabian lawyer, explaining to the New York Times how Twitter has created a revolution of sorts in his country.
Alex Macgillivray
No one wants a pen that’s going to rat them out. We all want pens that can be used to write anything, and that will stand up for who we are.
– Alexander Macgillivray, general counsel of Twitter, commenting to the New York Times about the social media giant’s legal efforts to protect the privacy of its users.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming president. When I got older and realized becoming president would require a ridiculous amount of work on my part, I settled on the only dream worth a damn in this country: I want to win the lottery. And not some rinkydink $1 or $2 million jackpot, either. I want to win a bunch of money. I’m an adult American and I daydream about winning the Powerball at least three times a week.
And I suspect that this does not distinguish me from many of my peers in the legal community. I don’t have hard stats on this, but anecdotal evidence gleaned from conversations with several of my friends who hate being lawyers suggests that ninety-seven percent of recent law school graduates want nothing more than to win the lottery and tell the miserable senior associate who made them work last weekend to get bent.
Theodore Scott knows what I’m talking about. He’s an attorney who spent 22 years getting beat down by the legal profession and thought he had found a way out….
One of the best and worst things about modern social media is the ability to know exactly how many followers or Facebook “likes” you, your friends, your competitors, and your enemies have. It’s useful to be able to rank yourself among other people, but it’s not hard to get overly concerned with boosting your stats. But metrics quickly become muddled when one realizes the mere “following” numbers are not totally transparent.
Case in point: a midsize law firm was publicly called out for some sketchy Tweetness, now the firm is learning the hard way that not all Twitter followers are created equal…
Continue reading “Law Firm Buys Fake Twitter Followers, Public Mockery Included at No Charge”
Welcome to the Matrix, err, 7th grade…
After what feels like years of schools trying to regulate every aspect of children’s social media lives, it looks as though we may have finally hit a threshold. There may actually be an electronic bridge that schools cannot cross in their attempts to spy on educate underage students.
In a particularly egregious case, a Minnesota federal court handed down a ruling that protects off-campus speech and prohibits schools from forcing students to hand over private login information. The ruling will hopefully put the kibosh on a practice that never should have been acceptable to begin with…
Standing trial for allegedly stabbing your significant other to death is not where anyone wants to be. Being unable to afford your own atttorney adds a whole new layer of stress to the whole “on trial for murder” issue. Now, add to the mix a public defender who takes a photo of the underwear your family brought you to wear during trial and posts it to Facebook.
Oh yeah, we should mention that the lawyer here is a woman, and the murder defendant is a man. And the underpants were leopard print.
CHECK YOU ineffective assistance of counsel….
If you use Facebook, you’ve probably noticed the sponsored stories that periodically pop up within the site. These (IMHO annoying) ads are an important part of Facebook’s revenue strategy. But recently, the company got sued over the stories, for allegedly violating the law by publicizing — but not paying — users who “like” certain advertisers, and not providing a way to opt out of the program. A settlement plan was recently announced. But uh oh, the federal judge handling the case rejected the settlement on Friday. Why?
Maybe something to do with the plaintiffs attorneys getting $10 million, the actual plaintiffs getting nothing, and an overall sense that left the judge wondering if the terms were “merely plucked from thin air”….
Continue reading “I Don’t Think Class Action Settlement Means What You Think It Means”
Yesterday we covered the internet brouhaha over Progressive Insurance. The insurance company caught a lot of internet flak after comedian Matt Fisher wrote this provocative blog post: My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court. Outrage against Progressive’s apparent provision of a defense to the driver who killed Katie Fisher — even though Katie Fisher was Progressive’s insured, not that driver — went viral over social media (especially after actor Wil Wheaton got involved).
Now Progressive is paying up. The company has reached a settlement with the Fisher family.
We recently heard from Progressive’s PR firm, which sent us a statement on the Fisher case. What does Flo have to say for herself?
Continue reading “Progressive Professes the Insurance Company Creed”
Last time we checked in with Paul Ceglia — the Man Who Would Be King of Facebook — and his lawsuit claiming partial ownership of the social media giant, he was facing sanctions if he refused to provide Facebook with a very touchy document known as the Kasowitz letter.
Well, the production deadline has come and gone, and there’s no letter. You know what that means. All aboarrrd! Next stop, Benchslap City…
If you were on the internet at all yesterday, you likely heard about this. Your mom probably posted it on her Facebook wall and a thousand of your tweeps probably hit you up on the Twitter to register their outrage. On Monday, a comedian by the name of Matt Fisher wrote a post on his tumblr account titled “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court.” What resulted was an outpouring of rage and hive-minded moralizing that has become the internet’s stock in trade. A great injustice had been done and, dammit, the internet was going to save the day. Or at least tweet about the day. Even Wil Wheaton made an impassioned cameo in the great shoutathon, presumably because a cameo is the best Wil Wheaton can hope for these days.
And this great unwashed mass of outrage went to sleep last night and slept like babies, secure in the smug knowledge that they had done good. Of course, the picture that was so broadly painted yesterday didn’t do justice to anyone. Progressive Insurance is not evil and the Internet remains a cesspool of pornography and legal blog posts. Matt Fisher did a pretty solid number on Progressive Insurance; this is true. They’ve taken a great PR hit, and most coverage of the whole affair has quickly moved on from any sort of analysis of the actual claim itself to a much easier consideration of how, and in which ways, Progressive Insurance is royally f**ked.
This is a shame….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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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.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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