Phishing

A lethal threat looms.

Phishing emails have 'grown up' and changed form, often delivered as a text message to your smartphone.

After a 2011 phishing incident, Metro Community Provider Network has agreed to pay $400,000 to settle claims that it violated HIPAA.

Hackers taking advantage of neurotic lawyers.

The mistake was caught by the firm when employees started reporting they were victims of fraud.

In the wake of the big hack of Biglaw, it's time to focus on what you can do to make yourself more cyber-secure.

Is your law firm prestigious enough to be targeted by Russian hackers? Check out this list of almost 50 Biglaw targets.

* Just because you showed up drunk for jury duty, it doesn’t mean you should have to go to jail for it — at least according to the Florida Supreme Court. [Daily Business Review]

* George Will on why Republicans may wind up wishing they’d confirmed Chief Judge Merrick Garland when they had the chance. [Washington Post]

* Amal Clooney, speaking at a government communications summit in the United Arab Emirates, urges governments to be vocal, consistent, principled, expedient, and transparent when dealing with human rights issues. [Yahoo News]

* High academic achievement now linked to… failure in the workplace? Well, that’s simultaneously depressing and comforting. [Law and More]

* A former U.S. State Department employee faces up to 8 years in jail for a massive phishing scheme aimed at getting young women to share nude photos. [CS Monitor]

* Check out The Merrick Garland Project by NYU Law Review. It’s a curation of select opinions written by Chief Judge Garland, organized by topic. [The Merrick Garland Project]

* The obstructed Supreme Court nomination process gets a children’s book treatment. [Slate]

Tech columnist Jeff Bennion speaks with Mounil Patel of Mimecast about how hackers are trying to get our email -- and what we can do about it.

* Should town clerks opposed to gay marriage be required to issue licenses to all couples? The Sixth Circuit says…. [How Appealing]

* John H. Ray III, the African American ex-associate at Ropes & Gray who claimed the elite firm discriminated against him, loses in court again, this time before the First Circuit. [National Law Journal]

* Vester Lee Flanagan aka Bryce Williams, the Virginia television broadcaster who killed two colleagues on-air before killing himself, was also no stranger to the legal system: he filed multiple lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. [New York Times]

* Why are in-house lawyers more likely than their non-attorney corporate colleagues to fall for phishing emails? [ABA Journal]

* Dewey know when the prosecution will rest in this seemingly endless trial? Probably today. [Wall Street Journal]

* State judges get nasty with each other in Oregon. [Oregonian]

* Federal judges around the country are advocating for a second look at how defendants get sentenced. [New York Times]

* The Dilly in Philly: Paul Clement v. Ted Olson. [Am Law Litigation Daily]

* A T14 law graduate turned “traveling artist” gets charged with criminal sexual assault in Chicago. [Chicago Tribune]

* Speaking of sexual assault laws, Emily Bazelon explains how the St. Paul’s Rape Case shows why these laws must change. [New York Times]

* Update: convicted Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes didn’t get just a life sentence, but 12 life sentences — plus 3,318 years on top of that. [CNN]

* Linda Hirshman, author of the forthcoming book Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World (affiliate link), explains how Justices O’Connor, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor brought wisdom to SCOTUS (but where’s the love for Justice Kagan?). [Slate via How Appealing]

* Too many students who still apply and attend law school, convinced they are the special snowflake that will beat the odds, are just lying to themselves. [Law and More]

* A new motion in the case of Adnan Syed, featured in the inaugural and highly successful first season of the Serial podcast, casts doubt on key evidence used to convict him. [Gawker]

* Attention in-house counsel: Please, please, please stop sending money to a Nigerian prince. It is, in fact, a scam. [Corporate Counsel]

* The legal battle to define mayo has reached its conclusion. Cutting edge of the legal world people. [Slate]

* Colleges are back in session and have to deal with the ramifications of incredibly offensive and juvenile behavior. Again. [Popehat]

* Is it possible there will be a legal research competitor to Lexis and Westlaw? Or Nah? [William Ha]

Why are law firms seen as soft, ripe targets for hackers? Columnist Keith Lee explains.

Who wants to guess which school pulled this boneheaded move? Hint: It's a top 50 school in the U.S. News rankings...

Due to security concerns, the lights will now go out on personal emails.

Having spam emails sent out under your name: it can happen to any of us. Including, it seems, the spouse of a Supreme Court justice....

This news is more than a little scary. Google announced yesterday that hackers in China had gotten access to hundreds of Gmail accounts. And it wasn’t just anyone’s email. The attack targeted senior government officials in the United States, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries, military personnel, and journalists. I have a feeling […]

Raise your hand if you are a JPMorgan Chase customer. Now raise your hand if you’ve shopped at Best Buy. How about Citibank, Target or Walgreens? Has everybody in the world raised their hands yet? Congratulations — your email address may have been stolen. There was a data breach at Epsilon, a Texas-based marketing firm, […]

Is “phishing” running rampant throughout the legal community? A few weeks ago, Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School fell victim to a phishing scam. As the HLS Help Desk helpfully explained at the time, “Phishing emails are fraudulent email messages claiming to be from a legitimate source that ask you to send confidential information […]

First of all, Happy Chanukah. May your candles burn bright. It is certainly possible that some lowly internet hacker was trying to take advantage of some holiday compassion when he or she hacked the email of Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson. Nesson is a well-known figure in “internet and the law” circles — as […]