Technology

Non-Sequiturs: 10.12.12

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* Even silly prime-time television shows can raise serious, interesting legal questions. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Joe Biden is hilarious, Paul Ryan is Eddie Haskel, yadda yadda, but let’s not forget that judicial appointments are kind of a big deal here in this election, too. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* For anyone interested in the prestigious Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) program, check out the new Path to PMF initiative, which will prepare you for the application process. [Path to PMF]

* This judge is upping the ante for prospective jurors who can’t stay off the Google machine. [Tampa Bay Times]

* Go see the America’s Funniest Attorney competition next week AND help fight juvenile diabetes. [Gotham Comedy Club]

* Meet David Lat in the flesh — or at least hear him speak — at UC Hastings on Monday evening. [California Lawyer]

After the jump, check out Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg Law interview the author of Adam Smith, Esq., on the implications of “suicide pricing”….

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Ex-Judge of the Day: Nobody Wants to See the ‘Judicial Penis’

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Along with all the wonders and ease of technology — the world wide web at your fingertips, the ability to send photos of your family vacations from the top of a mountain — there are also some serious accompanying risks. Like the possibility of forgetting to delete a stray picture of your privates and accidentally showing it to a colleague in the middle of a cellphone slideshow of otherwise innocent family and church photos.

Oops.

But that’s what former Philadelphia traffic court judge Willie Singletary did. He resigned several months ago over the blunder, and now he’s been officially called out by the state’s Judicial Discipline Committee…..

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A Closer Look at the ‘Chaos’ of the American Patent System

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On the day the iPhone 5 became available to the public, I wrote a post asking if the new smartphone might be a sign of the IP apocalypse. I’m not the only one, apparently.

Finally, the rumblings of discontent within the tech and legal industries haved boiled over into the mainstream. The New York Times wrote an extensive front-page story yesterday, chronicling the intellectual property arms race gripping the industry.

A lot of the subjects in the piece may be familiar to Above the Law’s readers. We’ve covered Apple’s schizophrenic attitude towards patents and the America Invents Act (and how it could affect one’s ability to patent bedroom gymnastics).

But let’s take a closer look and put it all in context…

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Quote of the Day: What Is This Thing You Call A ‘Pen’?

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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.

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Law Firm Website Weirdness: What’s Going On?

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Have you tried visiting the website of your favorite major law firm today and encountered something like this? Here’s a screenshot for Davis Polk (but you’ll see something similar for Cravath, Jones Day, White & Case, and many other top firms that tipsters emailed us about today):

Let’s find out why this is occurring….

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Alleged ‘Hoodlums’ Upload Search Engine Optimized Assault Footage to YouTube, Lead Police Right to Them

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There are many worrisome aspects of online privacy — or the lack thereof. But on the upside, poor privacy protections do come with certain benefits. For example, stupid criminals more often expose themselves to prosecution — and public ridicule. Yesterday, we mentioned some teenagers who broke into a man’s house, threw a party, and then threw the photos on Facebook, where the man saw them and called police.

Today we have a more violent but similar story, this time from Philadelphia. Police posted security footage of several teenagers beating up a middle-aged man inside a supermarket, only to discover the assailants had also apparently posted footage of the crime on YouTube.

At least the alleged assaulters have a firm grasp on search engine optimization…

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Morning Docket: 10.03.12

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Not so fast, Canellas…

* Yeah, about that huge bonus we were going to pay our ex-finance director — we realized how silly that was, so we’re not going to do that. Aww, don’t worry, Dewey & LeBoeuf, you’ll have plenty of other chances to look absurd. [Am Law Daily]

* Not only is Samsung suing Apple for patent infringement, but the company is also trying to get a do over by getting Judge Lucy Koh to throw out the original billion-dollar verdict over jury foreman Velvin Hogan’s alleged misconduct. [Bloomberg]

* “Small deals are easier to swallow, easier to integrate.” Regional firms like Carlton Fields and Adams and Reese are gobbling up smaller firms in what seems to be the latest trend in law firm merger mania activity. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Douglas Arntsen, the former Crowell & Moring associate who had to be extradited from Hong Kong after embezzling $10.7M from clients, pleaded guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence. [New York Law Journal]

* It’s tough to come up with appropriate whistleblower jokes given the background here. We’ll play it straight: Mike McQueary filed a defamation suit against Penn State, and he’s seeking $4M in damages. [ABC News]

* Jose Godinez-Samperio, an undocumented immigrant, is fighting for the ability to practice law in Florida, but the members of the state Supreme Court are literally trying to make it into a “federal case.” [Washington Post]

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.02.12

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* A case of alleged murder by legal form. Christ, this sounds like a bad Twilight Zone episode. [Lake Expo]

* A novel reason why teenagers should still refrain from posting party pictures on Facebook, future job concerns be damned. [ABA Journal]

* Kirkland & Ellis donated $5 million to the Northwestern University Law School. I think some celebratory key jangling is in order. [Northwestern News Center]

* Con law nerds, you can now check out the audio from the Supreme Court’s announcement of its ruling in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. the Obamacare case. [Oyez]

* What do the naked Kate Middleton pictures mean for modern privacy law? Other than the fact that all famous people should just become nevernudes, obviously. [LinkedIn]

* A judge blocked the controversial Pennsylvania Voter ID law, at least until election season ends. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Although law school application rates are falling across most of the country, application numbers have spiked at the extraordinarily prestigious Kansas University School of Law. Wait, what? [LJWorld]

* Oh lord, here we go again. Samsung sued Apple for patent infringement in the iPhone 5. Let’s begin round #72,354. Ding! [CNET]

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Biglaw Firms Join the San Francisco Start-up Gold Rush

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Out west, we’re in the middle of a gold rush. Programmers, marketers, and young business school grads are flocking to the Bay Area all with big dreams of striking start-up gold.

If you wander down Market Street, you’ll hear people mumbling a mantra: “Internet business. Internet business. Internet business.” Or perhaps, “Please let Google buy me. Please let Google buy me.”

Lawyers don’t usually play too much into this equation, except for the unfortunate in-house counsel tasked with explaining to a start-up’s management why playing beer pong in the conference room during work hours may be an unwise decision.

Or are attorneys much more relevant here than the layman might realize? Yesterday, the New York Times profiled a storied Biglaw firm that’s playing quite a part in the current tech bubble boom. It’s not this firm’s first time at the rodeo, but other firms smell dollars in the air, too, and there’s a battle brewing over who will represent the next Google, Facebook, what have you.

Which Biglaw firm is leading the charge?

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Ennui. Rhymes With Crap Tea.

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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….

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