15 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology
≈ Comments Off on “How To” Tip for iPhone and iPad.
How to Use Caps Lock on Your iPhone and iPad, by Lori Kaufman, How-To Geek Blog
http://www.howtogeek.com/233097/how-to-use-caps-lock-on-your-iphone-and-ipad/
You just got your new iPhone after switching from Android and you want to type something in all caps. How do you use caps lock in iOS 9? We’ll tell you how to type all caps and also how to enable and disable the caps lock feature. . . .
15 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in Certification, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Regulation, South Carolina Supreme Court
≈ Comments Off on South Carolina Supreme Court Creates Board of Paralegal Certification.
Tags
Board of Paralegal Certification, Edward Nelson, examiner.com, NY Public Policy Examiner, Paralegal Certification, Supreme Court of South Carolina
South Carolina Supreme Court creates a State Board of Paralegal Certification, by Edward Nelson, NY Public Policy Examiner, examiner.com (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)
Today [November 11, 2015], the South Carolina Supreme Court issued an Order which gives legitimacy to Rule 429 of the South Carolina Appellate Court Rules (SCACR) and creates the Board of Paralegal Certification where paralegals can voluntarily apply to become certified with the State of South Carolina. According to the Supreme Court, ‘The purpose of certification of South Carolina’s paralegals is to assist in the delivery of legal services to the public by identifying individuals who are qualified by education, training, and experience and who have demonstrated knowledge, skill, and proficiency to perform substantive legal work under the direction and supervision of a lawyer licensed in South Carolina.’
This is a tremendous Order from the South Carolina Supreme Court issued on November 12, 2015. The Board of Paralegal Certification shall be formed of five (5) attorneys in good standing with the South Carolina Bar and four (4) paralegals certified under the program which constitutes a nine (9) member board. . . .
11 Wednesday Nov 2015
Posted in Courts, Federal District Court Rules
≈ Comments Off on The Amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Effective December 1, 2015.
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp
The full text of every federal civil procedure rule, including Notes and Committee Notes. -CCE
11 Wednesday Nov 2015
Posted in Bankruptcy Law
≈ Comments Off on Bankruptcy Forms Substantially Change Effective December 1, 2015.
Pending Changes in the Bankruptcy Forms, United States Courts
http://www.uscourts.gov/rules-policies/pending-rules-amendments/pending-changes-bankruptcy-forms
Most Official Bankruptcy Forms will be replaced with substantially revised, reformatted and renumbered versions effective December 1, 2015. . . .
10 Tuesday Nov 2015
Posted in Appellate Law, Civil Rights, Excessive Force, Governmental Tort Claim Act, Qualified Immunity, United States Supreme Court
≈ Comments Off on The U.S. Supreme Court, Qualified Immunity, Deadly Force, and a Car Chase.
Tags
Excessive Use of Force, Law Enforcement, Law Librarians Blog, Mark Giangrande, Qualified Immunity
Supreme Court Action: Qualified Immunity When Deadly Force is Used By Officers During A Car Chase, by Mark Giangrande, Law Librarians Blog
It will be interesting to see how this ruling may be applied to recent news events. –CCE
The Supreme Court issued one opinion today [November 9, 2015]. The case, Mullenix v. Luna (14-1143), decided whether a Texas state trooper (Mullenix) was entitled to qualified immunity when he fired shots at a suspect’s car during a high speed chase, killing the suspect. . . .
08 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in Discovery, Social Media, Subpoena Duces Tecum
≈ Comments Off on How To Subpoena Social Media – Updated 2015.
Tags
Associate'sMind Blog, Discovery, Electronic Communication Service, Keith Lee, Remote Computing Service, Social media, Stored Communications Act, Subpoena Duces Tecum
Social Media Subpoena Guide 2015 Edition, posted by Keith Lee, Associate’sMind Blog
http://associatesmind.com/2015/01/26/social-media-subpoena-guide-2015-edition/
I cannot explain why people lose their sense of discretion and decorum on social media. I just know that it often happens. In some areas of law, Facebook is a lawyer’s gift from God. How many of you routinely tell your clients to close their social media websites and/or delete incriminating photos and posts?
If you get lucky, the person who swore in a deposition that he never drinks alcohol has a picture on his or a friend’s Facebook page in which he is chugging a beer with a big thumb’s up. Don’t you just love it when that happens? Ah, good times.
But it is not always easy to get your sticky fingers on the smoking gun. Keith Lee has some good advice for finding and obtaining social media, which he has generously shared with us. -CCE
I initially wrote about how to subpoena various social media sites back in 2011. Seeing as it has been a few years I thought it was time to provide an update.
08 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Intellectual Property, Legal Writing, Legalese, Patent Law, Plain Language, Readability
≈ Comments Off on The Effort to Make and Keep Patents Correct and Clear.
Tags
Dennis Crouch, Intellectual Property, Michelle K. Lee, PatentlyO Blog, Patents, Plain Language, US Patent and Trademark Office
Director Michelle Lee: Moving toward Patent Clarity, posted by Dennis Crouch, PatentlyO Blog
The following is a post from Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee and was published on the PTO Director’s blog.
Patent quality is central to fulfilling a core mission of the USPTO, which as stated in the Constitution, is to ‘promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ It is critically important that the USPTO issue patents that are both correct and clear. Historically, our primary focus has been on correctness, but the evolving patent landscape has challenged us to increase our focus on clarity.
Patents of the highest quality can help to stimulate and promote efficient licensing, research and development, and future innovation without resorting to needless high-cost court proceedings. Through correctness and clarity, such patents better enable potential users of patented technologies to make informed decisions on how to avoid infringement, whether to seek a license, and/or when to settle or litigate a patent dispute. Patent owners also benefit from having clear notice on the boundaries of their patent rights. After and after successfully reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications, our agency is redoubling its focus on quality.
We asked for your help on how we can best improve quality—and you responded.
03 Tuesday Nov 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Legal Writing, Pleadings
≈ Comments Off on If You Don’t Need It, Don’t Plead It.-
Be A Winning Writer, Not A Self-Indulgent One, Starting With Complaints, by John G. Balestriere, Above the Law Blog (with hat tip to Allen Mihecoby, CLAS, RP®)
‘In law it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.’ – Abraham Lincoln
We lawyers love to write, at least most of us do (as well we should, since to say it’s a big part of our job is an understatement). But as with all of the work we do, we need to remember our writing has a purpose: any of the writings we submit as litigators to a court or arbitrator must be directed towards winning for our clients.
02 Monday Nov 2015
Posted in Evidence, Insurance Defense, Litigation, Personal Injury, Product Liability, Torts
≈ Comments Off on Seventh Circuit Rules On The Weight Of Scientific Evidence.
Tags
Brian O'Connor Watson, Causation, Neil Loyd, Personal Injury, Product Liability, Product Liability & Mass Torts Blog, Robert H. Riley, Scientific Evidence, Toxic Torts
Seventh Circuit Ruling On Scientific Evidence Closes Some Doors But Opens Others, by Robert H. Riley, Neil Loyd, and Brian O’Connor Watson, Product Liability & Mass Torts Blog
Exposure to potentially harmful substances at some level is a fact of modern life. These substances are everywhere — in the air we breathe, in the food we eat, and in the water we drink — and many of these substances are naturally occurring. It is impossible to have zero exposure to all of them.
For both science and law, however, the issue is not whether someone has some detectable exposure. Rather, it is whether the dose was sufficient (in quantity and duration) to cause harm.
02 Monday Nov 2015
Posted in Legal Directory, References, Research, Wayback Machine
≈ Comments Off on Search Engine for The Wayback Machine!
International School of Information Science
http://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/archive/archive_web.aspx
and
The Wayback Machine, Internet Archive
These links are two great ways to get to the Wayback Machine. Not familiar with it? Please allow me introduce you. The Wayback Machine has been around for 19 years, and has literally billions of saved URLs. If you ever tried a hyperlink and got that annoying 404 message, did you know it was still alive and well on the Wayback Machine?
As you can imagine, the Wayback Machine is huge. There has been only one way to search on the Wayback Machine – you had to have the URL. If did not have the exact URL, you were out of luck.
The great news is that the Laura and John Arnold Foundation have donated several million dollars to create a search engine for the Wayback Machine. The word is that it will be ready sometime in 2017. Imagine being able to search that much data!
Commonly, if you are researching on the Internet, you use Google, Bing, or another major search engine. How long do those links stay available? It varies, right? You thought Google was huge? It is said that the Wayback Machine has snapshots of every webpage ever posted on the Internet. Every single one.
Think about a researcher’s possibilities when the search engine is up and running. It is going to be interesting. -CCE
02 Monday Nov 2015
Posted in Class Actions, Litigation, Torts
≈ Comments Off on A Different Perspective On Mass Torts.
Tags
Class Action, Litigation and Trial Blog, Mass Torts, Max Kennerly, Quantum Meruit, Tort Reform, Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuits
The Lucrative Mass Torts Scam That Wasn’t, by Max Kennerly, Esq., Litigation and Trial, The Law Blog of Plaintiff’s Lawyer Max Kennerly
The lawsuit brought by financier Amir Shenaq against mass-torts law firm AkinMears has made the rounds of the tort reform blogs (e.g., SETexas Record, Daniel Fisher at Forbes, and Paul Barrett at Bloomberg), so I figured some plaintiff-side commentary was in order. The details of the lawsuit confirm what I’ve been saying for years: ‘Mass torts is not an area in which you want to dabble and start throwing around discounts. It’s work, it’s risky, and it can be very, very expensive.’
27 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in ALWD, Citations, Legal Writing, Public Domain Citations, The Bluebook
≈ Comments Off on Legal Citation Honey Pot.
Tags
ALWD Citation Manual, Andrew Zimmerman, Bluebook, Legal Citations, State Citation Manuals, Universal Citations, Zimmerman's Research Guide
Citations, Zimmerman’s Research Guide©2015, by Andrew Zimmerman
https://law.lexisnexis.com/infopro/zimmermans/disp.aspx?z=1288
Zimmerman’s Research Guide has been around a long time, and is definitely worthy of a bookmark. Here is a very nice collection of legal citation guides that drills down a bit deeper than most. -CCE
27 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in Ethics Opinions, Judges, Legal Ethics, Legal Technology, Research, Rules of Professional Responsibility
≈ Comments Off on Is It Wrong To Research Your Judge And Jury? Is It Wrong If You Don’t?
The Do’s and Don’ts of Researching Judges and Juries Online, by Anna Massoglia, The Lawyerist Blog
It makes sense to research potential jurors, and social media makes it easier than ever. But courts have only recently begun to issue guidance now that researching jurors and other courtroom players online is becoming an increasingly common practice.
Researching judges, too, has its advantages. Some jurisdictions, like California, allow you to strike a judge once per case without establishing bias. Although there are limitations and technicalities on these rules, they can give you a say in who decides cases — making it important to know your judge. . . .
26 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Document Retention, File Naming Conventions, Law Office Management, Legal Technology, Office Procedures, Technology
≈ Comments Off on Going Paperless?
Tags
Bryan Sims, File Naming Conventions, Jim Calloway, Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, Office Manuals, Paperless Office
‘Paperless’ Office Doesn’t Really Mean Paperless, But It Does Mean New Processes and Procedures, by Jim Calloway, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog
http://www.lawpracticetipsblog.com/2015/10/paperless-processes-and-procedures.html
‘Let’s just go paperless. We can free up all that space in the file room and quit paying so much for outside file storage.’
“What a great idea!
* * *
Thus begins the perfect storm of a paperless law firm makeover absolutely destined to fail. . . .
25 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Legal Technology, PowerPoint, Presentations
≈ Comments Off on The Most Effective Use of PowerPoint.
Tags
Comedy Central, PowerPoint, Stephen Colbert, Teaching Community, The Colbert Report, The Word, Tom DeRosa
What Stephen Colbert Teaches Us About Effective Presentations, by Tom DeRosa, Teaching Community
Although Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report has run its course and is no longer on the air, I have always thought that “The Word” was the best use of PowerPoint I have ever seen. The PowerPoint slides did not provide the content of the presentation, which is common. Instead, as the punchline, each PowerPoint slide hit the mark. -CCE
Great lessons for educators can be found in the most unlikely of places. One such example can be found on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, in a reoccurring segment called ‘The Word’. In ‘The Word,’ host Stephen Colbert uses one word or phrase as a jumping off point for his unique editorial commentary.
Now, some might dismiss ‘The Word’ on it’s face as partisan punditry. The truthiness, of course, is that ‘The Word’ is the best, most effective PowerPoint presentation ever broadcast. . . .
21 Wednesday Oct 2015
Posted in Implied Bias, Jury Persuasion, Jury Selection, Trial Tips and Techniques, Voir Dire
≈ Comments Off on Understand Group Psychology Patterns for Winning Trial Strategy.
Tags
Group Psychology, Jury Persuasion, Jury Selection, Ken Lopez, The Litigation Consulting Report, Voir Dire, Wilfred Bion
Group Psychology, Voir Dire, Jury Selection and Jury Deliberations, by Ken Lopez, The Litigation Consulting Report
Since first being exposed to the group psychology work of Wilfred Bion 15 years ago, I’ve been completely fascinated by it. I think his theories perfectly explain the behavior of every group that I’ve ever encountered. From boards that I sit on to groups on reality TV shows, they all behave in the same predictable ways, especially when placed under pressure. . . . [Emphasis added.]
19 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Legal Writing, Legalese
≈ Comments Off on The Worst Legal Writing Ever?
We Created the Worst Piece of Legal Writing Possible, by Sam Glover, Lisa Needham, and Sam Harden, Lawyerist Blog (with hat tip to Raymond Ward!)
https://lawyerist.com/91373/we-created-the-worst-piece-of-legal-writing-possible/#disqus_thread
I have to admit that it’s a good effort at legalese, but is it the worst legal writing you have ever read? Does it deserve a place in the Legal Writing Hall of Shame? You be the judge! -CCE
Legalese is awful. To prove it, we forced three lawyers (Sam Glover, Lisa Needham, and Sam Harden) to combine their skills to write the worst piece of legal writing imaginable. Here’s what they came up with:
Clarity in Legal Writing: Unattainable Goal or Necessary Component of Effective Advocacy?
The issue of clearness and conciseness in writing and preparing legal documents, e.g. court filings, pleadings, and motions and all other possible legal and ancillary documents is often a topic of discussion among judges and legal scholars. . . .
17 Saturday Oct 2015
Posted in Corporate Law
≈ Comments Off on On August 1, 2015, Delaware Amended Its Business Entity Laws.
Delaware Amends its Business Entity Laws, by Sandra B. Feldman, Publications Attorney for CT Corporation
https://ct.wolterskluwer.com/resource-center/news/delaware-amends-its-business-entity-laws
If you are the owner, manager, compliance officer, or counsel for one of the more than one million Delaware domestic corporations, limited liability companies, or partnerships, it should interest you to know that important amendments to the state’s corporation and alternative entity laws are going into effect on August 1. Here are some highlights. . . .
16 Friday Oct 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Editing, Grammar, Legal Writing, Legalese, Plain Language, Proofreading, Punctuation, Readability
≈ Comments Off on Plain Language Examples – Before and After.
Before-and-After Comparisons, PlainLanguge.gov
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/index.cfm
There are a number of superior – and free – websites available to anyone who wants to improve his legal writing skills. PlainLaguage.gov is one of them.
I doubt that anyone wants to write poorly. Often, just showing before-and-after examples improve writing skills. One of the most efficient ways I have found when teaching legal writing is to take a bad writing example, identify why it is ineffective or just plain silly, and suggest different ways to fix it.
Here are examples of government regulations, manuals, handbooks, reports, and other publications that show “before and after” examples that use plain language to improve a sentence, paragraph, or document. -CCE
15 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in United States Supreme Court
≈ Comments Off on C-Span’s 12-Part Series on Landmark Supreme Court Cases.
C-Span Launches New Series On Landmark Supreme Court Cases, by James B. Levy, Legal Skills Prof Blog
I apologize for not finding this sooner. Sounds fantastic! -CCE
C-Span has launched a new, 12 part series that airs on Monday evenings at 9:00 p.m. (the series began on October 5 but I only found about it now) that profiles landmark Supreme Court decisions through 1973.
* * *
Using C-SPAN’s signature live format of studio guests interacting with viewers and interspersed with visits to historic sites for context, the series will explore the stories of historic rulings which changed American society, the plaintiffs who sparked these cases and the justices and lawyers who were key to the Supreme Court’s review. A video-rich website will offer the series on demand along with classroom materials. Here is a two-minute video trailer previewing the series https://youtu.be/6kuc5tyborM. . . .
11 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Note Taking, Office Procedures
≈ Comments Off on Take Notes By Hand, Not On A Laptop, To Improve Your Memory Retention.
New Study Finds Taking Notes By Hand “Significantly Improves” Word Recall Compared To Typing, by James B. Levy, Legal Skills Prof Blog
In the old days before laptops and other digital devices were the norm, we took notes by hand. When I took notes rather than observing and listening in a hearing, meeting, or at trial, I thought it helped me to notice more details that stuck in my memory. I have not had the opportunity to use a laptop or other digital device to take notes. I cannot say whether handwriting or typing improve memory retention. But it is an interesting idea. -CCE
The study was conducted by a team that includes Professor Anne Mangen (U. Stavanger, Norway) who is one of the foremost researchers studying the effect of hardcopy versus screens on comprehension and retention of information. This new study is called Handwriting versus Keyboard Writing: Effect on Word Recall and is available at 7(2) Journal of Writing Research 227 (2015) and can also be accessed online here. . . .
05 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology
≈ Comments Off on How To Add Section and Paragraph Symbols on An iPhone or iPad.
Tags
Codification App, iPad, iPhone, iPhone J.D. Blog, Jeff Richardson, Keyboard Character Shortcuts, Section Sign
Sections And Pilcrows — Making The § And ¶ On The iPhone, by Jeff Richardson, iPhone J.D.
Yesterday, I reviewed an app called Codification, which uses for its icon the section symbol — §. That is certainly a symbol that lawyers need to type a lot, but it isn’t immediately apparent how to do so on an iPhone or iPad. . .
You can type many additional characters using the iPhone and iPad keyboard by holding down on a letter. I see that I haven’t posted a full list of those shortcuts since 2010, back when iPhone J.D. had far fewer readers, so I thought it might be useful to post the list again, which is largely still the same in iOS 8 . . . .
04 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Admissibility, Discovery, E-Discovery, Emails, Emails, Evidence, Federal Rules of Discovery, Forensic Evidence, Gap-Period Emails, Legal Technology, Motion to Compel, Relevance, Requests for Production
≈ Comments Off on Defendant Ordered by Court to Produce Gap-Period Emails on Backup Tapes.
Defendant Compelled to Restore and Produce Emails from Backup Tapes: eDiscovery Case Law, by Doug Austin, eDiscoveryDaily Blog
In United States ex rel Guardiola v. Renown Health, No. 3:12-cv-00295-LRH-VPC, (D. Nev. Aug. 25, 2015), Nevada Magistrate Judge Valerie P. Cooke concluded that emails contained on backup tapes held by the defendants was not reasonably inaccessible due to undue cost and, even if the emails were reasonably inaccessible due to undue burden or undue cost, ‘good cause supports their discoverability.’ . . .
04 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in References, Research, SSRN
≈ Comments Off on New And Easy-To-Use Search Tools for SSRN.
Did You Know? Searching SSRN Just Got Easier, by Gregory Gordon, President and CEO of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) (with hat tip to Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog)
http://ssrnblog.com/2015/10/02/did-you-know-searching-ssrn-just-got-easier/
Scholars of all types share their research here. You will often see it at SSRN before you see it in books and other publications. If you have not taken the time to truly investigate what you can find here, please give yourself a treat. -CCE
In What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, I wrote about the overwhelming amount of data that is available today. This is especially true of the SSRN eLibrary. With over 600,000 papers, finding the right research may seem daunting. So, we significantly improved our search functionality.
SSRN’s new page centralizes all the tools you need to find stuff in the eLibrary. We combined Quick Search and Advanced Search onto one tab, and made it simple to switch to Browse SSRN Networks or Browse JEL Codes. Did you even know all of those functions existed? . . . .
01 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Drug Promotion, Government, Health Law, Health Reform, Intellectual Property, Patent Law, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
≈ Comments Off on Could Lawyers Fix The Rising Cost of Medicine?
Tags
Cancer, FDA, Litigation & Trial, Max Kennerly, Medicaid, Medicare, Pfizer, Prescription Drugs, RICO, Schering–Plough
Send In The Lawyers: A Partial Fix For America’s Dystopian Prescription Drug Market, by Max Kennerly, Esq., Litigation & Trial Blog
It’s hard to read any news about prescription drugs these days without wondering if you’ve somehow fallen into a Philip K. Dick novel. Just look at some of these titles over the past week:
- ‘2 new studies show the FDA is rushing more drugs to market based on shoddy evidence’
- ‘The True Cost of an Expensive Medication’
- ‘U.S. drug company sues Canada for trying to lower cost of $700K-a-year drug’
- ‘Outrage could lead to lowering price of high-cost drugs’
All of these stories are about different drugs, but the common theme among all of the stories is, of course, money. The Mayo Clinical Proceedings recently found ‘In the United States, the average price of cancer drugs for about a year of therapy increased from $5000 to $10,000 before 2000 to more than $100,000 by 2012, while the average household income has decreased by about 8% in the past decade. Further, although 85% of cancer basic research is funded through taxpayers’ money, Americans with cancer pay 50% to 100% more for the same patented drug than patients in other countries.’ . . .
The Researching Paralegal 
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