08 Saturday Aug 2015
Posted in Benchslap, Court Orders, Federal Judges, Judges, Legal Writing, U.S. District Courts
≈ Comments Off on Perfect Benchslap For Redaction Running Amuck.
Judge Trolls Lawyers Without Saying Anything At All, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/08/judge-trolls-lawyers-without-saying-anything-at-all/
Joe beat me to it. Many thanks to Jessica L. Craft at Holden & Carr for the heads’ up. -CCE
Judge Charles Breyer proves that a redaction can be worth a thousand words. . . .
07 Friday Aug 2015
Posted in 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Diligence, Lawyer Supervision, Legal Ethics, Malpractice, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Rules of Professional Responsibility, Supervising Support Staff
≈ Comments Off on Big Law Firms Miss $1.5 Billion Dollar Mistake.
Mayer Brown & Simpson Thacher Make Epic Screwup, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/mayer-brown-simpson-thacher-make-epic-screwup/
It is rare indeed to find such a dearth of responsibility among so many fine legal professionals. If you can, follow the bouncing ball. –CCE
Mistakes happen. It’s why pencils have erasers. But it’s also why law firms install tier after tier of increasingly senior professionals to second-guess every ounce of work product. It’s remarkably effective — and fairly lucrative on an hourly basis.
Unfortunately, the flip side of a tiered system is a tendency toward over-delegation. And that’s how an unwary paralegal ends up costing a bank millions. . . .
20 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Cross-Examination, Divorce, Family Law, Trial Tips and Techniques
≈ Comments Off on Ex-Wife Cross-Examines Former Husband – No Squabbling!
Biglaw Divorce Gets Nasty As Ex-Wife Cross-Examines Former Husband, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/06/biglaw-divorce-gets-nasty-as-ex-wife-cross-examines-former-husband/
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this was a good idea.
Hydee Feldstein, a retired Sullivan & Cromwell partner, decided to cross-examine her ex-husband Peter Gregora, a former tax litigator at Irell & Manilla, in their contentious divorce case — a case where Feldstein alleges Gregory stole nearly $20 million from her. They say a lawyer representing herself has a fool for a client. Well, Feldstein has outside counsel — indeed counsel from two firms, Miller & Ayala LLP and the Rudd Law Firm — yet it was Feldstein who cross-examined her ex in open court. After reading the resulting train wreck, perhaps there are fools on all sides of Feldstein’s defense. . . .
20 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Appellate Law, Appellate Writing, Brief Writing, Citations, Citations to the Record, Court Rules, Courts, Legal Writing, Local Rules, Table of Authorities
≈ Comments Off on An Expert’s Guide To Formatting An Appellate Brief.
Tags
Above the Law, Appellate Briefs, Appellate Record, Brief Formatting, Court Rules, Deborah Savadra, Legal Office Guru, Legal Writing
(Deborah Savadra is editor and chief blogger at Legal Office Guru, which offers The WordPerfect Lover’s Guide to Word as well as Microsoft Office video tutorials. You can follow her on Twitter at @legalofficeguru.)
https://lawyerist.com/70334/format-appellate-brief-microsoft-word/
Appellate briefs are not a project for beginners. And, regardless of what you read in this tutorial, you must follow your appellate court rules to the letter.
When your court’s rules tell you that it wants citations done a certain way, it mean exactly that. If the court’s rules say a brief must not go over a certain number of pages, do not even think about “fudging” the rules by changing the font, page size, or line spacing.
You see, all courts, not just appellate ones, write local rules for a reason. Whatever “trick” you may try to skirt around those rules, that court has already seen it and knows it when it sees it again. Courts take their local rules seriously, and so should you.
There are many posts and articles posted on my blog about the strategy and nuances of writing appellate briefs, as well as many excellent books on the subject. This tutorial will help you with the nuts and bolts of writing the bare bones, which is always useful regardless of your writing proficiency.
I also highly recommend Ms. Deborah Savadra’s blog, Legal Office Guru. She does an excellent job. -CCE
13 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Benchslap, Calendar/Docketing, E-Filing, Judges, Law Office Management, Legal Technology
≈ Comments Off on Judge’s Benchslap for Missing E-Filing Deadline By Three Minutes.
Judge Shames Lawyers Over Midnight Filings In Awesomely Sarcastic Order, by Staci Zaretsky, Above The Law
Thanks to the advent of electronic filing, lawyers get to work nearly 24 hours a day. You’re not expected to work that much, of course, but your firms certainly wouldn’t mind it if you did. Got a motion due at midnight? No problem! You’re overworked and you’ve got a million other things on your plate, so putting one filing on the backburner can’t hurt. After all, you can just furiously write it the night it’s due, and click a few buttons to get it filed by 11:59 p.m. But for some, until the last minute will come back to bite you in the ass. . . .
09 Tuesday Jun 2015
Posted in Courts, E-Docketing, E-Filing, Federal District Court Rules, Recent Links and Articles, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
≈ Comments Off on Big Changes For Civil Cases In The Southern District Of New York.
Beyond Biglaw: The End of Paper Filing in the S.D.N.Y., by Gaston Kroub, Above The Law Blog
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/06/beyond-biglaw-the-end-of-paper-filing-in-the-s-d-n-y/
Yesterday marked the beginning of a new era for those who file civil cases in the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.). Considering its status as one of the nation’s oldest, most prestigious Districts Courts, with a corresponding docket full of high-profile civil (and criminal) cases, the change from ‘paper filing’ to electronic filing is an important one. The announcement that the District would be going to electronic filing was in itself a bit surprising, considering that the clerk’s office and judges had resisted the temptation for many years. But change is constant, and starting yesterday [June 9, 2015], filing civil cases in the S.D.N.Y. will be done electronically in the vast majority of cases. . . .
25 Monday May 2015
Posted in 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Depositions, Discovery, Federal Rules of Discovery, Relevance, Requests for Production, Subpoena Duces Tecum
≈ Comments Off on Judge Uses The “Mommy Voice.”
Tags
Above the Law, Benchslap, David Lat, Depositions, Discovery, Discovery Abuse, Judge Richard Leon
Benchslap Of The Day: Just. Produce. The Documents!, by David Lat, Above The Law Blog
http://abovethelaw.com/2014/02/benchslap-of-the-day-just-produce-the-documents/
What’s the “Mommy Voice?” We have all been there, and may have used it ourselves. It’s when your parent – usually your mother — calls you using your first, middle, and last names in a no-nonsense voice. Usually, whatever happens next, it isn’t pretty. -CCE
Yes, benchslaps are great fun to read about, especially if you enjoy a little schadenfreude. But benchslaps are not fun to receive — and they’re not always justified.
Because of the prestige of judicial office, judges generally get the benefit of the doubt when dishing out benchslaps. But sometimes judges go too far. For example, some observers felt that Judge Richard Posner crossed the line when interrogating a Jones Day partner during a recent Seventh Circuit argument.
This brings us to today’s benchslap — directed at a lawyer for the federal government, no less. It’s harsh, but is it warranted? . . .
11 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in Discovery, Document Coding, Document Review, E-Discovery, Requests for Production
≈ Comments Off on Choosing The Best E-Discovery Document Review Platform For Your Project.
How To Choose The Best Document Review Platform, Part 1, by Jeff Bennion, Above The Law Blog
When you are planning a document review project, the selection of your document review platform is critical. In a nutshell, document review is the process of organizing and categorizing large amounts of data to find the small percentage of documents that will end up as exhibits. The data is usually stored on an offsite server and is accessed through an online review platform. Although the coding of documents is usually pretty standard across platforms (a list of documents, a document viewer window, and a panel for your tags), the features that each platform has to help you organize your key docs for depositions, hearings, and trial are not the same. . . .
28 Monday Oct 2013
Posted in Trial Tips and Techniques
≈ Comments Off on A Return to Civility?
The Practice: Dealing with Threatening, Demanding Opposing Counsel, by Brian Tannebaum, Above the Law Blog
The Researching Paralegal 