Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

A Classic — “The Becky Klemt Letter.”

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Humor

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The Becky Klemt Letter, published in Law And Disorder, Legal Assistants Division State Bar of Texas ©1999

http://www.txpd.org/TPJ/18/law_disorder.htm

The link above no longer exists. You will find the Becky Klemt Letter here: https://www.penceandmac.com/index.php/then-and-now-becky-klemt-macmillan/

If you have been around long enough, my bet is that you will recognize this right away. If not, then enjoy. It’s a classic.  -CCE

Becky Klemt is a lawyer in Laramie, WY (with the five-person firm of Pence & MacMillan). On Aug. 17, 1988, she wrote a letter. It was only one letter—’just one funny letter’ as Becky describes it. But these are the ‘reviews’ of The Becky Klemt Letter, by various lawyers, judges and clients, as quoted in an article in The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 6, 1990) ‘A Lady Lawyer in Laramie Writes A Landmark Letter’:

‘Hilarious’. . . ‘a masterpiece’. . .’ a jewel’. . . ‘brutal’. . . ‘skewers the pretentiousness of big-city lawyering with incomparable wit’. . . ‘the pot-shot heard round the world’. . . the ‘most photocopied letter in legal history’. . . ‘the best writing (ever done) on legal stationery.’

Tom Scott of Midland (Bullock, Scott, etc.) got copies of the letters from Becky after reading The Wall Street Journal article and—since The Letter was not printed in that article—suggested that it be published in full in this column. So here it is, together with two other letters which set the scene for The Becky Klemt Letter. . . .

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Which Party Bears The Responsibility For The High Cost of Litigation? Plaintiff or Defendant?

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Intellectual Property, Litigation, Patent Law

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Who Is To Blame For High Litigation Costs: Plaintiffs For Filing The Lawsuits Or Defendants For Refusing To Deal And Instead Fighting?, by Dennis Crouch, PatentlyO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/l7peu4h

The recent WSJ op-ed by John Chambers (CEO Cisco) and Myron Ullman (CEO JCPenny) is interesting, but largely not compelling. What the article does do is indicate that patent lawsuits is the avenue being by non-practicing patent holders and it is pretty clear that manufacturers and retailers would be better off (at least in the short term) without being charged with patent infringement. The core of their argument is here:

A 2012 study by Boston University researchers estimated that companies spent upward of $29 billion a year defending patent lawsuits, and the problem has not let up. According to RPX Corp., more than 3,600 companies and named defendants were sued by so-called patent-assertion entities in 2014, triple the number in 2006. Patent-assertion entities—aka non-practicing entities, or as some would call them, trolls—that own patents but do not make products or sell services based on them file more than 60% of patent litigation in the U.S.

A civil lawsuit generally comes about based upon a failure of the parties to negotiate a just solution. Of course, for any given lawsuit, we don’t know beforehand whether it is the plaintiff or the defendant who is being more unreasonable.

The op-ed suggests that the plaintiffs are to blame for filing the lawsuits, but there is also a strongly compelling case for arguing that the defendants are to blame for refusing to deal and instead fighting every lawsuit tooth-and-nail. When reach a point where out-of-litigation resolutions are rare, we should recognize that it is a systemic problem. And, at this point – where the primary complaint is high litigation costs – the solution is not to favor one side or the other, but instead to look for systemic changes that substantially decrease the cost of resolution.

Gene Quinn provides his take on the op-ed at IP Watchdog.

LexisNexis® Adds To Its List As Exclusive Provider.

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Legal Technology

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Lexis Gains Exclusive Legal Information Provider Status of The New York Times, by Greg Lambert, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/mwvcdyn

LexisNexis representatives are sending out notices that they are now the exclusive provider of The New York Times content for the legal market. For those of you that are keeping score, this adds to LexisNexis’ exclusive content with Factiva (which includes The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Service), and ALM content. It would seem that LexisNexis is doubling-down on the news content area.

Here is the message that went out earlier today.

LexisNexis® is now the exclusive legal information provider of The New York Times® content to the legal market!

This agreement extends LexisNexis’s position as the leading provider of premium news content to the legal market. Highlights of our unmatched collection of news and current awareness sources include:

  • LexisNexis is the exclusive legal information provider of The New York Times content to the legal market.
  • Law360® is exclusive to LexisNexis, providing breaking news and analysis.
  • LexisNexis is the exclusive online third-party provider of ALM® news publications—including titles such as The American Lawyer®, The National Law Journal® and Corporate Counsel®—and the only provider of its publication news archives (more than six months old).
  • LexisNexis is the exclusive provider of Factiva® content to the law firm market, offering access to North American English sources, including The Wall Street Journal® and Dow Jones News Service.
  • LexisNexis provides more than 26,000 News & Business Sources from 4,000+ Publishers, with many exclusives, in over 150 countries and 21 languages.

The New York Times, as well as our other news exclusives such as Factiva, The Wall Street Journal, and ALM, will continue to be available through LexisNexis® Publisher and via our Moreover/Newsdesk product (releasing in Q2). Newsdesk is the only aggregator/monitoring tool that will be able to deliver this content in full text.

iPhone J.D.’s Latest “In The News”

15 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Apple, Cell Phones, Google, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology, Mac, Tablets

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In The News, by Jeff Richardson, iPhone J.D. Blog

http://tinyurl.com/kn6r3xt

Another excellent review of legal technology news for the past week. -CCE

“Hercules and the Umpire” and Other Judges’ Blogs.

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in Judges

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Federal Judge Hangs Up His Blogging Robes, by Robert Ambrogi, Robert Ambrogi’s Law Sites

http://tinyurl.com/ktmc7dd

Last summer, Law Technology News published my article, Blogging From the Bench, in which I surveyed the fairly paltry number of judges who blog. In a subsequent post here, I added more blogging judges.

Prominently featured in the LTN piece was Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who last February launched the blog Hercules and the Umpire and quickly found notoriety when he published a post in which he declared, ‘A lot of what the Supreme Court does is simply irrelevant to what federal trial judges do on a daily basis.’

Yesterday, after writing 416 posts in the last year that generated some 425,000 page views and 3,700 comments, Judge Kopf announced the end of his blog.

“Must Read” for HR – Evidence of Hiring Discrimination Using Social Media.

24 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Affirmative Action, EEOC, Employment Law, Gender Discrimination, Race Discrimination

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Everyone knows by now that human resources professionals and employers use social media to screen potential employees. Studies now show that some employers illegally discriminate against applicants based on what they find. CCE 

Study Finds Evidence of Unlawful Discrimination in Using Social Media to Recruit Employees, posted by Jason Shinn, Michigan Employment Law Advisor

http://tinyurl.com/k63s24l

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (reported on 11/21/2013 by Jennifer DeVries) discussed a study showing bias in the hiring process when social media is used to screen job applicants. Because of the potential for unlawful discrimination and losing out on otherwise qualified job applicants, the article and study should be a “must read” for every human resource professional or anyone with hiring responsibilities.