The BLOB-in-Law

If you haven’t heard, there’s an update on a story we’ve been following for over a year now. Blink 182 drummer, Travis Barker, has settled his lawsuit against those responsible for the September 2008 plane crash which severely injured him...

CCH has published a 4-page special briefing on The Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers, and Small Businesses Bill of 2009: Highlights: $3.5 million estate tax exclusion amount Top estate tax and gift tax rate of 45 percent Not indexed for inflation No portability of spouse’s unused exclusion Continuation...

According to grand jury transcripts released yesterday, builder Randy Wastal delivered testimony about how developer Stephen Holgate sold San Jacinto Councilman Jim Ayres and his wife Nancy a home in the Enclave community for thousands less than it was worth....

With all the discussion about conscience, I thought I'd mention an upcoming conference entitled "The Future of Rights of Conscience in Health Care: Legal and Ethical Perspectives." The conference, which is co-sponsored by University Faculty for Life, Ave Maria School...

Edward Sanders, a Reed Smith attorney whose contributions included serving as senior advisor to President Jimmy Carter, passed away at home Monday morning at 87 years of age. Sanders served as Senior Advisor to President Carter and the Secretary of...

I am sorry to report that the distinguished First Amendment scholar, and longtime faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, passed away suddenly on December 8. You can find out more about his career and work from his...

I doubt that if you asked your clients what they buy from you that they'd answer, "Time." Yet because (many of) you sell time to them, it is often the only thing that you measure with any rigor. In 2010,...

It might not be as big a bet as leaving Cravath to start your own firm, but the legendary litigator is plunking down $386,900 for a two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Las Vegas.

The transcript of oral argument in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp. is here.

The Tax Lawyer's Blog is running an online poll on Your Favorite Tax Blog among ten listed tax blogs (including TaxProf Blog).

So, if there were an information market for the honest services statute, it's price definitely took a nose dive yesterday...

By Eriq Gardner Adult entertainment publisher Perfect 10 has for years been fighting to stop search engines from displaying thumbnails of its copyrighted photos of nude women. This week, Perfect 10 filed a motion against Google for allegedly abusing the...

Two years ago, I blogged my civil procedure colleague Adam Steinman's tax rap: Robert Bone (Boston University) offers this civil procedure rap: (Hat Tip: Most Strongly Supported.)

The Arizona Supreme Court has adopted the recommendation of a hearing officer of a 30 day suspension and probation of a prosecutor for a wide and persistent array of ethics violations during a trial. The hearing officer had found that...

Below, Sam Bateman of Stanford Law School recaps Florida v. Powell, one of two cases heard by the Court on Monday. Sam previewed the case here on Sunday, and Lyle’s post-argument analysis is available here. Check the Florida v. Powell (08-1175) SCOTUSwiki page for additional updates. At oral argument on December 7 in Florida v. Powell, [...]

So begins an article that mainly focuses on the following facts: (1) donating one's own plasma in return for being...

The defendants in an environmental suit pending in 125th District Judge Kyle Carter’s court in Harris County say it wasn’t OK for the judge to invite County Attorney Vince Ryan to have a cup of coffee in his chambers before...

In October, I wrote here that the "real-time Web" was almost upon us. As defined by patent attorney Brett Trout in this post on his BlawgIT blog, the real-time Web incorporates tools such as Twitter to enable lawyers (and the rest of the world) to obtain instantaneous access to information about something that just happened, or about something that is constantly changing. Trout explained in October how he had jerry-rigged his Internet browser to integrate real-time Web information by installing the Greasemonkey plug-in and the AutoPagerize script in Firefox. As a result, he said, when he performed searches with Google it also automatically pulled up the five most recent "tweets" that contained the search terms. That MacGyver-like method probably helped the two or three of you out there who were able to duplicate Trout's efforts, but wasn't much help to the rest of us. As Kevin O'Keefe explains today on Real Lawyers Have Blogs, however, that has now changed forever. O'Keefe notes in a...

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has just released a report on Academic Law Library Statistics 2007-2008. Among the highlights (all dollars are in US currency): Out of 113 ARL university libraries, 74 responded to this survey Law libraries reported median values of 345,935 volumes held and 8,033 gross volumes added. Also, these libraries employed the full-time equivalent [...]

The Charge Of The Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854 Written 1854 Half a league half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the...

Logging in this week to my so-called virtual life, one constant and growing buzz is over privacy in social media and targeted marketing. I had meant to blog about something else, but the noise is too just to loud. While the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s findings on the CIPPIC Complaint against Facebook are by [...]

Chrometa - Time tracker to maximize your billable time. The billable hour is not dead. However, it is a pain to keep track of. Chrometa is innovative software that automatically tracks your time on the computer, and makes billing for...

Pretty big news out of Houston today on the drug-policy front. Harris County DA Pat Lykos announced a change in her office's charging policy on low-level drug offenses that will put Houston in line with other Texas jurisdictions, but has the police union seething ("DA's crack pipe policy stirs storm," Dec. 9): Starting next year, the Harris County District Attorney's Office no longer will file state jail felony charges against suspects found with only a trace — less than a hundreth of a gram — of illegal drugs, District Attorney Pat Lykos said Tuesday. Instead, people found with crack pipes with nothing more than residue inside or other drug paraphernalia, would face a ticket for a class C misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $500. Not surprisingly, the pending change was hailed by defense lawyers, but criticized by police officers. “It ties the hands of the officers who are making crack pipe cases against burglars and thieves,” said Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston...

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Winston Churchill I suppose the retort is that, if we have a democracy, these other forms must be really, really terrible. The U.S. seems mired, incapable of even starting to come to grips with our problems. After a 50 year struggle to get a rational health care system, we are closer but still not there. And, we may yet not get there. Waiting in the wings are issues such as reforms in financial regulation, climate change, and important civil rights issues. At the glacial pace of health care reform, these issues may not be reached, much less decided, before the next election cycle starts in [...]

The private equity arm of debt-ridden Dubai World lost the W Hotel in New York's Union Square in a foreclosure auction held Tuesday in the New York office of Allen & Overy. The firm has been busy with high-profile foreclosure auctions this year.

A recent survey of the Toronto law firm student recruitment process by Ultra Vires, a University of Toronto Faculty of Law student newspaper, suggests a large discrepancy between the success rate of visible minority students and non-minority students. Non-minority students received one or more offers of employment in this year's recruitment drive 75% of the time, compared to 52.8% for visible minorities. Julius Melnitzer

Firms are loathe to sue clients for unpaid fees, so it's worth noting that Debevoise is taking one to court. The client, a timber company, isn't rolling over. Candlewood Timber Group is accusing the firm of overstaffing its case with inexperienced associates.

Entertainment law news this morning: Will the Obama presidency lead to the return of Howard Stern to traditional radio? According to the Wall Street Journal, satellite radio provider Sirius is gearing up for new contract negotiations with the shock jock,...