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Legal News

Legal Blog Watch

Tracks the daily musings of Law.com bloggers.
By Lisa Stone

Post Frequency: 34.5/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 17:07:51

Mass. Disbars Former House Speaker

Posted on January 12, 2010
Thomas M. Finneran, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, was disbarred yesterday for lying under oath in a federal voting rights lawsuit. In ordering the disbarment, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected Finneran's contention that he should be given lighter discipline because his false testimony was unrelated to his practice of law...

Jurors' Internet Research Could Zap Taser Verdict

Posted on January 12, 2010
Lawyers in Louisville, Ky., are asking a federal judge to set aside a jury verdict exonerating a police officer in a Taser-related death because they say the jury foreman researched the case on the Internet and used what he found to sway other jurors...

Monday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on January 11, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I just got pulled over by the police at a roadblock check. The officer eventually waved me through after grilling me with a few questions, and then handed me a ...

Santa Fe Man Alleges Neighbor's Wi-Fi and Cellphone Threaten His Life

Posted on January 11, 2010
Via this post on the FutureLawyer blog, I came across this story of a Santa Fe man who allegedly suffers from "electromagnetic sensitivity" and is now suing his next door neighbor for refusing to turn off her cell phone and her home Wi-Fi. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that Arthur Firstenberg alleges that he has actually been rendered homeless by his neighbor's rejection of his requests...

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Court Lets $850,000 Verdict Against Baseball Bat Maker Stand

Posted on January 11, 2010
On Friday, a Montana state judge refused to throw out a recent jury verdict that found the maker of Louisville Slugger baseball bats was liable in the amount of $850,000 for the 2003 death of a baseball player during a game in Helena. In October, the jury found that Hillerich & Bradsby Co...

Google Dictionary Creeping Into Legal Space

Posted on January 11, 2010
The Legal Writing Blog and the Law Librarian Blog point out in these posts that the new Google Dictionary, which was quietly rolled out in December 2009, presents a formidable competitor not only for other Web dictionaries such as Answers.com, but also potentially to niche lexicons like Black's Law Dictionary...

And Now, the First Facebook Folly of 2010

Posted on January 08, 2010
Earlier today, I recapped some of the fabulous Facebook follies of 2009, examples of how Facebook can be risky for lawyers, judges, law students and just about anyone else. Now comes our first folly of the new year. A Georgia judge is stepping down following publication of Facebook messages he exchanged with a woman who was a defendant in a matter pending before his court...

Saving Lawyers from Themselves -- and From the ABA

Posted on January 08, 2010
Here in Massachusetts where I practice, debate continues over a plan by the University of Massachusetts to open the state's first public law school. A key concern raised by the plan's opponents is that a new law school would only add more lawyers to an already-flooded market...

Law Students Thai One On

Posted on January 08, 2010
Some law students barely leave the library, let alone the country. But a group of students at the University of Buffalo Law School left that frigid city yesterday for the steamier climes of Thailand, where they will study the Southeast Asian nation's unique legal culture...

Fabulous Facebook Follies of 2009

Posted on January 08, 2010
For lawyers, Facebook could prove to be a practice area unto itself. As a place where anyone can be anyone else's friend, where words and pictures land too casually and remain too long, and where people have a propensity to publicize their private acts, the social networking site is a breeding ground for legal trouble...

Thursday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on January 07, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I'm not a lawyer, but I'd like to keep up with the legal world. Only problem is, I can't make any sense out of what these high-falutin' law bloggers are even talking about...

Missouri: 'Browsewrapped' T&Cs Can Be Binding on Web Users

Posted on January 07, 2010
On Dec, 23, the Missouri Court of Appeals held that a Web site's terms and conditions presented in ?browsewrap? format are not, in fact, just meaningless drivel. Actually the opinion was more nuanced than that, but the main idea seems to be that users can be legally bound by T&Cs presented in that fashion...

Scott Turow Goes the Extra Mile to Maintain 'Executive Platinum' Status

Posted on January 07, 2010
Attorney Scott Turow is the well-known author of legal best-sellers such as "One L" and ?Presumed Innocent.? Among his many accomplishments in life, he undoubtedly served as an inspiration to thousands of disgruntled lawyers who secretly wanted to be novelists...

Battle Gets Personal Between Prosecutor and Professor

Posted on January 06, 2010
Remember the subpoena Chicago's top prosecutor issued seeking records of students at Northwestern University's Medill journalism school? We reported on it in October, when Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez asked professor David Protess, director of The Medill Innocence Project, to turn over students' notes and recordings of witness interviews, as well as the students' grades and evaluations and e-mails they sent to each other...

The Year's Most Memorable Lawyer Misbehavior

Posted on January 06, 2010
I've been culling through our 2009 Legal Blog Watch posts and decided to search for the year's most egregious examples of lawyers gone bad. I found such a wealth of misbehavior that I had difficulty picking just a few to highlight. That said, here are my somewhat arbitrary and purely subjective choices for the year's best examples of bad behavior by lawyers...

Prisoners Cannot Be Charged Board, Court Says

Posted on January 06, 2010
Five dollars a night would be a steal at any other place of lodging, but the patrons of the county jail in Dartmouth, Mass., had certainly not shopped around for their overnight accommodations. Going to jail was punishment enough, at least they could expect three squares and a place to sleep...

Of Am Law 100 Firms, 29 Are Tweeting

Posted on January 06, 2010
It was more than a year ago that the Wall Street Journal declared, Twitter Goes Mainstream. Now comes proof that Twitter is reaching the mainstream of the legal profession. A survey finds that 29 of the Am Law 100 law firms actively use Twitter. Weil Gotshal was the first of the lot to tweet in October 2008...

A Dismal Legal Economy in 2009, With One Small Exception

Posted on January 05, 2010
The legal economy ended 2009 in shambles, as no fewer than 12,196 people were laid off from major law firms during the year. Law Shucks reports here that, out of that frighteningly high number, 4,633 were lawyers and 7,563 were staff. The site also points out that as layoffs are notoriously underreported, the actual number of layoffs in 2009 was likely much higher...

'No Frills' Law School Thriving Outside U.S. News Ranking System

Posted on January 05, 2010
Back in October, I wrote about the impact the U.S. News and World Report rankings continue to have on on the behavior of law schools and how many academics now believe the tail of USNWR rankings is wagging the dog of legal education. This is not true everywhere, however...

Parents Tattoo Their Kids, Use Costanza Defense: 'Was That Wrong?'

Posted on January 05, 2010
Let's start off with the simplest form of this issue: Should it be legal for parents to put real tattoos on their children? A Georgia woman, Patty Jo Marsh, apparently thought it was a fine idea. She said (after being released from jail on bail), "I'm their mother...

Tuesday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on January 05, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I was sitting in the courtroom as a spectator watching my buddy's trial. A minute ago the judge started eying me, and now some officers have led me to a room and are telling me to submit a urine sample...

A Tainted Victory for TechnoLawyer

Posted on January 04, 2010
While we here at Legal Blog Watch were off holiday-ing, the ABA Journal wrapped up voting for readers' favorites among its 2009 Blawg 100. Today, the ABA Journal editors posted the final results. In the technology category, the top vote-getter was TechnoLawyer Blog...

Year in Review: Lawyerly Sexcapades

Posted on January 04, 2010
Is "lawyer sex" an oxymoron? Psychologist Fiona Travis would seem to suggest as much, as we wrote in a post here last February, Marry a Lawyer? Are You Crazy? "Overworked, overburdened and squeezed by time -- and now, the worst downturn in two decades -- lawyers do exhibit communication and intimacy breakdowns peculiar to their education, their professional training and work environment," Travis explained...

Lawyers Get Cyberstalked, via Twitter

Posted on January 04, 2010
It is only Jan. 4, but we already have a contender for strangest social-media story of the year. It involves a California man who used Twitter to retaliate against a lawyer who angered him and who eventually broadened his Twitter-based cyber-vendetta to include an ever-growing list of lawyers he followed and harassed under the name @asshatlawyer...

Legal Blog Watch Holiday Open Thread

Posted on December 24, 2009
'Tis the holiday season and your Legal Blog Watch scriveners are taking a few days off. We'll be back on Monday, Jan. 4th, but in the meantime, whether you need a break from year-end collections or just the in-laws, please make yourselves comfortable in the comment section of this open thread.

Wednesday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on December 23, 2009
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blawgosphere. 1) Question: I just got home and I see that someone has removed and thrown away every last possession that was in my condominium, including my clothes, my wedding dress, baby pictures, wedding photos, my dishes, my towels and my jewelry...

Legal Obsolescence: Say Goodbye to These Items in the Legal World

Posted on December 23, 2009
New York magazine had an interesting list of things that were once everyday, common items, but are now all but obsolete. Their list (via this post on Consumerist.com), and my comments, are as follows: 1. Answering machines (haven't seen one in 5 years) 2...

Will Facebook Destroy Your Marriage?

Posted on December 23, 2009
It turns out that one of the most significant impacts that the rapid spread of Facebook is having on society may be ... destroying marriages? The Telegraph reports that by reconnecting old flames and enabling new ones, Facebook is tempting to people to cheat on their partners...

The Decade's Top 10 DUIs

Posted on December 22, 2009
Lists have me absolutely intoxicated today. I have already blogged about year-end top-10 lists, a decade-end top-25 list, and forward-looking lists of legal-industry predictions. But before I stagger off into the decade to come, my hindsight must pass one more nystagmus-gaze test and one more backward countdown...

Predictions 2010: Blawgers Dust Off Their Crystal Balls

Posted on December 22, 2009
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," cautioned philosopher George Santayana a century ago. As the year and the decade come to a close, there is plenty of remembering going on, with legal bloggers and newspapers offering year-end lists and decade-end lists...

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