Sat.Sep 04, 2021 - Fri.Sep 10, 2021

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Is It Time to Steal One of Those Surprising Job Titles?

The Estrin Report

HR Manager, attorney, paralegal, marketing manager, may describe your role but it sure ain’t fun. By Chere B. Estrin. COVID-19 has led a lot of people to search for a brand new position. The problem is, those brand new positions may be sporting brand new titles and you haven’t a clue what to look for anymore. Let me give you an example: A couple of months ago, my client, one of the biggest law firms in the world, called me and told me they wanted a “Professional Development Innovative Specialist

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Federal court rules Artificial Intelligence cannot be an ‘inventor’ under US patent law

JURIST

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Wednesday ruled that an artificial intelligence (AI) machine cannot be an inventor under the Patent Act. The action was a motion for summary judgement concerning two patent applications filed by Stephen Thaler for an AI machine called DABUS. DABUS was listed as the inventor for Neural Flame—a light beacon that flashes in a new and inventive manner to attract attention—and Fractal Container—a beverage container based on fractal geometr

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The World’s Top Jailers: 24 U.S. States

The Crime Report

Twenty-four states have the world’s highest incarceration rates, beating even the U.S. national average and surpassing countries that have comparable or higher crime rates, says the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI). In its 2021 survey of global incarceration rates, the PPI found that “the only countries that approach the incarceration rate and ‘violent crime’ rates of the 50 states are El Salvador, Panama, Peru, and Turkey.

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ABA Issues Ethics Guidance On Lawyers Investing In Alternative Business Structures

LawSites

With both Arizona and Utah now allowing nonlawyers to deliver legal services through alternative business structures, the American Bar Association today issued a formal ethics opinion that addresses the question of whether lawyers outside those states may passively invest in an ABS. The issue hinges on ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4 , which prohibits lawyers from sharing fees with nonlawyers or practicing in an entity in which a nonlawyer has an ownership interest.

Lawyer 138
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Recipe for a Failed CLM Implementation

Selecting and implementing CLM technology can be daunting, leading to underutilization or abandonment. Factors like provider differentiation, inadequate planning, and lack of user training contribute to these failures. Recognizing these pitfalls is crucial for successful adoption, ensuring organizations harness the full potential of CLM for streamlined contract management.

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Data on Transition Phrases in Patent Cases

Patently O

by Dennis Crouch. You may have heard that most US utility patent claims use the open transition phrase COMPRISING. Here’s the data to support that hearsay. The chart below shows data from independent claims gleaned from issued US patens grouped by patent issue year. To make the chart, I calculated the percentage of independent claims that include the phrase comprising or comprises or comprise as the first traditional (or only) transitional phrase within the claim text.

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The Media and the ‘Right to be Forgotten’

The Crime Report

When it comes to seeking expungement of stories from the media, do some people seeking a clean start have an advantage when making their case to newspaper boards considering their requests? Should the boards be comprised of purely journalists? These are two of the questions raised in a recent paper “Newspaper Expungement,” written by Brian M.

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Explosive Revelations Expected as Trafigura Group Bribery Case Goes Ahead in Jamaica

LegalReader

The Mexican Government recently reacted to the mounting corruption allegations in Brazil by banning Trafigura from doing new business with its state-owned oil company Pemex.

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Lawyer accused of calling opposing counsel ‘lowlife bottom-feeder’ says term was ‘entirely truthful and accurate’

ABA Journal

A suburban Chicago lawyer has admitted that he called a judge a clown and an opposing lawyer a “lowlife bottom-feeder,” but he said his comments…

Lawyer 133
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Federal court grants Sackler family immunity from all future opioid lawsuits

JURIST

The Sackler family on Wednesday won immunity from opioid lawsuits linked to Purdue Pharma , their privately owned company, and its OxyContin medication when a federal judge approved a bankruptcy settlement to resolve thousands of opioid lawsuits. OxyContin is a prescription painkiller that is stronger than morphine. Nearly all 50 states filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family for their alleged roles in the opioid crisis.

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Contract Lifecycle Management: A Business Enabler Exploring On-Ground Challenges

CLM tools have always strived to push contract management into the digital age for almost 30 years. But the complexities of digitising a legal document are numerous. The current scenarios in business development have shown that having a fully automated CLM has become a mandate for every law firm and in-house legal department. To determine if you need a CLM system, it's essential to clearly identify the on-ground business challenges you aim to solve.

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Rethinking Police Traffic Stops

The Crime Report

Traffic stops for expired tags and broken tail lights will no longer be prosecuted in Ramsey County, Minnesota as part of an initiative to reduce police violence following Philando Castile’s police killing during a traffic stop in 2016, CNN reports. These “non-public safety stops” have a history of leading to fatal interactions with police, according to Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.

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Resetting Default Heading and Body Fonts in Word

Attorney at Work

If you’re sick of MicroSoft word fonts Calibri and Cambria, change your default heading and body styles so you can start every new Word document with the fonts you prefer. Put Font Frustration Behind You! One of the most persistent frustrations legal users have with Microsoft Word fonts is the default font settings. Fortunately, you can permanently change just two Styles (+Body and +Headings) to give your documents a more businesslike typeface.

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Texas inmate seeks stay of execution over request for pastor to minister to him in final moments

SCOTUSBlog

Share A Texas inmate asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to block his execution, arguing that the state’s refusal to allow his spiritual adviser to lay his hands on him and pray out loud in the execution chamber violates both the Constitution and a federal law protecting the religious freedom of people in prison. The request by John Ramirez, who is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, once again brought the issue of religious rights during the administration of the death penalty back to the jus

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TikTok faces €6B lawsuit in Netherlands court

JURIST

Dutch non-profit Stichting Massaschade & Consument filed suit Tuesday against TikTok, seeking to force the social media app to compensate 4.5 million Dutch users for “harvesting and auctioning sensitive user data” in violation of European privacy laws. Stichting Massaschade & Consument is asking the court in Amsterdam to order TikTok to pay €6 billion, an amount based on fixed damages of €1.250-1.750 per user.

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California Civil Discovery Act Undergoes Significant Overhaul

Short article looking at the new CCP 2016.

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Forensic Testimony Distorted by ‘Implicit’ Racial Bias: Paper

The Crime Report

Photo by janinsanfran via Flickr Photo by PROjaninsanfran via Flickr. Far from an objective and equalizing tool, forensic testimony perpetuates the “presumption of guilt” for people of color involved in the criminal legal system, argue the authors of a forthcoming Criminal Law Bulletin article. In “Perpetuating the Presumption of Guilt: The Role of Implicit Racial Bias in Forensic Testimony,” Forensic Justice Project Executive Director Janis C.

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Dating app is for lawyers, legal professionals and those who want to meet them

ABA Journal

A dating app called Lawyr is intended to connect people in the legal community with each other or with others who want to meet them.

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7 Questions to Ask When Auditing Your Customer Success Processes

The Process Street

Bora Lee is the Manager of Customer Enablement at ChurnZero. She is passionate about helping customer success teams succeed by crafting big-picture strategies executed through automated, streamlined processes that put the right data in front of the right customer at exactly the right time. She works hand in hand with customer success leaders to create fruitful, long-term relationships and to maximize customer satisfaction.

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Afghanistan dispatches: ‘Gender discrimination and the separation of women from men have begun again.’

JURIST

Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Here, a female law student in Herat in western Afghanistan offers her latest observations and perspective. For privacy and security reasons we are withholding her name and institutional affiliation. The text has been only lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.

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Dangers of Digital "Reporting": Legal Risks and Unreliable Transcripts

In the world of legal proceedings, the choice between a certified stenographer and digital "reporting" holds significant implications. Certified stenographers go through rigorous training and testing and stand as the gold standard for accuracy in capturing every word. Their expertise ensures a reliable record, a crucial foundation for legal cases.

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Can Online Interventions Deter Offline Violence?

The Crime Report

The “robust” use of social media should be part of anti-violence efforts in troubled neighborhoods across the country, says the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ). According to a new report from the council’s Working Group on Violent Crime, “offline altercations are increasingly triggered by online conflicts.”. “Cyber- or ‘internet-banging’ happens when individuals or groups taunt, insult, challenge, and threaten each other on social media, resulting in violent encounters in real life,” the repo

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District attorney is accused of offering bribes to prosecutors, suborning perjury

ABA Journal

A district attorney in Georgia was indicted Tuesday based on accusations that he offered $1,000 bribes to two prosecutors and tried to influence a police…

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Court blocks execution, will weigh in on inmate’s religious-liberty claims

SCOTUSBlog

Share The Supreme Court agreed to postpone the execution of John Ramirez, who was scheduled to die on Wednesday night in Texas. The last-minute respite will allow the justices to fully consider Ramirez’s request that his pastor be allowed to physically touch Ramirez and audibly pray in the execution chamber while Ramirez is put to death. Ramirez’s emergency application was the latest in a series of shadow-docket requests in the past two years involving spiritual advisers at executions.

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Germany companies accused of using forced labor

JURIST

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a criminal complaint in Germany on Monday accusing five retailers of using forced labor in Xinjing in their production line. In a press statement by the ECCHR, information has found that companies including Lidl, Aldi, Hugo Boss, and others have “allegedly directly or indirectly abetted and profited from the forced labor of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.” There have been mounting concerns over concentration camp

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Optimizing Contract Management and Enhancing Team Collaboration: Insights from a Legal Operations Perspective

Speaker: Adina Marta Newman

Learn about a world of effective contract management and seamless teamwork across departments in this upcoming webinar from Cobblestone Software. You'll discover practical strategies and tips that legal professionals can use to streamline contract processes and enhance collaboration, making significant impact across legal and corporate departments. Join us as we show how you can supercharge contract processes, improve team communication, and take your contributions to the next level.

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9/11 Perpetrators Still Await Trial After 20 Years

The Crime Report

Photo via YouTiube. As the 20-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed still awaits trial in Guant á namo Prison. Speaking with national security experts about how the justice system at the prison is set up, NBC News reports that “the system is set up to fail.”. Although legal proceedings in the case against Mohammed and four other defendants resumed Tuesday with a pretrial hearing after a long COVID shutdown, a trial date has still not

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Are Sound Trademarks the Next Frontier in Fashion Branding?

The Fashion Law

Over the past several years, fashion brands have been rolling out podcasts left and right in an attempt to reach consumers in all possible mediums and the pandemic brought this trend to a fever pitch. On the heels of first dipping its toes in the podcasting game back in 2017 by way of its “3.55” series, for instance, Chanel introduced a new podcast venture this January called “Chanel Connects,” in which the French fashion house delivers intimate conversations on the future of culture with the li

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Justices to hold in-person arguments in the fall

SCOTUSBlog

Share The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that the justices will return to the courtroom for oral arguments this fall. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the arguments will not be open to the public. Instead, the court will provide live audio of the arguments, as it has done since May 2020. The announcement about the fall oral arguments had been widely anticipated for several months.

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Australia Indigenous leaders file UN complaint over proposed heritage bill

JURIST

A group of Indigenous Australian leaders have filled a complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination calling it incompatible with Australia’s international obligations. The complaint comes one year after the legal destruction of historically and culturally significant rock shelters by the mining company Rio Tinto in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (WA) that sparked protests across the nation.

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Visibility Into the Strategy & Supporting Documents of Major US Law Firms

Law Firm Intelligence by Trellis aggregates state trial court data across the Trellis platform enabling users to: look up a particular metric related to a specific law firm (such as, how many cases a law firm had or has against another law firm), and see the actual dockets and documents supporting the metric. Trellis data is maximized in a revolutionary and unique way to provide users an exclusive look into a law firm litigating in state trial courts.