Legal Docs LibraryKnow Your Rights

On this edition of Litigation Support Review, host Mary Pat Poteet, an eDiscovery/Litigation Support expert with almost 20 years experience and the new Vice President of eDiscovery for RiverGlass Inc., welcomes Julie K. Brown, Litigation Technology Manager with Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, to take a look at project management. Julie talks about the elements she finds most important to document and track, the benefits of project management and the dos and donts of setting up project management programs.

Debtors’ prisons were outlawed early in the nineteenth century because people realized that debtors couldn’t work and pay back their debts (or support their families) if they were behind bars. However, debtors’ prisons may be making a comeback in the early twenty-first century. Newsweek published a short article this week entitled “The Return of Debtors’ Prisons in Louisiana,” by Joel Schectman. Schectman concluded that
Read the rest of this entry »

On this edition of The Legal ToolKit, brought to you by Catuogno Court Reporting, host Jared Correia, Law Practice Management Advisor with Mass. LOMAP, welcomes Attorney Chiara Urbani LaPlume and Attorney Audrey Heidt, both co-chairs of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Committee, to take a look at setting fees, through the lens of the new Womens Bar Association series of “fee circles”, that focus on the issue. Among other topics, Jared, Chiara and Audrey cover how to start the conversation about fees, whether to charge consultation fees and/or retainers and, of course, how to establish rates, including when to reassess and reduce rates, as necessary.

Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Rustad, Suffolk Law’s Intellectual Property Concentration Co-Director, discusses the licensing of software in our first IP podcast of 2010. To learn more about our IP concentration visit http://law.suffolk.edu/academic/ip/

FOIAdvocates.net is an international network of private individuals and organizations interested in freedom of information, transparency from governments: Read the rest of this entry »

On this edition of The ESI Report, host Gina Jytyla, Managing Staff Attorney in the Legal Technologies division at Kroll Ontrack welcomes John Woods and Jonathan Wilan, Partners at Hunton & Williams LLP, and Chris Wall, Manager for the Legal Technologies Consulting Group at Kroll Ontrack, to discuss the next generation of document review Intelligent Review Technology and how these innovative tools can reduce the burden and expense of analysis, review and production in regulatory matters and litigation. In the Bits & Bytes Legal Analysis segment, Kroll Ontrack Legal Correspondent Kelly Kubacki discusses Chief Magistrate Judge Grimms recent order in Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., issued September 9, 2010.

USA Today’s article entitled “Prosecutors’ Conduct Can Tip Justice Scales” makes for upsetting reading. The paper launched an investigation of “201 criminal cases … in which judges determined that Justice Department prosecutors … violated laws or ethics rules.” The high-profile Duke lacrosse case demonstrated that prosecutors can badly overstep and misstep, but the USA Today investigation shows that the same abuses are rampant in the federal system. The consequences have been serious–”the abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.” One of my colleagues at Pace Law School, Professor Bennett L. Gershman, was interviewed for the USA Today story. He is a former prosecutor himself, having worked for the prestigious Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for six years. Professor Gershman has written extensively about prosecutorial misconduct on both the federal and state level, and many of his law review articles are available by hypertext link from his faculty page (linked to above). According to Professor Gershman, the abuses detailed in the article are the “‘tip of the iceberg’ because many more cases are tainted by misconduct than are found. In many cases, misconduct is exposed only because of vigilant scrutiny by defense attorneys and judges.” The article is accompanied by a compelling videotape that focuses on the case of Nino Lyons, who was incarcerated for nearly three years after a prosecutor failed to disclose exculpatory evidence; he was eventually declared innocent and released, but his life will never be the same. The prosecutor, Bruce Hinshelwood, was ordered to pay $1,111.80 in costs and to attend an ethics workshop, but stayed on the job until 2008 and has since opened his own practice. He was never punished by the Department of Justice or by the Florida Bar. Read the rest of this entry »

For nearly 15,000 years dogs have lived with and served humankind as companions, hunters, shepherds and most recently detectives. The average canine possesses hundreds of millions of receptors for odors, compared with a few million for humans. Their outstanding sensory endowment - olfaction - makes dogs sought after by law enforcement. And in the last century, the cultivation and harnessing of this ultra sensitive faculty has become a part of many facets of criminal investigation. Ken Strutin’s article surveys select studies, standards and resources about canine scent detection evidence.

With the inception of YouTube, the video has skyrocketed in popularity from how-to videos to promotional videos, to marketing for businesses and law firms. On this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, host Attorney Rodney Dowell, Director of the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program, welcomes Lu Ann Reeb, Co-founder and President of Legal Talk Network, LLC, to talk about the value of video and how firms and attorneys can gain exposure with a high quality video.