Which should come first: California’s right to regulate how eggs are sold or other states’ rights to regulate their farms? That’s the question that drives six states in their lawsuit against California, filed in federal court in Fresno. The states are taking issue with a California law banning the sale…
State bars around the country are on notice that assessing prospective attorneys’ fitness to practice law based on their mental health may discriminate against individuals with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Justice said that states may examine applicants’ prior behavior, but not their mental health status, when determining whether to…
Daniel Lewis was midway through his second year at Stanford Law School when he became convinced there was a better way to do legal research.
The thought came to him while doing work for a nonprofit in 2011. He was trying to understand where his issue fit within a broad group of cases his research had found. In his mind he pictured a view of his issue triangulated against the most important cases at the center and all the other, less important cases circled around them.
Venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, in a speech he gave last year, was not venturing much oral capital into the concept of investing in legal services. A corporate and securities-law attorney before he co-founded the Foundry Group, his venture capital firm, Mendelson told a conference he found it difficult to invest…
The Atta family locked up their Temecula, Calif., home and went on vacation in 2012. While they were gone, Victor Cheng moved in. Cheng had owned the home before the Attas, but he lost it in foreclosure. Nonetheless, he filed a fraudulent deed with the county recorder’s office, transferred the…
Pastor Rick Warren had a tax problem. Warren is the best-selling writer and leader of the evangelical Christian Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. As a “minister of the gospel,” under IRS rules he may receive a tax-free housing allowance from his church and apply it toward the cost of…
Even in a widely vilified industry, MPHJ Technology Investments stands out. The company is not just a patent troll; it has been called one of the worst of the trolls. Its patent licensing campaign is deceptive, unfair and unlawful, according to many critics. MPHJ is a “bottom feeder” engaged in…
When Alison Monahan, founder of the Girl's Guide to Law School website, went to a high-profile legal technology conference last year in Silicon Valley, she noticed something missing on the roster of speakers: women.
"There was really only one woman speaking the entire day," she says. "I thought, 'Really? That's the best you can do?' "
That day she and some other female audience members decided to form an online group called Law Tech Ladies to cater to the small-but-growing number of women in the blossoming field where law and technology intersect.
Talk about a classic dinghy-among-the-battleships dilemma: Large law firms are lurching toward even greater mass every year. In 2013, and for the first time, the National Law Journal 250 list of the nation’s largest firms included two breaking the 4,000-lawyer barrier. Three more had more than 2,000 lawyers, and an…
In December 2012, Emily Sue Falkenstein of Renton, Wash., drove into a marked crosswalk where wheelchair-bound Gregory Ramirez, 48, was crossing with his 6-year-old niece in his lap. The crash broke his leg and his wheelchair, and it left the girl with bruises and scrapes, according to court papers. The…
