Small Law


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    Connolly Gallagher Gets 2 Attys For Trusts, Estates, Tax Dept.

    Delaware firm Connolly Gallagher LLP has added a former Ernst & Young tax consultant and an attorney who previously worked at Morris Nichols Arsht & Tunnell LLP to its trusts, estates and tax department.

  • Firms Fight Bid To Revive Malpractice Suit Over Liability Case

    Two firms are asking the Delaware Supreme Court to affirm the dismissal of a malpractice suit filed by parents over damages sought for their child's "catastrophic injuries," allegedly caused by contamination from a chicken plant.

  • DC Firms Say They Must Be Allowed To Exit $120M Iraq Row

    Two boutique firms are fighting a construction company's effort to make them stay on as counsel to Iraq in a D.C. federal court case related to a nearly $120 million arbitral award, saying Wednesday the country has stopped paying fees.

  • Treasure Hunter Urges Atty DQ In Fla. Shipwreck Suit

    A member of an ocean salvage company urged a Florida federal court Wednesday to disqualify counsel applying to represent his opponent in a lawsuit over a claim to a Spanish galleon's sunken treasure, saying the attorney previously represented the company in a separate dispute involving the same wreckage.

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    Ohio Justices Say Attorney In Prison Should Not Be Disbarred

    The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an attorney in federal prison for his participation in a tax fraud scheme should not be disbarred, and should have a chance to reapply for his law license in the future

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    Gunster Expands With Private Wealth Pro From Tampa Firm

    Florida business law firm Gunster has brought on a private wealth services shareholder in Tampa from Bleakley Bavol Denman & Grace as part of the firm's effort to meet growing client demand.

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    Room For Improvement: How To Hone Atty 'MarTech' Use

    Improving attorney adoption of marketing technology — otherwise known as "MarTech" — is a critical business need for law firms, but not enough lawyers have the skills needed to use such tools, platforms and software, according to an industry report made public Wednesday.

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    Pervasive Bullying In Law Is Impacting Young Attorneys

    A report released earlier this month cataloging the experiences of more than 6,000 Illinois lawyers found that one quarter say they have experienced bullying within the last year. Among the youngest lawyers, that number jumps to 39%.

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    NJ Judge Exits Disbarred Atty's Suits Over Ties To State Bar

    A disbarred New Jersey civil rights attorney persuaded a New Jersey federal judge to recuse herself from cases he has pending before her due to the "slim, but conceivable chance" of an appearance of impropriety stemming in part from her time as president of the New Jersey State Bar Association.

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    Approach The Bench: Judge Rosenthal Praises Zoom Hearings

    While U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal calls the pandemic a disaster that "discombobulated" the federal courts, she thinks there was also a silver lining to the experience.

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    Legal Marketer Sues To Halt New Pa. Atty Text Solicitation Ban

    A marketing company focused on soliciting criminal defendants on behalf of attorneys has filed suit in Pittsburgh federal court looking to overturn a new Pennsylvania ethics rule barring lawyers from using text messages to recruit clients.

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    How Certifications Became Ubiquitous For Privacy Attorneys

    As privacy has become a more prominent and popular practice area, many attorneys have turned to certifications offered by the International Association of Privacy Professionals to market their skills, with those in the field saying that the popularity is the result of privacy's rapid evolution and the ubiquity is unlikely to diminish.

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    Circuit Judge Rips Atty's 'Unearned Windfall' In Liability Case

    Although the Sixth Circuit has affirmed a decision awarding roughly $353,000 to a Texas attorney in a decadelong fee dispute over his representation of a client in a product liability case, one circuit judge expressed "extreme disapproval" over the lawyer's conduct in the matter.

  • Partner Sues Over Firm Breakup After $100M Conn. Verdict

    Ryan C. McKeen, the former CEO of a trial firm known for high-dollar verdicts, is wrongfully trying to arbitrate a dispute over the terms of the practice's breakup, his former law partner Andrew P. Garza alleged in a state court showdown between the two 50% owners and their families.

  • Denver Law Firm Faces Class Action Over Data Breach

    The former spouse of a Sherr Puttmann Akins Lamb PC client has launched a putative class action in Colorado state court alleging that sensitive information she provided to the Denver-based family law firm, including her Social Security number, ended up on the dark web following a data breach.

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    3 Factors Attorneys Should Keep In Mind When Using AI

    Attorneys who hope to leverage new artificial intelligence programs in their legal work should stay mindful of three rules of conduct from the American Bar Association dictating attorney competence, client confidentiality and billing procedures, according to a recently published paper from the International Association of Defense Counsel.

  • NY Firm Sued Over Botched $5M Art Collector Ch. 7 Dispute

    A family enmeshed in New York's art world is suing their former attorneys in relation to a dismissed bankruptcy proceeding with an art collector over a breach of contract, alleging the attorneys' incompetence lost them $5 million when they moved the case from state court to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.

  • Philly Attys Sued For Allegedly Botching Bias Lawsuit

    A malpractice suit filed in Philadelphia court alleges that attorneys at the Law Offices of Eric A. Shore did not properly manage a pair of federal employment discrimination cases for a power plant engineer, causing the dismissal of one complaint and a diminished jury verdict in the second.

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    Texas Firm Reynolds Frizzell Finds Strength In Being Small

    While it makes room to physically accommodate a growing roster, Houston trial boutique Reynolds Frizzell LLP is not angling to shed its small law firm status.

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    Mich. Firm Can't Get More Fees From Nassar Suits, Jury Finds

    A Michigan federal jury said Monday a personal injury firm already got what it was owed as local counsel for survivors of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar's abuse, rejecting the firm's claims against a Colorado firm for another $500,000.

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    Fla. Bar Insurance Biz Names First New Chair In Over 30 Years

    Florida Lawyers Mutual Insurance Co. will have a new chair for the first time since its launch in 1987 after its board of directors tapped a solo practitioner in Tampa as its next leader.

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    National Footprints Scramble Partner Pay's Link To Location

    Law firm partners' increasing pay often varies based on where those attorneys are located, a fact reinforced by a new study out Thursday, but experts say the relationship between compensation and location has become more complicated as more firms operate on a national scale. 

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    Insurers Have Long Used AI; Now Litigation Funders Want In

    As State Farm waded into the nascent field of "artificial intelligence" tools in the mid-1980s, its mainframe computers began to overheat under the strain of calculating the values of claims.

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    Milber Makris Expands Trial Capabilities With 15 Attys In NY

    Milber Makris Plousadis & Seiden LLP, a full-service civil litigation defense firm for the insurance industry, has expanded its litigation and trial capabilities with the addition of 15 attorneys from Zaklukiewicz Puzo & Morrissey LLP and Gartner & Bloom PC in New York.

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    Kessler Topaz Founding Partner To Retire At End Of Year

    One of the founding partners of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP announced this week he is retiring from the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based firm after more than two decades of representing clients in securities class actions.

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Expert Analysis

  • Personality Tests And Machine Learning Applications In Law Author Photo

    Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.

  • AI Is Reshaping Lawyering: What To Expect In 2024 Author Photo

    The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.

  • Embrace Active Voice In Legal Writing — In Most Cases Author Photo

    Legal writers should strive to craft sentences in the active voice to promote brevity and avoid ambiguities that can spark litigation, but writing in the passive voice is sometimes appropriate — when it's a moral choice and not a grammatical failure, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Help Associates Turn Down Work? Author Photo

    Marina Portnova at Lowenstein Sandler discusses what partners can do to aid their associates in setting work-life boundaries, especially around after-hours assignment availability.

  • How AI Legal Research Tools Are Shifting Law Firm Processes Author Photo

    Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.

  • Data Source Proliferation Is A Growing E-Discovery Challenge Author Photo

    With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.

  • Bracing For A Generative AI Revolution In Law Author Photo

    With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.

  • Why I Use ChatGPT To Tell Me Things I Already Know Author Photo

    The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly? Author Photo

    Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.

  • Yada, Yada, Yada: The Magic Of 3 In Legal Writing Author Photo

    Attorneys should take a cue from U.S. Supreme Court justices and boil their arguments down to three points in their legal briefs and oral advocacy, as the number three is significant in the way we process information, says Diana Simon at University of Arizona.

  • How Firms Can Stop Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data Security Author Photo

    In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.

  • 5 Life Lessons From Making Partner As A Solo Parent Author Photo

    Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage? Author Photo

    Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.

  • Resume Gaps Are No Longer Kryptonite To Your Legal Career Author Photo

    Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.

  • Law Firm Guardrails For Responsible Generative AI Use Author Photo

    ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.

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