Category: News

Fired employees include defamation claims in their lawsuits

June 9, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment Court, Economy, Justice, Legal News, News, Social Media

Companies are increasingly facing defamation claims from former workers, along with being sued for discrimination and wrongful termination. According to the Recorder, the defamation claim usually accuses the organization of giving inaccurate reasons for firing an employee.

The employment sphere isn’t the only place one might find defamation claims due to social media and review websites, according to Internet law attorney Karl Kronenberger.

L. Julius Turman, a Reed Smith partner and attorney, said that 60 to 70 percent of his wrongful termination and harassment cases incorporated defamation claims.

In a suit by Robert Sallustio, a defamation claim made a large difference in the outcome of his case. Sallustio argued that Kemper Independence Insurance Co. fired him after wrongly claiming that he wasn’t attending work in the morning. He won his defamation judgement in the California case last year, which was nearly $5.7 million, despite losing his retaliation and wrongful termination claims.

Article via ABA Journal, 27 May 2015

Photo: construction via J J [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Antitrust complaint made against Google over banned privacy app

June 5, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment Ethics, News, Privacy, Security, Tech

A recent complaint against Google claims that the company was violating antitrust regulations when it banned a privacy app. The app, Disconnect, stops malevolent advertising and secretive user tracking. The creator of the app filed a complaint with the EU on Tuesday. According to Disconnect, Google’s decision to discontinue the app on the Google Play store was an abuse of its dominant position in mobile tech. Google said the app violates its policies and their complaint is groundless.

“We don’t oppose advertising and understand ad revenue is critically important to many Internet companies, publishers and developers,” Disconnect Co-founder and CEO Casey Oppenheim said. “But users have the right to protect themselves from invisible tracking and malware, both of which put sensitive personal information at risk. Advertising doesn’t have to violate user privacy and security.”

The complaint is just a part of the increased scrutiny Google is undergoing as it hopes to increase the influence of its Android Mobile operating system. The ongoing European Commission investigation into Android shines a light on regulators’ worries concerning how Google exercises its power.

Disconnect argues that Google is using Android in monopolistic ways and has consolidated inadequate security and privacy features into its presiding products, thus bringing harm to consumers and giving itself a discriminatory advantage.

Google, on the other hand, claims that Disconnect has violated its policies, according to clause 4.4 of Google’s Developer Distribution Agreement which forbids apps from interfering with other apps.

Article via CNET, 2 June 2015

Photo:Big Google brother?  via Alain Bachellier [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Jump-start your legal career by participating in a Hackathon

June 4, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment News, Tech

The word ‘hackathon’ may inspire mixed emotions, depending on the legal ramifications surrounding the event. Brooklyn Law School Professor Jonathan Akin debated organizing such an activity for this very reason; that is until 2012, when he helped arrange a legal hackathon with the support of the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic.

A hackathon is a conference, meet-up or workshop where experts from a variety of disciplines get together with tech aficionados who are seeking innovative solutions and structures to take on long-established problems. A challenge or problem is presented, and then groups put on a demonstration.

Hackathons are proving to be a way for like-minded lawyers to find each other and help them discover new directions in their careers. The event may produce an app, policy proposal, service or other work product that addresses problems in the real world. After the Brooklyn hackathon, a number of Legal Hackers chapters spread across the United States.

These events create a way for like-minded attorneys to connect, innovate their careers and help students allocate a job in a contracting legal market. Hackathon organizers’ first challenge is overcoming the stigma surrounding the word ‘hacker.’ “To most lawyers, ‘hackathon’ probably sounds like an invitation to commit felonies,” says Dazza Greenwood, a lawyer and research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. “But to people who get it, a legal hackathon is about lawyers, engineers and policymakers interested in solving problems at the intersection of the law and technology.”

Article via ABA Journal, 1 June 2015

Photo: HACKERS MEET JOURNALISTS via Ophelia Noor [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Lawyers: Why it is important to train employees for cyber attacks

May 29, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment Cybercrime, Legal News, News, Security, Social Media, Tech

Recently it has been reported that about 45% of IT security personnel are dealing with extensive issues resulting from employees clicking on email links and attachments that download malware and phishing attacks. Osterman Research issued its “Best Practices for Dealing with Phishing and Next-Generation Malware” in April . Stories included described real-life situations in which law firms lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to cyber attacks. Here are three key takeaways :

  • Users are sharing more information through social media as cybercriminals are refining their tactics, and unfortunately many current anti-phishing solutions are proving insufficient. This makes companies and groups more susceptible to cyber attacks.
  • Organizations should execute a training program that will raise their employees’ awareness of phishing attempts and other possible attacks, so users become the first line of defense in any security infrastructure.
  • Business and IT decision makers should put forth best practices to help their users screen electronic communication and collaboration for social engineering attacks more carefully.

Article via Above The Law, 20 May 2015

Photo: Macbook Pro via Warren R.M. Stuart [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Lawyers and the future of the legal profession

May 29, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment In the Law, Legal News, Mediation, News, Opinion, Tech

Speakers at Avvo’s sixth annual Lawyernomics conference discussed how the legal profession will function in the next five to ten years. Avvo CEO Mark Britton noted that lawyers are leaving opportunities on the table by not addressing commoditized work. Attorneys aren’t providing certain services to their clients yet look negatively upon nonlawyers who try to do it themselves. Automating work through “freemium” models such as Rocket Matter can help attorneys create strong relationships with potential and current clients while allowing lawyers to avoid the work they don’t want to do, according to Britton.

F. Daniel Siciliano, a professor at Stanford Law School, asserted that, as law becomes readily available to the public and more open-sourced, clients will no longer need lawyers. He had done research that ultimately indicated that, when a targeted immigration law office relied less on human employees and more on technology, it was 10 times more profitable than offices with traditional revenue models. According to Dave Schappell, startup business development manager at Amazon Web Services, a lawyers should be investing in is the Cloud, an option that has been ignored by many attorneys. Plenty of major companies and government agencies already run on the Cloud, increasing agility and encouraging innovation by lowering risk, Schappell says. While the legal profession may be going through chaotic changes, it is important that they create a strong culture of client service and remain true to their values.

Article via ABA Journal, 18 May 2015

Photo: Law Books via Mr.TinDC [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

CrowdJustice: Combining public interest litigation and crowdfunding

May 27, 2015 Christy Leos Leave a comment Court, Finance, Human Rights, Justice, News

A London-based startup, CrowdJustice, has emerged and hopes to help communities fund legal action. The startup, founded by ex-UN lawyer Julia Salasky, is a crowdfunding platform for public interest litigation. The group’s goal is to provide access to justice for poorly-funded legal cases through the Kickstarter model. According to Salasky, CrowdJustice let’s communities come together to access the court system and protect their shared values and assets. The types of cases CrowdJustice features could vary from local to nationally-based issues. Until recently, there really wasn’t a means for communities to take advantage of the finances and energy of the community as a whole; typical public interest cases relied on the financial sacrifice of a few individuals.

Article via TechCrunch, 22 May 2015

Photo: 104:365 – a little justice via orangesparrow [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]