By placing her physical condition at issue in a tort claim over a fall from an office chair at work, a woman effectively waived any expectation of privacy in her nonpublic social networking posts relevant to show the extent of her injury and damages, a New York judge has ruled. After the defendant, Steelcase Inc., made a showing that the plaintiff, Kathleen Romano, seemingly might have relevant material on her "private" Facebook and MySpace pages, Suffolk County Supreme Court Acting Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner ruled that she had to provide access to all of the material on the sites, the…

Guidance for lawyers advertising on the Internet is offered by a new ethics opinion announced by the American Bar Association in a press release today. The ethics opinion (PDF), which was issued by the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, points to a number of potential website pitfalls. Among them are a need to obtain informed consent from clients before identifying them online; a need to update website information to ensure that it is current; and a need for lawyers to beware of conducting fact-specific discussions over the Internet that might create confusion about whether the other party…

A prominent California personal injury lawyer has been criminally charged for allegedly impersonating a female neighbor on the Internet and setting up pages encouraging strangers seeking sexual encounters to contact her. But attorney Franklin Casco Jr., 49, has been wrongly accused by Irvine police, his counsel, John Barnett, tells the Orange County Register. Authorities say they tracked the creator of the sex pages to Casco's law firm via Internet Protocol addresses, the article explains. However, "nothing found on his computer links this to him,'' Barnett tells the newspaper. "He is an attorney with an excellent reputation and doesn't need to…

An assistant attorney general in Michigan is asserting his First Amendment right to criticize an openly gay student leader in blog tirades, despite misgivings by his boss. Appearing on CNN’s AC 360, assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell said he has a constitutional right to criticize the University of Michigan student he labels a “radical homosexual activist” in his blog. Shirvell claims on his blog that student assembly president Chris Armstrong tries to recruit new students to “join the homosexual lifestyle” and turned a once-conservative student into a “proponent of the radical homosexual agenda.” According to CNN, Shirvell acknowledged protesting outside…

A law firm consultant who blogged about the possible loss or shifting of 17,500 BigLaw jobs is trying to put a lid on speculation about the reasons for her forecast. In an interview with the American Lawyer, Hildebrandt managing director Lisa Smith said her words were “just some initial thoughts on what we see going on.” In her blog post, Smith wrote that 17,500 associate and staff attorney jobs could be lost or shifted as a result of staffing changes driven by pressures for lower costs. She argued that outsourcing, efficiencies and increased hiring of staff attorneys could mean a…

A significant minority of BigLaw lawyers are apparently satisfied with their careers, a statistic that has a former partner speculating on the reasons why. Steven Harper, a former Kirkland & Ellis partner, points to a 2007 ABA survey that found 44 percent of lawyers at firms of more than 100 lawyers reported career satisfaction. In a column for the American Lawyer, he asks: “What makes these satisfied attorneys tick and what can be done to increase their ranks?” He suggests that some of those lawyers may be the type who thrive in firms where the focus is on metrics such…

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has sold his Pfizer stock, allowing him to participate in cases involving allegations of drug overcharges and vaccine injuries. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg confirmed that Roberts sold his shares, valued at less than $15,000, in August, according to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.). Arberg didn’t give a reason for the stock sale, the Post says, “but it appears likely that Justice Elena Kagan’s need to sit out the two cases played a role in Roberts' timing.” Kagan will recuse herself in 24 out of 51 cases on the…

Georgia State University has secured the No. 1 spot on National Jurist’s 2010 list best value law schools. A total of 60 law schools made the best value list based on three criteria: a bar pass rate that is higher than the state average, average indebtedness after graduation that is below $100,000, and an employment rate nine months after graduation that is 85 percent of the class or more. The schools are then weighted based on those factors and in-state tuition costs, National Jurist explains. Most law schools in the top 20 are located in the Midwest and Southeast, and…

Shawn Chapman Holley is in the media spotlight as Lindsay Lohan’s lawyer, but her initial legal experiences were a lot less high-profile. Holley, a graduate of Southwestern Law School, gained her legal experience working at the public defender’s office, working her way up to felony cases, CNN Justice reports in a profile. Then legendary lawyer Johnnie Cochran saw her in court and recruited her to work at his firm. Cochran’s firm didn’t handle criminal cases, at least not at first. But after Holley had been working at the firm for six months, O.J. Simpson hired Cochran to defend him on…

A former in-house lawyer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who focused on diversity issues has started a networking website for lawyers called Diverselawyers.com. “We are called diverse lawyers because of our emphasis on diversity, but also because the practice of law is diverse,” the website explains. Diverselawyers.com went live Sept. 1, says its founder, former in-house lawyer James Dockery. “The purpose behind the site is to allow lawyers, law students, and staff professionals to build sustainable relationships and not just to know who is connected to whom,” he tells the ABA Journal in an e-mail. The website’s motto: “Create, connect, collaborate.”…