Customers and other users who stored personal materials on Megaupload have another two weeks to retrieve their files, under an agreement negotiated by the embattled website and its hosting companies. However, it isn't clear whether and how individuals can access their property since the raid by the U.S. that shut down the Megaupload site worldwide and the indictment of seven individuals associated with the company in a criminal piracy case, PC Magazine reports. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation has teamed up with one of Megaupload's hosting companies, Carpathia Hosting, to launch a megaretrieval.com website in an effort to help. A…

A medical technologist’s complaints within her company about time-sheet alterations that allegedly violated the Fair Labor Standards Act are protected activity and she may sue under the FLSA’s antiretaliation provision, 29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(3), on a complaint that she was terminated for her intracompany complaints. Plaintiff was a medical technologist at defendant laboratory. She met with [...]

Representatives from New York’s top 200 law firms learned about hacking risks in a meeting with the FBI last November, and some were better prepared than others. The FBI’s cyber division in New York City held the meeting because of the rising number of law firms getting hacked, Bloomberg News reports. A warning was issued: Hackers are targeting law firms to access data about their corporate clients. Mary Galligan, who heads the FBI division that held the New York meeting, talked to Bloomberg about the dangers. “As financial institutions in New York City and the world become stronger, a hacker…

Jurors ruled for Seyfarth Shaw on Monday in a malpractice case that alleged the law firm didn’t do enough to protect a client from employment judgments. A 13-member jury found no liability after all the parties agreed that the alternate could join deliberations, the National Law Journal reports. The suit by ex-client PCG Trading blamed Seyfarth for successor liability in an employment case. PCG Trading had purchased the assets of Converge Inc. in 2003. In 2007, PCG was hit with a $3.32 million judgment in a suit to enforce a woman’s bias judgments against Converge. The judge in the case…

Workers are bound to run into people they don’t like—at the office and everywhere else. But if it happens too often, you should consider whether it’s you, according to Stanford University management professor Robert Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and The No Asshole Rule. The Harvard Business Review covered Sutton’s advice in an article noted by the Careerist. Sutton says you should consider what it is about the hated person who sets you off. Is jealousy part of the reason you don’t like the nemesis? Is he or she different than you? Does he remind you of your…

Televised oral arguments are one way the U.S. Supreme Court could communicate better with the public, according to University of California at Irvine law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. But why stop there? Speaking at a symposium on the court and the press at Brigham Young University’s law school, Chemerinsky suggested several ways the court could do a better job of informing the public. The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times summarizes Chemerinsky’s keynote address. According to The BLT: Chemerinsky offered these suggestions: • Instead of rejecting cert petitions without comment, the court could explain why it denied review. • The court…

An environmental group has sued the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to block the EPA’s conditional approval of odor-fighting nanosilver in clothing and other textiles. The Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit last week in the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the National Law Journal reports. A federal fungicide law allows challenges to EPA orders to be filed at the appeals level, the story explains. Silver has been used in pesticides, but the NRDC says in a press release that the smaller nanosilver particles used to kill bacteria in textiles could harm human health and the environment. The…

An index used to monitor the health of the nation’s major law firms has fallen to the lowest level in more than two years, but it's unclear whether the lower numbers will translate to more layoffs this year, according to the lawyer who oversees the research. The Hildebrandt Institute’s Peer Monitor Index fell to 49 in the fourth quarter of 2011, which is below the 65 points that indicate a healthy operating environment, according to a summary (PDF) and a press release. Demand for legal services was down for the fourth quarter, though it was up 1 percent for the…

Slater & Gordon, the world's first publicly traded law firm is poised to grow again after agreeing to pay 53.8 million pounds (about $84 million in U.S. dollars) for a United Kingdom law firm that also specializes in personal injury work. The acquisition of Russell Jones & Walker is authorized under the Legal Services Act, but must be approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority before it is final, the Financial Times (reg. req.) reports. Under the LSA, the U.K. is the world's second country, after Australia, to allow law firms to be purchased on the open market by another firm…

Six doctors and scientists have sued the Food and Drug Administration after discovering that the agency snooped into their personal Gmail accounts, which the staffers accessed from their government computers. Government documents show that the secret surveillance took place, over a two-year period starting in January 2009, after the staffers complained to lawmakers in Congress that the FDA was approving risky medical devices, the Washington Post (reg. req.) reports. All six of the plaintiffs say in the Washington, D.C., federal suit that they suffered adverse consequences at work over the material the FDA gleaned in this manner from their Gmail…