This recent news about the comptroller of a New Orleans law firm stealing $2 million from the firm reminded me how common employee embezzlement is in the legal industry. I have several friends over the years who were victims of employee embezzlement. Invariably, it was the last employee they would have suspected who was doing… Continue Reading
Most Michael Cohen/ Donald Trump stories call Cohen Trump’s former fixer. That worries me. If there’s anything solo and small firm lawyers don’t need, it’s more people calling wanting a lawyer to fix their problem. Most people aren’t Donald Trump. Regular people with regular problems have to fix their own problems. A lawyer can’t fix… Continue Reading
Here is a preview of the February 2019 issue of the Miss. Jury Verdict Reporter: $2 million verdict- Hinds County car wreck case reported here (2/7/19); $968,000 verdict- George County uninsured motorist case (1/31/19); $2.5 million verdict (15% fault)- Hinds County medical malpractice verdict reported here (1/18/19); $350,000 verdict- Jackson federal court civil rights verdict… Continue Reading
This post is a follow up on a 2014 post about civil filings in Mississippi. Cliff Johnson, the Director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Ole Miss Law School, provided me with these updated statistics: Civil Cases filed 2001 – July 2018 . Another helpful document for analyzing filings is the Mississippi Supreme Court’s Annual Report.… Continue Reading
A proposed amendment to Fed. R. Civ. P. 30(b)(6) is drawing fire from the defense bar and their clients. Here is the proposed amendment: FRCP 30(b)(6). Here is the Lawyers for Civil Justice’s comment: Lawyers for Civil Justice Comment. Lawyers for Civil Justice is a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense trial lawyer… Continue Reading
Above the Law posted about Michelle Obama telling Oprah how great being a lawyer was how terrible document review is: …she preaches about the soul-crushing nature of document review. “I was doing document production in Washington, D.C., and I was like, ‘I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I can’t sit in… Continue Reading
Altman Weil recently released: 2018 Law Firms in Transition, an Altman Weil Flash Survey. From the introduction, comparing today to 2009 during the Great Recession: The threat in 2018 is broader and more nuanced, arising primarily from the sweeping force of technology evolution over the last two decades that has resulted in the commoditization and… Continue Reading
I’ve been working out in the afternoon at a gym with a wall of TVs in the cardio room. A TV is tuned into each of the local channels and the popular cable channels. I find myself mystified by the number of lawyer commercials. Both the number of commercials and the number of different law… Continue Reading
Hike’s over. It was….hard. Hiking 18-20 miles a day above 10,000 feet is tough for a desk jockey from sea level. You know why there aren’t any tall mountains in this picture? Because this is what it looks like when you are on top of them. The good news is my summer sabbatical from blogging… Continue Reading
For two years I planned to take a 6-week sabbatical in the summer of 2015 to thru hike the Colorado Trail. It didn’t work out. I had hip problems that made hiking impossible from 2014-2016. It didn’t matter. My wife developed serious health problems that would have pulled me off the trail if I had… Continue Reading
The Mississippi Bar issued the results of its 2016 economic survey last week. You can review the complete survey results here. You can review results from surveys in 2014, 2012, and 2010 here. You can read my blog post on the 2014 survey here. It appears notable trends from 2014 continue. 419 attorneys responded to… Continue Reading
It was another win for the plaintiffs yesterday in the Mississippi-born Johnson & Johnson baby powder talc litigation. The latest verdict was $417 million a California jury awarded to a single plaintiff after a 4 week trial. The plaintiffs have now won something like 5 of the 6 trials with most verdicts being massive. That… Continue Reading
After the panel discussion on social media at the Bar Convention and talking to people about Twitter, I am going to experiment with using Twitter in connection with this blog. Here is my Twitter feed. I will still blog a couple of times a week. Twitter will allow me to do three things that may… Continue Reading
An interesting article recently hit the presses: The Curious Incident of the Falling Win Rate, by Alexander Lahav and Peter Siegleman. Here is the Article. The study is based on federal court results nationwide for 1980 to 2010. It opens: Between 1985 and 1995, the plaintiff win rate in civil cases adjudicated in federal district… Continue Reading
It’s Bar Convention week–probably the slowest non-Holidays week of the year for Mississippi lawyers. Even attorneys who don’t attend the Bar Convention often schedule vacations this week. On Friday morning, I will be speaking at the Litigation and Appellate Sections meeting on an otherwise all-star panel about social media. On the panel: Texas Supreme Court… Continue Reading
A lot’s happened in the legal world since I last had time to blog. The U.S. Supreme Court took a lesson from the Miss. Supreme Court’s playbook on joinder. Meanwhile, some non-Mississippi judges on the 5th Circuit locked Mississippi into 50th place upheld HB 1523. That’s like letting Bama homers decide whether Ole Miss committed… Continue Reading
The WSJ had an article [paywall] last week about the number of Americans working remotely rising to 20% as part of an inexorable trend. The legal world is in front of that trend. I recently saw a stat that 43% of attorneys work remotely. I would have guessed that the number is even higher. If… Continue Reading
I saw a report that an effort in the Florida legislature to amend the state’s workers compensation act failed in part because the House wanted to cap fees of claimants’ attorneys at $150 per hour. The Senate was more generous, only wanting to cap fees at $250 per hour. Florida has close to 30 million… Continue Reading
A couple of weeks ago Jackson personal injury attorney Rocky Wilkins announced that he will join the Jackson office of Morgan & Morgan on May 1. It’s my understanding that the plan is for Rocky to try all of the firm’s Mississippi cases. Wilkins’ late father was a well known criminal lawyer in Jackson. Before… Continue Reading
Note: I wrote most of this post week before last. In the interim, another local man in his early 20’s overdosed. Good kid. Good family. The opioid epidemic is real–and it’s in your neighborhood. This is kind of off topic, but it’s becoming more apparent by the day that maybe the number one threat facing… Continue Reading
Mississippi Power Co. and its corporate parent Southern Company’s Kemper power plant may be the biggest debacle in the history of Mississippi not related to the Civil War or its long aftermath. It makes the famed beef plant look like tiddlywinks. The Company spent $6.2 billion (and counting) to build a plant that would (maybe)… Continue Reading
This Medscape Article titled Poll: 43% of Doctors Say Lying For Colleague Could Be Justified confirms what lawyers already know. Doctors aren’t any more honest than the next guy. In the poll of 922 physicians, only 57% said it was never okay to lie to protect a colleague. Nurses have more scruples–82% of nurses said… Continue Reading
In February a federal district court in Virginia issued this opinion on a motion to disqualify counsel for using inadvertently produced documents. Here’s what happened factually: In an effort to share information electronically, Thomas Cesario, a Senior Investigator for Nationwide Insurance Company, (“Nationwide”), which owns Harleysville, uploaded video surveillance footage of the fire loss scene,… Continue Reading
As reported in the Daily Journal, former Circuit Judge Frank Russell died on Saturday. Judge Russell had a quick wit, as evidenced by this exchange that I was lucky enough to see in person: Defense lawyer: I’ve got 10 reasons for why you should grant our summary judgment motion. Judge Russell: Well, you better pick… Continue Reading
