I’m not sure if anyone really falls for the commercial April Fool’s Day pranks anymore. It was novel a few years ago, but it is so widespread that we come to expect it (or, if you have some time to spend in front of the computer–you seek it out).

But, the point is not so much to fool consumers as it is to impress us with their cleverness.

Here’s my top five list of 2012 April Fool’s Day Pranks:

• No. 5: Google Analytics — Interplanetary Reporting.
• No. 4: The YouTube Collection on DVD — discs delivered to you for those days when the Internet is down.
• No. 3: Apple prepares to enforce its patent:  ”A quadrilateral having all four interior angles of 90°, opposite sides that are parallel, and congruent diagonals that bisect each other.”
• No. 2: Google 8-bit Quest maps. “Your system may not meet the minimum requirements for 8-bit computations.”
• No. 1:  Though the Star Wars’ Admiral Ackbar Singing Bass is a close runner-up (“It’s a trap!”), being the devoted Trekkie, I have to go with the inflatable Star Trek Captain’s chair. The product description is fantastic, and the video, though completely inane, is somehow compelling. I found myself hoping that, in the spirit of the Tauntaun sleeping bag, ThinkGeek would hear the cries of thousands of Trekkies, and get this product made. For fun, I clicked the “Buy Now” button. It’s real.

Did I miss any others? What are your favorites?

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Technology should make our lives easier. Properly harnessed, it can do just that. Left to its own devices, however, it’s less “Star Trek” and more like the worst parts of “The Matrix” — you remember, the scary part with computers and machines taking over our lives. Here’s one Word 2010 tip that will make your life easier.

Rule 2-341(e) of the Maryland Rules of Civil Procedure requires:

Highlighting of Amendments.  Unless the court orders otherwise, a party filing an amended pleading also shall file at the same time a comparison copy of the amended pleading showing by lining through or enclosing in brackets material that has been stricken and by underlining or setting forth in bold-faced type new material.

(Curiously, this rule, based on Local Rule 103(6)(c) of the Rules of the United States District Court of the District of Maryland, applies to circuit court cases but there is no counterpart for district court cases. Perhaps the Rules Committee figures that district court practice is too fast-paced to warrant this protocol. I bet if they knew how easy it was to comply, they would change their tune.)

Some people try to do this manually — going through a pleading, selecting a portion to be excised, right-clicking it, selecting Font, and then clicking strikethrough to show a deletion. But try doing that in a 100-paragraph pleading.

If you want an easier way, this is it:

– Find your original pleading. Open it up.

– Under the File menu tab, click Save as. Name it something easy, like “P AMD Complaint (02-28-12)”

– In the Review tab, click Show Markup. This will allow you to choose what revisions show up in the new document.  I put checkmarks next to Comments, Ink, Insertions and Deletions.

(You might choose formatting, too, though those changes appear in balloons to the right of the document, which can appear unwieldy.  I’m not aware of any courts that have taken a position on revealing changes in document formatting.)

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The electronic discovery community is all abuzz about U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck’s Feb. 24 opinion in which he recognized that “computer-assisted review is an acceptable way to search for relevant [Electronically Stored Information] in appropriate cases.” Peck, of the Southern District of New York, is one of several judges who has taken an active role in the debate on electronic discovery issues, along with Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola in Washington, D.C. and our own Chief Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm.

When Peck ruled from the bench Feb. 14, numerous blogs and websites and even the American Bar Association were quick to call the “decision . . . to require a so-called predictive coding protocol for automated e-discovery in an employment discrimination class action” one that could put document review teams’ jobs at risk.

In the current job market, an opinion that signals the death knell of any position — even document review positions — is highly concerning, particularly to young attorneys and law students.

But, there is good news. When Judge Peck issued his formal opinion, he clarified:

To correct the many blogs about this case, initiated by a press release from plaintiffs’ vendor—the Court did not order the parties to use predictive coding. The parties had agreed to defendants’ use of it, but had disputes over the scope and implementation, which the Court ruled on, thus accepting the use of computer-assisted review in this lawsuit.

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And more power to them. I happened upon this New York Times article over the weekend: How Companies Learn Your Secrets. The gist (it’s about 7,000 words, but it’s a quick read) is that Target hires statisticians to increase revenue.

Target, like many other corporations, wants to get repeat business. Most of us are set in our buying ways — we usually shop at the same places until some life-changing event happens. Those life-changing events include moving, marrying, divorcing, graduating and, of course, the holy grail of life-changing events: having a baby.

As most parents will tell you, having a baby changes everything (as it should). New parents must wrestle with sleep deprivation, continuous family illnesses, financial changes (sometimes including converting to one-income family for a short time, if not longer) and figuring out how to best care for their new bundle of joy.

New parents and parents-to-be are more open to changing their retail routines, as they try to fit their new purchasing requirements (baby food, formula, pacifiers, diapers and everything else) into their old shopping habits.

For example, Target hopes that new parents will stop shopping for food at grocery stores and convert to Target, which has a grocery section and baby products section. The theory is that they can predict which of their customers are pregnant based on purchasing habits.

[SPOILER ALERT]

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One of the partners at my law firm is a walking legal database. Whether I need to know a case dealing with fiduciary duties of a prior owner of a company or the last case in Maryland dealing with notices for mechanic’s liens, there is a high probability that he will know the case (or have information to quickly locate the case).

We all know of these individuals (and some of the readers of this blog may be those individuals). I’ve heard of stories about recently retired Court of Appeals judge who could not only cite cases regarding various legal topics but provide footnotes and pin cites.

Alas, I am not one of those individuals. To make up for my inability to recall the specific passage and verse of every single case I have ever read, I needed to develop a system to ensure that I was up to date with each new opinion pertinent to my practice. Fortunately, as a business attorney with a focus on construction law, I do not need to read every single opinion that is drafted and published (though I enjoy reviewing some of the criminal law opinions because they made for some good story telling).

So, I’ve developed a personal law library. In order to keep track of new opinions, I initially review the Maryland Lawyer section in Monday’s Daily Record, which provides a list of all of the previous week’s cases and a handy summary for each case. I circle cases I deem important for my practice and then have my legal assistant download them from the Judiciary’s website (a process that is free and environmentally friendly).

After I review the case and make electronic notes (I’ve only scratched the surface of PDFs’ wonderful features, though John Cord has written about this), I save the electronic version of the case in a folder in my Dropbox account (a cloud account that is free for the first 2GB).

Over the past few years, I have created an online, readily-available personal law library for myself. If a legal issue comes up, I can quickly determine if it’s something I already have researched. Obviously, I make sure the law is still good, but its the start that saves me time and our client’s money.

While this method works for me, are there any other methods that you use to help organize relevant cases you use?

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Why some people take pride in the fact their Facebook profile emulates an episode of Tosh.0 is beyond me. (I am not saying that I don’t watch the show and laugh hysterically. But, simultaneously, I do wonder why people put some of this stuff up on the Internet for the entire world to see.)

While Facebook has been in the news recently for its upcoming IPO, another story, about Facebook privacy, caught my attention on the radio as I was brushing my teeth this morning. Apparently, Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after the issue was brought to Facebook’s attention.

Have you ever deleted a horrific photo on Facebook that was posted by a “friend?” Well, you may not have really deleted it. Photos “deleted” from Facebook seemingly never go away if you have a direct link to the image file on Facebook’s servers. Just imagine the joy felt by those individuals who had the common sense or foresight to delete photos because they didn’t want retaliation from an employer, wanted to avoid family drama or uploaded a photo of a friend without permission, to name a few reasons, when they discovered the photo would remain accessible for an indefinite amount of time as long as someone had a direct link to the .jpg file in question.

A few months ago, I had to research the discoverability of information and data on a Facebook (or other social media) account and profile. From the limited guidance published by a few jurisdictions, it seems that a party would likely succeed in requesting Facebook information and data during the discovery process. The court’s interpretation of federal Rule 26(b)(2)(c) allows for an extremely broad scope of relevancy.

While Maryland courts have not ruled on this broad scope of relevancy as it pertains to social media discoverability pursuant to Rule 26(b)(2)(c), it has ruled on its reliability and authentication. In April 2011, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Antoine Griffin, which was based on evidence gathered from a MySpace profile of Griffin’s girlfriend. The Court of Special Appeals had ruled the police officer proffered by the state as an authenticating witness was sufficient to authenticate the MySpace profile printout. (A law professor from Chicago gave a great summary of this case on his blog and I will highlight some points here.)

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