The only winning blog I had heard of was Above the Law, which has been my (and I think everyone else’s) go-to source for informative and funny posts about legal happenings and the legal profession, as well as occasional disdain for the profession. It’s especially good for BigLaw lawyers and has great coverage of how bonuses are stacking up across the various firms each year.

While I really like the news and the humor, I find the BigLaw talk a bit irrelevant to me in my downtime, so it’s nice to add some new blogs to the mix. Among the Blawg100, I particularly liked Lowering the Bar,  which describes ridiculous and funny lawsuits. I also liked Abnormal Use, which contains stories about interesting tort lawsuits, product mishaps and personal stories from attorneys.

An ABA Journal reader suggested the Blawg 100 include Twitter feeds next year. (The Blawg 100 is also happens to be available in convenient Twitter form.) These are particularly good if you want detailed coverage of a specific event, like this Twitter feed that provides regular Huguely trial updates and additional information about the story (and I am sure there are others).

Even some local law firms have funny and informational Twitter feeds.

Any other blogs out there that are worth making part of your daily routine?

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]

By far, the best part of the article was the outing of pregnant high schooler. Certainly, it’s not ideal that a high school student is pregnant. But Target, applying its algorithm to purchasers, started sending baby and pregnancy-related coupons to one young girl, whose father was outraged that Target appeared to be encouraging her to become pregnant. The Target manager dutifully apologized on two occasions, but was surprised on the second conversation when the father revealed: “I had a talk with my daughter. It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of.”

Comments to the article and on social networks seem to favor the “THIS IS AN INVASION OF MY PRIVACY” model. I’m no privacy expert, but it seems to me that if you communicate with a store through customer service, fill in their surveys, give them your email address, shop online or use a credit card when purchasing products, it’s logical that they put all of that information into a big basket marked “About You.” And if they can use that information to send you coupons for things you might need (I’ll say it again), more power to them.

On the other hand, if you don’t want them to have any information about you, you’ll pull some money out of your bank account and pay in cash. Problem solved.

I’m not really sure why people are all that surprised about this type of thing. I remember the exact same complaints back when Safeway started the Club Card, I think in the late ’90s, and I’m sure there are examples way before that. Technology is going to get better and better, and retailers will have access to more information about us.

But we still have free will; they are not forcing us to buy their products. And, frankly, they don’t care about any of us as people. No one is looking through the spreadsheets saying, “Huh. Mrs. Smith is pregnant.”

So, in case I haven’t made it clear, I don’t mind that companies can use technology to figure this stuff out. But then, in a parallel universe I was probably the guy who said “This Skynet thing is really cool!”

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?

Of course, there were excellent CLEs and panel discussions. Not only did I attend an educational event put on by the ABA Criminal Justice Section, but I also participated in one at Tulane Law School.

There, I had the honor of discussing careers in criminal justice alongside a sitting U.S. District Court judge and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, which gave me an opportunity to learn and to hopefully impart something helpful to a room full of law students.

The ABA meetings are also an opportunity to recognize those attorneys and judges who are doing great things nationally and back in their home states. A member of Maryland’s delegation was awarded as a finalist for the ABA National Outstanding Young Lawyer Award. Recognitions such as these are important not only for the recipient but also for those in attendance as inspiration to do better in our profession and communities.

These meetings are a big draw, filling up hotels with lawyers and judges from across the country. As such, they are often a great venue for policymakers to come, be heard and make news. One day during the meeting I had lunch a table over from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and I got to break bread and discuss issues with members of his staff. Holder gave a speech during the lunch and announced, for the first time, plans to offer $2.4 million in grants for improvements to indigent legal services.

Finally, the ABA meetings are a great place to network with colleagues and meet new people. My wife and I were strolling one day in the French Quarter and walked into the Kitchen Witch, a book store for cookbooks, and while musing over various gumbo recipes, we bumped into a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Justice Antonin Scalia and his family graciously allowed us to take a picture. Fortunately, it was safer than hanging out with Justice Stephen Breyer but unfortunately, there was no time to discuss the constitutionality of healthcare (I think I could’ve contributed to oral arguments).

Think about attending an ABA meeting sometime – the ABA Young Lawyers Division next meets in Nashville from May 3-5 and the ABA’s Annual Meeting is in Chicago from August 2–7.

(Photos courtesy of Erek Barron. Top, Taria Barron, left, Justice Antonin Scalia and Erek Barron)

My firm encourages its associates to join committees and associations and to take on leadership roles in local and state bar associations. We are encouraged to attend the events put on by the bar associations — for instance, we had 18 lawyers and family members signed up to bowl.

But, as a young lawyer, I often struggle with striking the balance between a busy practice and all of the “extracurriculars.” There never seems to be enough time to do everything.

I still am not clear on how to “do it all,” but there have been no regrets thus far when I’ve put the red well aside for a bit to attend a bar association meeting or event. I have never left an event, meeting or presentation wishing I hadn’t attended and stayed at the office instead. There is something that goes on when we connect with our colleagues outside of the court room that is incredibly refreshing.

Plus, I’ve noticed (and experienced first-hand) that attorneys who know each other on a personal level from bar association interactions tend to be more civil and willing to work out their differences when they are opponents in court.

So, my humble advice is to get involved. Set aside time to join a committee or section of a bar association. Attend both substantive events and the just-for-fun events. Participate in the volunteer opportunities hosted by the bar associations.  The balance is important, and you never know when the connections you make at a bar association event are going to be advantageous.

(Photo by Sam Holden/Urbanite)

According Jeff Scholnick at the  Baltimore County Small and Solo Attorney’s Blog, the tradition may date back to the late 1950s.  Scholnick posted Towson legal icon Harris “Bud” George’s tale of his first bar banquet.

Gov. Theodore McKeldin was the keynote speaker, and at that time the banquet was held at the Greenspring Inn. McKeldin dodged not only carbohydrate bombs, but also pea projectiles launched from lawyers’ spoons.

Here’s a key passage:

At a table in front of me, I noticed a white-haired gentleman stagger to his feet. Very deliberately, he leaned over his table, selected a small roll of bread, and, to my dismay, suddenly heaved it at Governor McKeldin.

For the full details and a hearty end-of-week laugh, check out the posts here and here.

All of a sudden, there was work to be done on deadline and I wasn’t the only one who would be doing it. Where I used to mark up students’ papers with abandon and be the final (and only) arbiter of quality and subpar work, I would now actually be working with other people who would mark up my work product (gasp!) and make suggestions for improvements to opinions, briefs and everything else I drafted.

Do I now know what it means to be a good colleague after a couple of years following this somewhat uncomfortable transition into the legal world? To see how much (or how little) I knew, I asked several attorneys I know — one government attorney, one at a large national firm, and one at a small firm — what they believe makes a good colleague.

Surprisingly, all of us (yes, even me) produced similar answers. So, with spring training right around the corner — Orioles pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18 — I have craftily compiled the main measures of attorney colleagueship into measurable statistics based upon familiar baseball stats. These can be used to evaluate all attorneys — new associates, senior counsel and even partners.

1. ERA (Earned Run Average) = meets Expectations, is Reliable and Accountable

In the feedback I got from almost every attorney I asked, these three traits appeared the most. Just like the baseball stat (which, yes, I know, is already a thing of the past) measures a pitcher’s reliability, this colleagueship statistic measures how well you do what you say you are going to do so that others can rely on you.

An implicit part of this aspect of colleagueship is actually understanding what you’re going to be able to accomplish over a specific time period and communicating that effectively to other colleagues. Unlike baseball, a high ERA as a colleague is a good thing. It means your colleagues can count on you, which means they will like to work with you.

2. RBI (Runs Batted In) = Respects Boundaries In the office

This was a key one for those I asked and, in my experience, a fairly easy area in which to pad your stats. Attend office functions, each lunch with your colleagues, tell cute/funny stories about your kids/pets/in-laws/parents. Ask questions of your colleagues about their lives to the extent that they are willing to share and you are willing to listen.

Get appropriate presents for secretaries, paralegals, etc. Remember the names of the children/pets of your co-workers. Of course, it’s easy to see how sometimes these boundaries could get crossed, so it’s just as important not to pry and to be professional at all times.

3. OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage) = Office Politics Savvy

If you’ve got a high OPS, you probably also have a high RBI. While respecting boundaries is a key element to being office politics savvy, there are many other elements involved. Office politics has a lot more to do with knowing and reading more senior colleagues, taking cues in meetings, avoiding gossip, knowing when to push back and when not to and knowing how to prioritize a workload.

One colleague who provided feedback told me that at his firm, the attorneys who have the highest OPS are also the worst attorneys, so beware of an attorney who is a little too good at playing this game.

4. OBP (On-Base Percentage) = Overly Buggy and Pesky

This is pretty self-explanatory, but everyone knows this colleague. This colleague walks the halls in a seeming endless loop peering longingly into offices for attorneys to talk to. This colleague will linger in your office doorway, happily filling you in on the gory (and often inappropriate — see RBI) details from the party over the weekend, the “hilarious” trip to the in-laws, the amazing thing that happened in court (“Can you believe the judge did that?”) or the latest office gossip (see OPS).

You must be careful with the OBA colleague. If you make the mistake of looking up as the OBP colleague passes by, you’d better have an exit strategy, as in, be prepared to drain your coffee and get up to get more. I recommend going to this exit strategy sooner rather than later.

5. WHIP (Walks Plus Hits Per Inning Pitched) = Works Happily/Handily In a Pressurized environment

In most legal settings, there are times when work needs to be turned around pretty quickly. If you have a colleague who works happily, or at least handily, in a pressurized environment, then you’ve got a colleague you like.

This colleague doesn’t waste time hemming and hawing or haranguing the client or opposing counsel who has forced you into this pressurized environment. Instead, this colleague simply puts his head down, gets to work and gets it done.

6. IP  (Innings Pitched) = Improvement Potential

This is one of the more “aspirational” qualities, as one attorney said. You aren’t going to find this every day, since we attorneys are a generally (perhaps overly) confident bunch. A colleague with a high IP actively seeks to improve as an attorney. The high-IP colleague takes criticism well; in fact, she seek it out. She asks questions and isn’t afraid to say she doesn’t understand something. More importantly, she actually learns from the criticism.

7. CG (Complete Game) = Communication Grade

It’s pretty clear from the above descriptions of good colleagueship that the heart of what it means to work with others is effective communication. So, if you have a high CG, that means you are clear about (a) your abilities, (b) your workload, (c) your expectations and (d) what you expect from your colleagues.

Failure to communicate effectively dooms many an assignment from the beginning, so if you are receiving the assignment, don’t be afraid to ask questions for clarification. If you’re giving the assignment, spend a few minutes thinking about how to be clear about what you want.

So there you have it. Let the statistics-keeping begin. But please, be OPS, not OBP. Make sure you RBI and ERA. Work on your WHIP and show your IP. Most of all, though, earn that high CG. Everyone will love you if you do.

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.)

The Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting the MySpace evidence pursuant to Maryland Rule 5-901(b)(4) because the picture of Griffin’s girlfriend, Jessica Barber, coupled with her birth date and location, were not sufficient “distinctive characteristics” on a MySpace profile to authenticate its printout, given the prospect that someone other than Barber could have not only created the site but also posted the “snitches get stitches” comment.

The potential for abuse and manipulation of a social networking site by someone other than its purported creator and/or user means a printout of an image from such a site requires a greater degree of authentication than merely identifying the date of birth of the creator and her visage in a photograph on the site.

The Court of Appeals also recognized the decisions of other courts when they were called upon to consider authentication of electronically-stored information on social networking sites, which have all suggested greater scrutiny because of the heightened possibility for manipulation by individuals other than the true user or poster.

After citing a laundry list of such cases, the court then cautioned that

we should not be heard to suggest that printouts from social networking sites should never be admitted. Possible avenues to explore to properly authenticate a profile or posting printed from a social networking site, will, in all probability, continue to develop as the efforts to evidentially utilize information from the sites increases.

The three existing methods are:

(1) The most obvious method would be to ask the purported creator if she indeed created the profile and also if she added the posting in question, i.e. testimony of a witness with knowledge that the offered evidence is what it is claimed to be.

(2) If the alleged creator denied creating the profile or posting the entry, the second option may be to search the computer of the person who allegedly created the profile and posting and examine the computer’s Internet history and hard drive to determine whether that computer was used to originate the social networking profile and posting in question.

(3) A third method may be to obtain information directly from the social networking website that links the establishment of the profile to the person who allegedly created it and also links the posting sought to be introduced to the person who initiated it. This method was apparently successfully employed to authenticate a MySpace site in People v. Clevenstine, 68 A.D.3d 1448, 891 N.Y.S.2d 511 (N.Y.App.Div. 2009).

Has anyone been shutting down their social media profiles to protect themselves? I never update my Facebook profile with status messages anymore, and all of the photos on my profile are fairly mundane. What are your thoughts on the discoverability of social media?

Is what the therapist did here breaking some kind of ethical code? Although the therapist’s article can be viewed as entertainment, it can also inspire hope and be used as a tool by other therapists as they look for ways to improve their own practices. Slate reports it’s not a violation of ethical code for a therapist to talk about his or her patients as long as the patient’s identity remains hidden.

Even though the therapist adhered to the code of ethics and concealed the identity of his clients, his (or her) actions still raised eyebrows and questions related to confidentiality. I didn’t think anything of it while reading the article, but apparently some people thought the clients could still be identified by such generalized descriptions.

For lawyers, of course, the line is a bit clearer. They must adhere to a strict code of confidentiality when it comes to information about their clients. They can only talk about or publicize information about their clients if their client has given informed consent. This happens often in high-profile cases when the lawyer basically buys the rights to a client’s case/story in order to write a book or make a movie/ TV show.

But what about if a lawyer wants to do something similar to the therapist who wrote for Gawker?

I’m many years away from starting my Great American Novel, so I’m not intimately familiar with the rules, but I imagine they are similar to in the case of the therapist. How else would books like this be able to be published? I would think it could be hard to write how-to books for lawyers given the ethical constraints, but these types of books that include first-hand accounts of professionals are incredibly valuable teaching tools. It’s the next best thing to learning by doing.

I know a glimpse into a lawyer’s mind while handling a case would have been a very welcome change from the endless waves of casebooks after casebooks I read in law school. Is it possible to create more books of this genre in the legal profession? Or are the ethical constraints too stringent to allow for this tool?

Yeah. That was my comment. I was working on the computer in the kitchen when my wife came down and said that it was over. It gets worse — she told me the answer, and my attitude was probably best described as indifferent. I am one of five brothers and the only one who has any consistent interest in sports is the oldest. The rest of us just didn’t get that gene. (My dad doesn’t have it, either, though I suppose he’s a carrier.)

I spent more time Sunday reading about football than actually watching it. I came across this article on CNN, “The president who saved football.” It seems whether you like football or hate it, you have Teddy Roosevelt to thank/blame.

Apparently, football was a very violent and unregulated sport back in Teddy’s day. In 1905, before the advent of the NFL and professional football, 18 amateur and college players died because of injuries associated with the game. Fans loved the sport with all of its raw brutality, but it had powerful detractors and was at risk of being banned.

Roosevelt called a beer summit (I can’t say that there was beer there, but one could easily imagine Teddy drinking a brew and bringing folks together) and helped influence changes to the sport that would save it while appeasing the more pacifistic opponents. No more gang tackles, 10 yards needed for a first down and the advent of the forward pass. It’s hard to believe that passing is such a relatively modern addition.

A bunch of grown men in costumes playing war games — it sounds like a Star Trek convention. Actually, how is fantasy football any different than Dungeons and Dragons? Maybe I should like it more than I do…