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Remember books? Not the books made for lawyers, full of cases and legal codes and moderately interesting footnotes. We mean books that don’t include case summaries or require cross-referencing. We’re going to go out on a limb and say you probably didn’t have time to get to reading many of the new books that came out this year. But this holiday week may be your chance. To help you figure out how to spend your limited reading time, we’ve put together a list of great books that came out in 2012....

For all of its popularity with urbanites, Uber is losing its luster in the marketplace. SoftBank is offering to buy the company for about $48 billion, but that is down 30 percent from the company’s most recent valuation. What happened to the most popular ride-hailing service on the planet? This happened: Uber tried to cover up a massive data breach affecting 57 million riders. For corporate counsel, it goes to show that paying for confidentiality is not always a good thing....

Defendants’ drug and racketeering conspiracy sentences are affirmed where 1) despite the district court’s occasional imprecision, it plainly accepted defendants’ guilty pleas and left them “no reasonable basis” for thinking otherwise; 2) the district court did not impermissibly intrude on the plea-bargaining process; and 3) the district court was not required to hold an evidentiary hearing on the plea agreement. Read US v. Robinson, No. 07-3127 Appellate Information Argued September 21, 2009...

By his own account, Honest Abe was not an accomplished lawyer. After leaving the law for politics, however, Abraham Lincoln advised younger practitioners to avoid “shady dealings” and to “discourage litigation.” His personal integrity led him to the White House and foreshadowed his greatest accomplishments. “As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man,” he said. “There will still be business enough.” “Business Enough” The United States has changed a lot since Lincoln, but integrity still pays – especially in corporate America....

When you look at a map, you may see a few ways to get to your destination. If you use a GPS device, it will usually show you the fastest route. Most people, especially in a hustling e-speed society, take the fastest way because they can’t wait to get there. But in the immortal words of Robert Frost, taking the road less traveled can make all the difference. It is a truism for poets and lawyers, too....

You learn a lot in law school. By graduation, the average student will have read thousands of pages of case law, will have spent months on legal writing and maybe will have taken a class on negotiations or other business-based legal skills. But there are also plenty of skills, skills essential to success as a lawyer, which go untaught. Here’s our list of the five of some of the most important skills you don’t learn in law school:...

When last we met, we finally found out who shot Annalise. And if her bleeding body wasn’t enough, Shonda Rhimes threw two more on the pile, and then one off the side of a building, for good measure. But that was three months ago. Now we’re back from the mid-season break and How to Get Away With Murder’s law students are recovering from their finals and stressing about finding summer gigs....

Wax on, wax off, right? The Dahl College of Beauty in Missoula has been rocked with sexual harassment allegations, expelled students, and worst of all: trimmed pubic hair, reports the Courthouse News Service. As you can surely imagine, what came next was a lawsuit. The plaintiffs in this case are both former students and former employees that were either expelled or fired after sexual harassment complaints were made. What was the alleged harassing behavior?...

Do you remember Saul, the ethically questionable attorney from Breaking Bad, played by comedian Bob Odenkirk? Maybe you’d prefer to forget because he seemed so shady. But if you’re contemplating solo or small practice, it’s time to settle in for some tragicomic TV. Saul got his own spinoff, Better Call Saul, on Netflix now, and it should be required viewing for all lawyers. Isn’t Saul a Crook? Lawyers may not want to admit that Better Call Saul says a lot about working in the trenches....

Ah, the Boy Scouts. They teach you how to use knives, camp in the woods, and make things out of other things. The Boy Scouts have been under fire in recent years, though. Turns out they’re a Christian organization that, until 2012, refused to admit openly gay Scouts, and still forbids employing openly gay Scout leaders. That’s enough to make them an organization that practices “invidious discrimination,” according to the California Supreme Court, which decided Friday to prohibit state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts, effective January 21, 2016....

Law students come from all walks of life but Shon Hopwood is probably one of the more interesting law students you’ll meet. Hopwood is at University of Washington on a full scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is married and has two kids. He clerks for a federal district judge in Seattle. He published an award-winning book before coming to law school. He is also a convicted bank robber and served more than nine years in prison, reports the ABA Journal....

People v. Gallego, C061749, concerned a challenge to a conviction of defendant for a 1991 second degree murder and a jury’s finding that he used a knife to commit the crime. In affirming, the court held that the cigarette butt that defendant voluntarily discarded by tossing it onto a public sidewalk, which was then collected and DNA-tested by law enforcement only to identify defendant as a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation, did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution, and defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in this discarded item....

Nearly every new car owner thinks, at least for a moment, about whether to get a vanity plate and what it would say. John Mitchell, a Maryland man, decided he would not only get a vanity plate, he wanted to get one with a Spanish curse word. While he was likely surprised that his requested plate was approved, he used the plate for two years before the DMV even knew what they did....

Are law reviews ruining legal education and thus the job market? That dissatisfaction is the result of poorly trained lawyers who acquire no practical skills during law school. And the reason they have no practical skills? Law schools are too busy pushing law review articles. Let’s start at the beginning. Though law schools are trying to increase the number of practical classes and clinics, they have a habit of shying away from experienced attorneys....

If you’re looking for a side of cocaine with your empanada, you should have asked Jorge Guerrero about it last week because now he’s been arrested. Guererro was busted on Tuesday for his role as the ringleader of a drug trafficking ring bringing illegal narcotics into the U.S. from Ecuador. Homeland Security agents have been following the New York lost luggage handler for six-months and intercepted 11 lbs of heroin and cocaine being illegally smuggled into the country....

The Fort Lauderdale area is aflutter with news that Phillip Winikoff has reached a deal with local prosecutors. The 81-year-old man allegedly posed as a doctor and offered door-to-door breast exams at a local apartment complex. Two women accepted his offer, but eventually realized something was amiss. It was ultimately Winikoff’s wandering hands that destroyed the ruse. And what a ruse it was. When police caught up with Winikoff on that fateful April 2006 day, they found him carrying a little black doctor’s bag....

This fleeing suspect seemed to want suicide by cop, but not by mud. After the trouble this man caused, good thing he asked the cops for help and not the woman he was assaulting. He may have gotten a different response. Adam Banks was reportedly assaulting his female passenger inside the PT Cruiser he was driving down a highway in Sonoma County, California. Police were called, and when Banks saw he was being pursued, he sped up....

In a patent infringement action involving refrigerator parts, district court’s grant of summary judgment and permanent injunction for plaintiff is affirmed where: 1) the court properly construed the claim term “relatively resilient end edge portion” in the patent to require only that the frame of the shelf be flexible at the time of manufacture; 2) the court properly granted summary judgment as there was undisputed evidence that the frames of defendant’s accused shelves were flexible at the time of manufacture, and thus infringed on plaintiff’s patent; and 3) the court did not err in denying defendant’s motion for a new trial on obviousness as plaintiff’s expert’s testimony provided substantial evidence that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have expected the results of the combination recited in the patent, and defendant did not seek to exclude or strike the expert’s testimony at trial and therefore the issue is waived....

One Oklahoma man’s grim Halloween decorations “tricked” people so well that a neighbor called 911. Johnnie Mullins decked out his yard with ghosts, tombstones, and two surprisingly realistic-looking bodies in his driveway. The hardcore Halloween enthusiast fashioned a dummy to look like it was person crushed to death by a garage door. Will the gruesome prank get Mullins a handcuff trick or a law enforcement treat? Trick: Crushed Kenny Mullins positioned one dummy coined “Crushed Kenny” to look like his head had been crushed by the garage door....

If your company’s problems make the news, remember, judges read newspapers, too. It has turned out to be an ongoing problem for Wells Fargo, still reeling from a scandal exposed by the Los Angeles Times in December 2013. The newspaper told the story about how the bank pressured employees to create fake accounts to generate fees, resulting in more than $300 million in penalties against the company to date. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who read the article, was unimpressed by arguments from the bank’s attorneys about it....