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R.V. doesn’t seem to be all there. He tossed a television onto the floor, pulled a knife on his mother and stepfather, and stabbed his bed three times, all because he didn’t want to go to school. His parents told police that the child has mental problems, was getting worse, and had not taken his prescribed medication for the preceding four weeks. An expert hired to evaluate his competency was unable to complete tests due to R....

As a matter of law, certain military workers are entitled to 15 days of military leave each year to attend training. These days cannot be charged against non-workdays. As a result, it’s common practice for these military workers to file claims seeking compensation for military leave charged on those non-working days. These claims are known as Butterbaugh claims, after the case Butterbaugh v. Dep’t of Justice. It’s exactly this type of claim that Nyles Duncan attempted to assert before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals....

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request for attorneys fees and expenses under the Equal Access to Justice Act to Thomas O. Ward, a former mechanic for the U.S. Postal Service. In 2008, Ward was involved in an argument with a supervisor. He was cited by the USPS for improper conduct and was issued a Notice of Proposed Removal. This notice was based solely on that one incident. Ward was subsequently removed from his position....

Welcome to “First Week at the Firm,” a new FindLaw feature for beginning associates, focused on helping you navigate the transition into firm life. We hope you’ll enjoy this new series and come back regularly for more insider tips. If you’re starting a new job at a firm, it can be difficult to decide what to wear once you’re there. Sure, you suited up for the interview, but do you need to wear one every day?...

If this article starts to sound like another corrupt judge story, that’s because it is. It is actually the second act in the tale of ex-Judge Cason “Casey” Moore, who was indicted last year on obstruction of justice charges after he allegedly traded his judicial favors for sexual ones. Now he has been charged with stealing drug court money to pay for sex (because judicial favors weren’t enough?). Seriously, these are all allegations....

When it comes to making the sale, in the legal profession, that usually means landing a client. For many attorneys, doing that can be rather elusive. That’s why the so-called rainmakers get the big bucks, and young lawyers are told (but not taught) to always be selling. And while learning to sell isn’t impossible, selling legal services is a little bit different than selling a traditional product or service. Below are three tips to improve your skills for selling legal services....

For all you 3Ls out there, March is a confluence of events. You’re two months into super not caring about law school anymore, as evidenced by the “Law and Shakespeare” class you’re taking just to round out your credit hours. It’s also time you started completing your moral fitness application (and truthfully, if you’ve waited until now, boy, are you going to be waiting for a long time to get the results)....

For those of you who are now sworn-in and certified attorneys, you will finally get a chance to pay your bar dues. We know, paying hundreds thousands of dollars for student loans, bar exam registration, and bar study really didn’t leave you wanting to pay even more – but your state of practice is here to help you out. If you’re as strapped as most young attorneys, find out how much you actually need to pay in bar dues....

In two separate instances, Washington D.C. law firms leased millions of square feet of additional real estate in the nation’s capitol and partners at these firms are earning 14 percent more than they did in 2010. Are these signs the Washington D.C. legal market is booming? Some say the health of an industry can be measured by how much office space they lease. In Washington D.C., there has been an ongoing pull-back in office leasing by federal agencies and government contractors, reports The Washington Post....

Back in the old days, you’d have to spend a lifetime scouring museums and art collections searching for a face that looked like yours. And you might even go to your grave without finding a match. Luckily for our modern times, there’s an app for that. In December, Google’s Arts & Culture app added a feature that instantly pairs your selfie to a work of art. But while this time-saving technological marvel is sure fun to play around with, it might be illegal where you live....

Judge Thomas Estes was not performing legal research in chambers. No, a social worker was allegedly performing oral sex on the judge. Tammy Cagle, who worked in the drug court with Estes, said the judge pressured her into it. Estes has denied the accusation, but admitted they had a sexual relationship. Either way, this judge will not be going back to his chambers. “Repeated Wrongdoing” The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Council suspended Estes from the bench....

Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) denial of claim for benefits by plaintiff and her three children under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Act (PSOB Act) 42 U.S.C. section 3796, is affirmed as the BJA correctly determined that plaintiff’s deceased husband did not die as a result of the type of injury that is compensable under the PSOB Act. Read Juneau v. Dep’t of Justice, No. 09-8002 Appeal from: Public Safety Officers’ Benefits...

Tess was a robot in law school. No, not like Siri or Alexa. And not like those students who are more machine than human. Tess Messiha, confined to bed rest during her pregnancy, attended UC Irvine School of Law through a robot. This is not the wave of the future; it is already here. Telepresence Robot UC Irvine has adapted robot technology to help students attend school virtually. Judy Olson, a professor emerita in information and computer sciences there, explained the “telepresence robot....

A Minnesota lawyer who decided to skip a trial last year to attend her brother’s wedding in Paris has been convicted of misdemeanor contempt. After the verdict was read, lawyer M. Tayari Garrett said that “an injustice has been done” and indicated that she will likely appeal the ruling, reports The ABA Journal. She was sentenced to a year of probation and fined $1,000. Garrett had claimed to be hospitalized, explaining why she could not attend the trial....

The Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, has made one of those blunders that the internet world labels #FAIL and every attorney dreads: A draft pleading, complete with caps-lock notes and empty bullet points, actually got filed with the court. Though a corrected version of his post-trial pleading was filed, the level of embarrassment that comes from such an epic blunder is not solely relegated to the legal community. In addition to the grief Kobach is getting from Twitter lawyers over his likely failure to proofread, during the actual trial, he was repeatedly lectured by the court on proper trial procedure....

Many of us have dreamt of cruising by traffic in the carpool lane. And maybe some of us have considered propping up a dummy in the passenger seat to get away with it. Well one brave man dared to follow his HOV-lane dream. And now that dream is dead. Who’s Your Dummy? James Campbell was speeding blissfully along in the HOV lane of the Long Island Expressway through Dix Hills, New York, last Friday morning....

Some people give a lot of thought to a marriage proposal, hoping to really wow the future spouse. Michael Banks certainly tried to do that when he scaled the side of a 581-foot rock in Fresno, California to propose. But it seems he should have given this proposal idea just a bit more consideration because he got in a lot of trouble for scaling the prohibited rock and more, according to the Huffington Post....

The conventional wisdom is that increased use of drugs and alcohol in married couples leads to greater risk of domestic violence. However, the results of a new study are casting some doubt on that wisdom, at least as far as marijuana is concerned, reports The Huffington Post. Does hitting the bong as a married couple really make it less likely that you’ll hit your spouse? Marijuana Use ‘Inversely Related’ to Married Partner Violence The study, conducted by researchers from Yale University, University of Buffalo and Rutgers, looked at 634 couples over three years in New York state....

What does Michael Vick want for Christmas? You guessed it: Michael Vick wants a dog. Surely he can afford a new pooch, but there is one large legal problem standing in his way: as part of his federal sentence for dog fighting, Vick has a lifetime ban from ever owning a canine again. The ban was part of his punishment for federal dogfighting and gambling charges. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback has certainly been punished for his illegal actions; in addition to serving jail time (18 months) he was also suspended from the NFL and paid heavy fines....

There’s plenty in-house attorneys can learn from Volkswagen’s emissions fraud scandal: the role of the private organizations in enforcing regulations, the teeth in the Clean Air Act, the strange overlap between copyright law and defeat devices. But ever since the automaker’s $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice two weeks ago, we’ve all been fixated on one thing: the role of one VW in-house attorney in bungling a litigation hold, resulting in destroyed documents and implicating the attorney in obstruction of justice....