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One of the emerging trends resulting from the legal market slump of the past few years is law firm mergers. While the largest law firm merger between Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae went down in infamy and lead to the eventual new firm’s bankruptcy, mergers are still happening. Last year alone, Altman Weil tracked 88 law firm mergers, reports The Wall Street Journal. While firms merge with the goals of boosting revenue and obtaining new clients, how will your law firm’s merger affect your career?...

In heartless Melbourne, Florida, wheelchair-bound cats must wear a leash – no exceptions. Cat owner Yvonne Steel learned that the hard way when she got ticketed for failing to put her disabled cat, Pooh Bear, out on a leash. To be fair, Steel reportedly failed to heed plenty of warnings. But c’mon, the cat’s name is Pooh Bear, for goodness sake! Anyway, Steel and Pooh Bear fought the law and the law won....

A Michigan man’s seventh DUI arrest didn’t take place behind the wheel. Instead, cops found him allegedly drunk behind the joystick of a motorized wheelchair that wasn’t even his. Raymond Kulma, 55, of Sterling Heights, Mich., failed several sobriety tests in his alleged wheelchair DUI in the Detroit suburb of Utica, police told WDIV-TV. His blood alcohol level was 0.241%, more than three times Michigan’s legal limit of 0.08%. Kulma is a repeat DUI offender, but police were initially called to investigate a separate incident that was also likely fueled by alcohol....

Maybe it’s the high stress or the long hours but whatever the reason, it’s clear that lawyers as a group drink more than other professions. Part of it is probably culture. Lawyers spend excessively long hours at the office and generally make a comfortable salary so they can afford to buy a few rounds of booze. Unlike doctors or pilots who have to be awake and alert in the morning, no one will die if you show up to a corporate legal job hungover - although it may cost you your job in the long run....

It’s a new job, either for the summer, or post-grad. You don’t know anyone here, nor do you know anything about the substantive law, the office procedures, or where the nearest falafel joint is at. How do you get up to speed quickly? It’s simple: it’s all about the people. Even if you’re shy-to-start or permanently introverted, at least during your first week at the firm, you should force yourself to be somewhat outgoing....

With the “nuclear option” engaged and filibuster rules amended, Senate Democrats have begun the second phase of the plan: voting on the three Obama nominees to the D.C. Circuit. On Tuesday, the Senate took that step by confirming Patricia Millett to the D.C. Circuit bench, the first of the three nominees to the Court to be pushed aside by Republican filibuster in late October and November, reports the Los Angeles Times....

Despite his controversial Facebook comments, Judge Greg Griffin was not about to recuse himself from a racially charged murder case. The murder defendant, a white police officer, had shot and killed a black man after stopping him on the street. Griffin, as fate would have it, had been stopped by police in the same city as he walked down the street. “(I)t was aggravating to be detained when the only thing I was guilty of was being a black man walking down the street in his neighborhood with a stick in his hand who just happened to be a Montgomery County Circuit Judge in Montgomery, Alabama,” Griffin posted on Facebook....

One normally doesn’t think of the prison population as being especially helpful when it comes to fighting crime. But as one state Department of Corrections official said, “we’ve got 26,000 felons behind bars, and they know a lot.” So how do you figure out what they know? Here’s an idea – give inmates playing cards featuring cold cases, and then wait for the inmates to solve them. A Captive Audience Florida was one of the first states to implement the cold case cards in 2005, inspired by the decks the U....

In some things, we have no choice – like the weather, aging, and cable companies. At least, that is true most of the time. You can always move to a warmer climate. When it comes to AT&T’s proposed purchase of Time Warner, Inc., however, it looks like same old, same old. The government may sue to block it, but chances are high that AT&T will ultimately reign. Too Much Power According to reports, the Department of Justice is considering whether to sue to block the merger....

Ben & Jerry’s isn’t interested in partnering with porn makers so they’ve filed suit against Rodax Distributors and Caballero Video for trademark infringement. The culprits? “Boston Cream Thigh,” “Peanut Butter D-Cup,” and the whole Ben & Cherry’s line of x-rated videos. The ice cream makers weren’t too amused by the video titles or the packaging display that they claim infringes on their easy-to-identify ice cream labels. But just because it is similar doesn’t mean it’s infringement....

When litigants warn courts that ruling a certain way will result in the litigation floodgates opening, most probably aren’t referring to actual, literal floods. However in recent months, more and more lawsuits have been filed against oil producers as a result of damage caused by climate change. Interestingly, it’s now the plaintiffs warning the courts about floods. As climate science continues to improve and courts continue to recognize the validity behind that client science, oil producers can likely expect to face lawsuit after lawsuit....

As most college sports fans tell themselves, student-athletes choose a school based on the quality of education, coaching, and overall program an institution has to offer, with some consideration to proximity to home and stylishness of uniforms. And while that may be true for some, or even most college athletes, astute observers of the college game have known there have been different forces driving recruiting for some time. Some of those dark arts were laid bare this week, when the FBI announced the arrests of ten people, including four college basketball coaches, a sports apparel executive, and multiple financial advisers....

It’s the week of resurrected legal claims against the NFL. Just days after the Ninth Circuit revived a lawsuit claiming the league was complicit in players’ long-term health effects and addiction to painkillers, the Second Circuit rekindled a different lawsuit claiming the NFL and Associated Press failed to pay royalties to several photographers for the use of photos they took at and during games. The photographers allege the NFL has made “widespread use” of their work, all without payment, claiming “the NFL has committed thousands of individual acts of copyright infringement....

Harari v. Holllmer, No. 09-1406 involved a challenge to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences’ dismissal of a junior party inventor from the interference. Because Board erred in its determination that the junior inventor’s claims were unpatentable for lack of written description due to an insufficient incorporation by reference statement, the dismissal is reversed and remanded. In Arzio v. Shinseki, No. 09-7107, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to the U....

Insisting that he let his “little head think for [his] big head,” a Florida doctor is now facing charges for drug trafficking and probably prostitution. His crime? He was caught during an undercover sting trading narcotic prescriptions for sex. Talk about unethical. At some point in January, it came to the attention of local police that Dr. Scott Oster had twice traded prescriptions for sex–handing out large quantities of oxycodone, alprazolam and Valium....

By now, you’ve figured out how you’re supposed to use LinkedIn, but there are so many options these days (test scores? Really?), it’s hard to know what to put on your profile. And who keeps “endorsing” you for things, anyway? In order to keep your profile tidy, ethical, and professional, we’ve got some tips on what to do (and not do) on LinkedIn. The default blue silhouette says, “I signed up for LinkedIn a long time ago and haven’t done anything about it....

Clients come with a lot of baggage, but in this case – which begins, of course, with “Florida Man” – the client brought some particularly gnarly literal baggage into his lawyer’s office. John Marshall, the Florida Man in question, allegedly killed his neighbor in self-defense and then drove the body to his lawyer’s office. So how does this mesh with the ethical requirement that lawyers safeguard client valuables? According to The Associated Press, the incident began when Marshall announced his plan to build a shed on rural property he had purchased....

The Birdman shall remain cage-free. Miami Heat star Chris “Birdman” Andersen, who was embroiled in an online child pornography investigation, was actually the victim of an elaborate Internet hoax, authorities revealed Wednesday. In what’s being called a bizarre “double catfishing” scheme, a Canadian woman not only posed online as other people to communicate with Andersen, but also posed as Andersen to talk to other victims. So basically, the Birdman got Manti Te’o-ed....

Nothing says racism like a photo of white males lynching an effigy while wearing mock Ku Klux Klan hoods. But a New Jersey high school wrestling team’s “ignorance” has helped them to avoid charges for snapping the inflammatory pic. How did these wrestlers avoid hate crime charges? The Phillipsburg High School wrestling team will not be charged in criminal court after staging themselves in a mock lynching photo. The photo depicted a wrestling dummy hung by its neck wearing a rival school’s shirt, with two of the members wearing hoods resembling those worn by KKK members, reports The Star-Ledger....

The #MeToo movement has resulted in some serious corporate shake-ups and PR nightmares. Billionaire Steve Wynn, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, and even the former Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, have all been ousted as a result of the public’s support for victims of sexual harassment. But not all #MeToo claims have resulted in widespread public backlash. One Silicon Valley startup faced a #MeToo charge and lawsuit without being publicly eviscerated, and what it did in response should serve as a guide for other companies that get called out....