Author: TSA Press

The international legal research service vLex has partnered with the legal blogging company LexBlog to add more than 400,000 law-related blog posts to its collection of legal-research materials, which currently spans some 100 jurisdictions, including the United States.

As a result of this partnership, legal researchers using vLex will now have direct access to legal news, insights and analysis from the LexBlog network of more than 23,000 individual bloggers writing on more than 1,400 blogs covering virtually every area of law. Estimated to include more than 400,000 blog posts, the collection will continue to grow with new posts added through regular updates.

These LexBlog blogs will become of a new blog category that vLex launched in July, originally with some 300,000 articles provided by the article-distribution service JD Supra.

[Disclosure: I work for LexBlog as publisher and editor-in-chief of LexBlog.com]

When you perform a search, you can narrow results to show matching blog posts.

vLex users will be able to access this blog content in multiple ways:

• By choosing the “Browse” function and then selecting blogs. (See the image above.) Users can then view blog posts sorted by most recent, most relevant or most popular, and apply filters to narrow the blog results shown.
• As part of their customizable news feed, blogs will be available to them as a category of news content, where they will be able to search for blogs and add them to their feeds.
• In search results, when blogs are relevant to the search query. Blog posts will be included in overall search results, and the user can select the Blogs category in the sidebar to filter search results to show only blog posts. (At this time, the blog category does not appear in the sidebar in all countries where vLex operates, but it is in the U.S. and Canadian versions).
• Through Vincent, vLex’s AI-powered brief-analysis tool, when blog posts are relevant to the brief, memorandum or other document the user has uploaded for analysis.

“The addition of LexBlog content on vLex will provide our customers with a much richer experience and enable them to access legal news, expert commentary and the important legal content they require all in one location,” Lluis Faus, vLex cofounder & CEO, said in a statement. “We’re pleased to be working with an established and trusted organization who provide much-needed content direct from law firms and well-known authors to our sector.”

“LexBlog is honored to play a role in the advancement and the administration of the law,” Kevin O’Keefe, LexBlog founder and CEO, said. “With legal insight and commentary moving from traditional law journals and law reviews to legal blogs, legal research platforms lacked a central source for this secondary law. As the ‘aggregator and curator of record’ for legal blogs, LexBlog welcomed the opportunity to serve vLex customers. vLex’s mission of delivering the world’s legal knowledge, one country at a time, fits right in with our mission of connecting lawyers with people, for good.”

Bottom Line

In the legal profession, blogs have become a leading source of news, analysis and commentary. As we have found at LexBlog, there are literally thousands and thousands of legal professionals writing blogs. They cover topics ranging from reporting on a just-decided case to analyzing long-term trends to discussing the business of law to offering how-to’s on various aspects of law and practice.

Given this, it makes sense that a legal research service should include blogs within the scope of its searches. In much the same way that law reviews once did, blogs provide context, analysis and insights around cases, statutes and regulations. They help a researcher better understand the cases they find in the course of their searches.

In fact, it seems to me that a research service that does not include blogs is significantly incomplete. If blogs are a central aspect of what’s being said about the law, then they should be a central aspect of research on the law.

Apparently the growing Ukraine scandal enveloping the presidency of Donald Trump is just too much for some conservatives, and they’re bucking the GOP trend of backing the president no matter what. Sixteen prominent conservative attorneys have authored a letter, published by Checks & Balances, in support of an “expeditious impeachment investigation”:

“We believe the acts revealed publicly over the past several weeks are fundamentally incompatible with the president’s oath of office, his duties as commander in chief, and his constitutional obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ These acts, based on what has been revealed to date, are a legitimate basis for an expeditious impeachment investigation, vote in the House of Representatives and potential trial in the Senate.”

And who, exactly are the conservatives taking this stand? Biglaw/in-house counsel are well represented with Wachtell counsel and tweeter extraordinaire George Conway III, natch; former acting U.S. attorney general and current Sidley Austin partner Peter Keisler; Kirkland & Ellis partner and a former State Department official, Andrew Sagor; former Thomas clerk and senior associate at King & Spalding Marisa Maleck; former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and Caplin & Drysdale partner Trevor Potter; Boies Schiller Flexner partner and former deputy associate White House director of communications Jaime Sneider; general counsel to the Center for a New American Security Carrie Cordero; Stuart M. Gerson, partner at Epstien Becker Green and former Acting Attorney General of the United States;  Sidley partner Alan Charles Raul, who served as  Vice Chairman of the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; retired Jones Day attorney Jonathan C. Rose; and former Justice Department lawyer and retired Jones Day partner, Donald Ayer. Plus a hefty dose of legal academics: Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried; Orin Kerr of University of California Berkeley School of Law; J.W. Verret of George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law; and Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

As Ayer noted, there’s a lot of frustration behind the letter:

“I am disgusted by the conduct of Republican senators who pose as reputable people, but shamelessly hide under rocks instead of calling out the president’s horrendous behavior as the gross misconduct that they know it to be.”

We’ll see if anyone in the Republican party is listening.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Some people blast eerie sounds from their house to spook trick or treaters. But if you’re obsessed with improving productivity in the legal space through targeted deployment of cutting-edge technology — preferably with some machine learning — then this might be the soundtrack to your Halloween.

In a recent episode of LAWsome, Jess Birken went all Orson Welles with the radio play antics and recorded a Halloween skit about the real challenge for a tech-minded law firm: piecing together different and questionably compatible tech solutions to build a functional law firm. Bringing us the most eDiscovery focused adaptation of Mary Shelley out there.

Bravo.

Check it out here.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Mental health disorders are fatal, [but they are treatable.]

People around you care about you more than you think.

— Eric Lang, a former Biglaw attorney who now runs his own practice in Georgia, in comments given at a recent talk entitled “Confronting Mental Health Issues in Your Profession.” Several years ago, Lang attempted to die by suicide, but survived the ordeal and feels lucky to have found doctors and colleagues who have helped him.

(If you are a state bar member and you are concerned about yourself or another bar member, the Lawyer Assistance Program’s confidential helpline is 800-327-9631.)

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Contracts Everywhere: How to Survive in a Do More with Less Environment 

Fill out the form to view the webinar now

Overview:

In a world of “do more with less,” corporate legal operations teams are often faced with an increasing contract volume but with no additional resources. Whether you use a homegrown or an older solution that’s just not working anymore, or you have no solution at all, chances are that the growth in your contract volume and complexity are difficult to manage and resource intensive. In this webinar, we will focus on:

• Why you need a simple, yet scalable, solution that you can configure and maintain on your own
• How consumer-style business tools are revolutionizing the operational experience 
• What AI is NOT capable of, namely, the replacement for your contracting expertise

The LSAT may be changing its ways by eliminating or significantly changing the logic games portion of the exam, but that doesn’t mean that law schools are going to stop deciding to accept the GRE for admissions purposes. It seems like it may only be a matter of time before the majority of law schools embrace the GRE. Which law school has decided to accept the alternative entrance exam now?

It’s the University of Akron School of Law, making it the first public law school in Ohio to accept the GRE (which means THE Ohio State University hasn’t made its move on the GRE yet). In its press release, Akron also touts the fact that it’s the first law school in the country to accept the GRE whose annual tuition for all students is under $25,000, which is a big selling point. Here’s more from the school’s press release:

“Because many more students take the GRE than the LSAT, we believe use of the GRE will make legal education more accessible to students with a greater diversity of backgrounds,” [said Christopher J. (C.J.) Peters, dean of Akron Law.] “Now, more students can consider law school along with other graduate programs without devoting extra time and resources to prepare for and take another test. Moreover, students can use a GRE score they received in the last five years when applying to Akron Law.”

Early indications from other law schools that began accepting the GRE as an alternative are that it can help increase the pipeline of qualified applicants from all fields. Because the GRE has a math section, applicants may be more plentiful from science, engineering and math areas. And the GRE clearly measures skills that are important to law schools, such as verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing, said Peters.

The list of law schools that are expanding their horizons beyond the LSAT is now quite long. Here are the 30+ schools that accept the GRE for admissions purposes:

And we are likely to only see this trend continue. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE. Another Kaplan study determined 49 percent of students surveyed support the move to the GRE.

Even though more and more law schools are on board with the GRE, the  body responsible for law school accreditation, the American Bar Association, hasn’t officially weighed in on using anything other than the LSAT in admissions. ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing and that the test used be “valid and reliable.” (In August, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar officially withdrew a resolution before the ABA House of Delegates that called for the removal of Standard 503.) Whether the GRE meets that standard, the ABA hasn’t officially said. But with this much momentum, stopping the GRE ball from rolling will be a monumental task.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Lawyers live in constant fear of details.  Superior attention to detail makes lawyers money; a lack of attention to detail makes for malpractice.  But, as law practice becomes more and more complex — contracts amass, details proliferate — it becomes more and more difficult to spot those small mistakes that can come back to bite you.  Of course, smart lawyers understand that technology is the solution for information overload.  Once you’ve figured that out, it’s just a matter of picking the right technology.

If you’re sweating your contract drafting like you’re walking through a field of land mines, Donna offers peace of mind, and protection against those backbiting oversights that keep you up at night.

What Is It?

Donna is a contract editing software, whose purpose is to provide context and relevant information when you need it in order to spot those easy-to-overlook mistakes. Because, let’s face it, when you’re reading a 50-page contract, it’s not quite as enthralling as “Avengers: Endgame”; so, it’s understandable that your mind might drift, and that you’d overlook an inconsistency or misinterpretation that could that could come back and haunt you.  Donna is there to watch your back, to make sure you’re consistently addressing even the most minute variables.

Donna is a cloud-based product that comes as a convenient Microsoft Word plug-in, available for both premise-based (traditional) versions of Word (like Word 2016 and Word 2013), as well as Word Online. And, because Donna is a plug-in that doesn’t require special permissions, it’s super easy to install.  I mean, you could probably install it without even asking your IT person… But, you didn’t hear that from me, okay?  So, when you do tell your IT person (you will, won’t you), it’s still just a one-step download.

Once you download Donna for Word, that’s when the magic happens.

What Does it Do?

What magic, you ask?  Good question.  THIS kind of magic:

After you’ve downloaded Donna, you’ll find a new Donna button on the far right-hand side of the Microsoft Office ribbon; you toggle Donna off and on by clicking that button.  When Donna is turned on, opening any document will automatically set it to work.  Donna will bring up potential suggestions and other interesting details, by generating colored highlights in your document. Clicking these highlights opens up matching snippets in the Donna sidebar. For instance, suggestions are highlighted in yellow and clicking them, Donna explains the potential problem discovered.  Donna will even link other relevant snippets such as related issues or definitions. Every snippet has a “focus” button that allows you to jump to the exact spot in the document where the Donna highlight exists.  Using this information, you can decide to make a change based on Donna’s suggestion, or to skip the suggestion, and optionally any suggestions like it.  In this way, Donna becomes your second set of eyes for contract review — eyes that don’t glaze over thinking about the upcoming weekend’s plans — but, it’s ultimately your choice as the lawyer to make or reject changes related to Donna’s operations. Donna of course can’t write the agreement for you, AI lacks something people like to call “common sense”. But Donna isn’t your typical AI, its Assistive Intelligence, because it ultimately leaves the decision making in the capable hands of the lawyer.

Donna’s baseline is simplicity: it issue-spots, gives you relevant information, and otherwise doesn’t disturb you getting the job done.  You can easily parachute into and out of potential change options by navigating the snippet, focus, and skip options.

And although you’ll be drawn to Donna’s yellow suggestions there are lots of other things Donna can highlight. A favorite seems to be defined terms in light blue. Clicking on this highlight gives you a snippet of how the term was defined in the side-bar. Nod “yes” if you’ve ever frantically scrolled up and down in an agreement trying to find what a term means. Now nod “yes” if you’d be happy to never have to do that again.

By filtering on a single category within Donna, a user can complete their review via the sidebar, rather than struggling through the massive scrolling and scanning challenge presented by traditional document review.  In this way, Donna delivers to you only the information you need, when you need it. With Donna, you can get into and out of your contract documents quickly, with increased accuracy and decreased malpractice risk.

What’s Next?

Donna currently has clients in 50 countries, with additional language capabilities coming.  And, with a $2.5 million capital raise recently secured, Donna will be investing even more resources into designing intuitive workflows as well as adding some great new features. A couple of things on the roadmap are:

– Compatibility with Google Docs and Word for Mac.

– Ability to link related documents and external resources. Imagine clicking on a reference to a specific law and having the relevant text available right there.

– Knowledge sharing features — Donna could allow users within a firm to look for inspiration from other clauses that have been drafted by colleagues for a particular client.

Want to Find Out More?

Schedule a demo or just download Donna today: https://www.donna.legal/

Donna is only $15/user, with enterprise solutions available.

Support options include in-app chat.

. . .

Ritchie Valens really loved Donna, but you might love her even more.

John Dowd informed the House Intelligence Committee that he wouldn’t be producing his two clients, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, in a short letter written in Comic Sans to the shock and dismay of the class of legal professionals who had never seen John Dowd work before. And while Dowd’s writing style, legal research, and all around conduct may leave a lot to be desired, his instincts remain as sharp as ever — his boys were picked up by authorities on campaign finance violations.

Fruman and Parnas are soldiers in the Giuliani family, which is like a lot of operations accused of organized law-breaking, except instead of using influence and intimidation to dominate Vegas, they use bumbling and Epoch Times headlines to litter a presidency with incriminating evidence. They’re a bit less RICO and a lot more LOCO. Fruman and Parnas are described in the press as Giuliani “associates” which is never a flattering title outside of the law firm setting (and is it really all that flattering there?) who allegedly set Giuliani up on the wild goose chase in Ukraine that threatens to end in the historical stain of impeachment:

Starting in November 2018, Giuliani told CNN, Parnas and Fruman introduced him to former and current Ukrainian officials who provided information that Giuliani claims is damaging to some of Trump’s political enemies, including Biden. House Democrats have subpoenaed documents from Giuliani relating to those interactions.

From earlier subpoenas, we’ve already learned that Giuliani’s arrested pals leaned on a congressman to push for the recall of the ambassador to Ukraine in part at the behest of the Ukrainian government, which is essentially the burglary in this here Watergate ensuring that Fruman will end up with a talk show deal as the G. Gordon Dimwitty of this operation.

But again, hats off to Dowd who kept his guys from delivering testimony to the House that would only risk undermining their defense efforts. Now he’s got to manage the much more difficult task of keeping their jail time to a minimum (or keeping them out of jail… though the case looks pretty damning at this juncture).

It might be time to write the prosecutors about setting up a proffer to discuss Giuliani. Might I suggest Times New Roman for that one?

Two men connected to Giuliani’s Ukraine efforts arrested on campaign finance charges [CNN]

Earlier: John Dowd Writes Letter In Comic Sans Because He’s Through Pretending He’s Not A Clown

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The heat is getting turned up on DLA Piper. When partner Vanina Guerrero wrote an open letter to the leaders of the firm accusing a fellow partner, Louis Lehot, of sexual assault, she also asked the firm to release her from the mandatory arbitration agreement which is a condition of employment at DLA Piper. So far, the firm hasn’t responded to this request, but that silence hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Kamala Harris, who is married to DLA Piper partner Douglas Emhoff, weighed in on the subject in support of Guerrero’s right to go to court rather than confidential arbitration. And now a group of student activists organized as the People’s Parity Project (formerly the Pipeline Parity Project) have taken to the streets in front of three of DLA Piper’s offices to protest the firm’s use of mandatory arbitration agreements.

This isn’t the first time law school students have protested DLA over their arbitration agreements. An online campaign urged fellow law students to #DumpDLA and there were organized protests earlier this year. But with the attention currently focused on the firm, and a specific case and victim that wants to use the court system but is being barred from doing so, well, the time’s ripe to pound the pavement.

In their statement about the action, students focused on the harms of mandatory arbitration:

DLA Piper has been a longtime target of the People’s Parity Project for its refusal to end its policy of forced arbitration, but the firm has stood proudly behind the practice. Ms. Guererro’s account of the firm’s hostile environment is a powerful reminder of how important it is for workers to be able to hold corporations accountable. “We now know why firms like DLA Piper refuse to give up forced arbitration,” said Elisabeth Campbell, a 2L at New York University School of Law. “Forced arbitration enables bad actors to cover up and avoid accountability for their gross misconduct.”

And they intend to keep up the fight:

Grace Bennett, a 1L at Harvard Law School, said that law students showed up because we have the power to change the legal profession for the better. “Law firms like DLA Piper have shown that they won’t change their policies without a fight. They have to be forced to, and we have to keep showing up because people like Vanina Guerrero shouldn’t have to fight for their basic rights on the job.”

They’ve also started an online petition at coworker.org for others that want to amp up the pressure on DLA Piper.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Meet Daniel. He’s a 36-year-old Harvard Law graduate who works in New York as an attorney (but lives in New Jersey to avoid NYC taxes). You wouldn’t know it from looking at him because his suits are so threadbare that they’re falling apart, but he makes $270,000 a year. Unlike the rest of his colleagues who work in large law firms, Daniel isn’t exactly fast and loose with his six-figure salary. He survives on a diet of rice and beans and beats himself up when he “splurges” on Chipotle. The most expensive pair of work shoes he owns cost $60, and the rest are from thrift shops. He doesn’t turn on the heat in winter; he just puts on additional layers of clothing. He doesn’t even own a TV.

Daniel’s frugal life may sound incredibly boring and, well, awful, but here’s a little secret about him: He’s saved 70 percent of his salary over the years, his IRA has been maxed out for almost 20 years, and he’s got more than $400,000 ready for the future.

Daniel plans to retire in the next three years.

How did he save so much money? According to a profile piece in the New York Post, Daniel subscribes to the financial independence, retire early movement (FI/RE):

The money philosophy — essentially, save fast and early so you can quit working young — is gaining traction among millennials who have had a taste of office drudgery and want nothing to do with it. Followers combine investment hacks with old-fashioned penny pinching to build up enough savings to quit their 9-to-5, well before their 60s. They’re also committed to a monastic existence, even amid NYC’s many social temptations — drinks with co-workers, workout classes and even the odd fast-casual Friday lunch.

Daniel’s stingy lifestyle has been quite detrimental to his social life — or complete lack thereof). He’s single (“My previous ex-girlfriend never really got on board. Her concept of what I was doing was being cheap, and depriving myself and her.”) and has trouble relating to his coworkers (“They talk all the time about the fancy restaurants, bars and Broadway shows they’re going to.”). At least soon he’ll be able to leave the Biglaw life behind and trade his long working hours for more leisurely pursuits.

But for now, the all-consuming FI/RE life is what what keeps him going: “I’m trying to get to a point where nothing besides death can stop me.” Best of luck, Daniel.

Inside the strange, secretive lives of rich millennial cheapskates [New York Post]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.