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Unlike on this side of the Atlantic, where the very idea of protecting financial consumers is anathema and where preying upon the hard-up and less-fortunate is an exceedingly lucrative line of business, in the U.K., turning the screws on customers in distress is illegal. Indeed, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority goes so far as to require consumer credit firms to try to understand their positions and, heaven forfend, show forbearance to customers struggling financially.

Have you ever wondered why courts do not order sanctions more often? Putting aside the litigation flurry since the election, there seem to be more cases where sanctions might be a good way to tell the attorneys that their case is not worthy of expending judicial time and resources, especially in these days of COVID-19. Reading advance sheets, various articles, and remembering my days in court, I am puzzled as to why the hammer doesn’t come down more often on ridiculous, frivolous litigation, as if the courts don’t have anything else to do.

Let me give you one example. A case was tried to a jury on a matter of pen-snatching. Yes, you read that right, pen-snatching. A plaintiff attorney (who else?) sued New York City and two police officers. The basis: when the attorney tried to serve a lawsuit on the department, the office for service of process was closed. One police officer grabbed the attorney’s pen as he tried to write down the officer’s name and shield number. The pen was returned to the attorney within minutes.

The attorney had alleged constitutional violations, as well as assault and battery and other charges. The jury awarded the plaintiff lawyer $1 for the pen-snatching. The attorney sought more than $44,000 in attorney’s fees. The district court decided that “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” and awarded the attorney $1, finding the case trivial. Naturally, the attorney “respectfully disagrees” with the fee award. When has an attorney who wasn’t awarded fees or they were awarded in a lesser amount than sought ever agreed with the decision?

This is just another example of how foolish lawyers can appear and do appear to the nonlawyer population. As the district court said, while the verdict may be personally meaningful to the plaintiff, no one else cares. No one else should care except for the waste of judicial time and resources in trying this case. What do you think the jury thought having to sit through this dreck in the middle of a pandemic? Could the award of $1 instead of the more than $44,000 sought be an implicit sanction?

And sanctions aren’t just for lawyers. The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission took a trial court judge to task for intemperate behavior, sanctioning him for, among other things, a temper tantrum on the bench.

One of the many things we tell clients not to do: “Don’t do anything that might appear in the news media.” Do we follow our own advice? Maybe, maybe not. Here’s a cautionary tale for all of us. Renowned LA lawyer Tom Girardi is in a pickle in Chicago. He’s alleged to have siphoned off settlement funds due to his clients to the tune of $2 million. Not only is Girardi known in his own right, but he’s also known as the husband of Erika Jayne, one of TV’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The Girardis do not live in Beverly Hills, by the way, and Mrs. Girardi has recently filed for divorce.

The court in Chicago overseeing the distribution of settlement proceeds has frozen all of Girardi’s assets and those of his firm. It’s not a pretty picture. Creditors are threatening to file an involuntary bankruptcy petition.

Girardi is in a world of hurt right now. Not only could he face discipline by the State Bar (and we all know or should know what a dim view bar discipline peeps take of claims of misappropriation), the federal court referred the matter for possible criminal investigation. (Shades of Michael Avenatti, remember him?) And the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago has asked the court to unseal a court filing in which Girardi’s law firm admitted that the $2 million appeared to be missing. This is going to go way beyond sanctions. Loss of bar license and reputation, among other things, seem to be in jeopardy.

Remember the childhood phrase “Liar, liar, pants on fire?” Hopefully, you will get the reference in this opinion by the Ohio Supreme Court. It had previously disciplined the lawyer (suspending him from practice for a period) for misconduct for engaging in a sexual relationship with an indigent client in a criminal case. The attorney lied about it to the court along with other offenses. Apparently, not feeling sufficiently chastised, the attorney continued his merry way, right after being suspended, engaging in the same type of conduct that got him suspended in the first place: lying to yet another court and his clients about the suspension, forging his client’s name on a settlement check without authority to do so and other folderol, not designed to improve his reputation with the court.

The court, (deciding that the attorney was, to use my client’s phrase and not the court’s “a lying sack of sh–”) found a pattern of misconduct that continued from his first disciplinary suspension, lying to the trial court on multiple occasions. “We can only assume that [the attorney’s pants are charred from the number of falsehoods that he has perpetuated” in his prior disciplinary and the current one. Some sayings still hold true.

And last, but not least, a shout out to LawProfBlawg (I am ignoring the “Dr.” in front of the name) who criticizes the dismissive attitude toward Dr. Jill Biden using her “Dr.” in her title. As the Prof points out, this is yet another example of the often-demeaning attitude toward women’s achievements on their own. It’s nothing new, unfortunately, but that attitude must stop and the way to do that is to push back against such nonsense. Dr. Biden is the incoming First Lady and will continue to teach full time. What about the incoming Second Gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, who will be teaching at Georgetown? Will he be able to fulfill his duties as Second Gentleman while teaching? Would anyone ask that question? I doubt it.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

After a grim and deadly year, and just in time for the holiday season, Americans finally have reason to hope. 

This week, the U.S. government began delivering the first 2.9 million doses of BioNTech and Pfizer’s vaccine, with 20 million to be administered by the end of December. Last week, the U.S. doubled its initial August order for 100 million doses of Moderna’s offering. The federal government is also negotiating a new deal with Pfizer to take delivery of more of its vaccine in the spring.  

Based on a glowing review of Moderna’s data Tuesday, FDA officials recommended on Thursday that members of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee issue the company the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) it needs to begin distributing the first 6 million doses of its drug across the country, ramping up to 20 million by the end of December.

In total, the two companies’ offerings can vaccinate 150 million Americans by the end of June. Barring successful renegotiations with Pfizer, the remaining 180 million people in the U.S. will either need to wait until these companies deliver their promised doses to other world governments or receive a different vaccine. 

AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are expected to seek Emergency Use Authorization for their vaccines in the first quarter of 2021. 

What lessons can these and other future Covid vaccine candidates take from the FDA’s response to Pfizer and Moderna’s study data?

Black Lives Have to Matter
With two Black Americans being killed by Covid-19 for every white American, the federal government has emphasized from the beginning that health equity had to drive vaccine development.

“From day one, the message was clear: ‘Vaccine trials needed to represent America,’” said Dr. Paul Offit in a phone interview. 

Offit is a member of FDA’s vaccine advisory group and was also active in the NIH’s Accelerating Covid-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership that launched on April 17. 

“The goal all along has been to ensure that when you go into these hardest-hit communities you can say: ‘Look you’re in this trial, you’ve been represented in this trial,’” Offit said. “Black Americans are both skeptical of the medical establishment and especially likely to be killed by the virus, so we need to break through that barrier.”

From their choice of principal investigators to selection of clinical trial candidates to evaluation of data, both Pfizer and Moderna delivered on historically public health-driven protocols. When the two companies saw their Phase III trials lacked sufficient racial and ethnic representation, they paused them. 

“I would rather we have higher diverse participants and take one extra week,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC. Diversity “matters more to us than speed.”

Partner With Government Early — And Communicate Often
While Moderna participated in the U.S. government’s vaccine research and development accelerator Operation Warp Speed and Pfizer did not, both Pfizer and Moderna had early and strong relationships with government agencies that allowed them to deliver strong protocols and Phase I results. [Pfizer is getting federal aid to distribute the vaccine, however.]

Regulators and the companies agree that these relationships sped up research without sacrificing quality.

After previously collaborating with Moderna on a serum to fight Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) supported the Massachusetts company in the rapid development of accurate Phase I trial assays and Phase III Covid trials.

As far back as May, Moderna Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks told investors that thanks to NIAID’s standardization of assays for its trials, the company was going into Phase III not worrying if the vaccine was safe and efficacious, but more what the ideal dosing would be and how many patients they would need to prove it. 

This paid off in the FDA’s Phase III data analysis this week, which found Moderna’s vaccine has a “favorable safety profile” based on its delivery to 30,000 volunteers and that there are “no specific safety concerns identified that would preclude issuance of an EUA.” The agency also affirmed Moderna’s overall finding of 94% effectiveness two weeks after the second dose of vaccine, when given 28 days after the first.

Despite its early role as a front-runner in the vaccine race and excellent scientific credentials in vaccine development, AstraZeneca damaged its relationship with regulators and slowed the development of its Covid vaccine through a “pattern of communications blunders,” according to a report in The New York Times. These include an incident in September when FDA officials were reportedly surprised with news that the company had halted its Phase III trial after a participant became ill.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel …
Both Pfizer and Moderna relied heavily on work that had begun before the SARS-2-Cov outbreak, using mRNA platforms that had been in development for decades, though they had yet to result in a successful vaccine. 

Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have adopted this approach as well, basing their Covid vaccine candidates on existing adenovirus vaccine platforms, which allowed them to get up and running immediately and gave the FDA a basis to analyze results of current vaccine trials against prior candidates’ results. 

AstraZeneca researcher Dr. Sarah Gilbert was able to start work on the vaccine Jan. 10, just one day after Chinese researchers released the virus’s genetic sequence.

But Be Ready For Everything to Change
Vaccine makers and the FDA are faced with an ethical dilemma grounded in these drugs’ early success: continue with fully randomized controlled trials, forcing some people to receive placebo and thus risk contracting this deadly disease, unblind the study and lose the ability to follow up on longer-term vaccine effects without bias, or do a blinded cross-trial, which would allow all participants to receive the vaccine (but at a potentially unfeasible cost)?

Moderna’s Zaks recently told Biocentury that he hopes vaccine makers that follow Moderna will rely on its findings instead of using a full Stage III trial with a placebo arm. This could mean no more placebo-controlled Covid vaccine trials moving forward — but instead the use of “correlates of protection” that would render large-scale, placebo-controlled trials unnecessary.

During Moderna’s presentation to FDA Thursday, Lindsey Baden, the co-principal investigator of Moderna’s trial at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, proposed the company offer doses of the vaccine to patients who had received placebo, saying they were already “voting with their feet” and leaving the study to receive Pfizer’s vaccine. He reasoned that the doses were already manufactured for the clinical trial and about to expire, and that they had seen two to three severe cases of disease among placebo recipients in the trial each week.

However, also on Thursday, Stanford Professor of Medicine Steven Goodman argued to the FDA that once the genie is out of the bottle, you can never really go back to placebo-controlled trials.

“There will be a precedent, as soon as something has been shown to be effective and available, that it’s unethical to ask people to wait any more time to be immunized in any way,” Goodman reasoned, “and this is a precedent you may not want to set.”

All in all, the first candidates to present Phase III data to the FDA have redefined the norm for vaccine development.  

“We did it,” Offit said. “We have two good candidates and a decent pipeline. The question now is how many will get to the finish line.”

Photo: Waldemarus, Getty Images

He left the department last time with a good reputation for professionalism and integrity. That’s not true this time. And it’s not because of particular positions he took. It’s because of his lack of respect for the rule of law, his dishonesty while he was attorney general and his clear lack of respect for traditions of professionalism within the department.

— Stanford Law professor David Alan Sklansky, who worked as a federal prosecutor under Attorney General Bill Barr during the George H.W. Bush administration, commenting on the fact that Barr may face a much more difficult job hunt if he decides to go into private practice after he leaves the Trump administration.

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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.

You’d think that someone who graduated from an Ivy League law school would know the difference between ripeness and standing. But you’d probably also think that the Hatch Act barred government employees, whose salaries are paid with your tax dollars, from openly campaigning for a political candidate. This is 2020, though, so you’d be wrong on both counts.

Here’s what they did Sean. Here was the clever little trick, and it happened in Nevada. When the claims were brought beforehand, when we warned and said, “Hey, mass mail-in voting’s a problem,” we brought these claims to a court of law, they said, “Hey, your claim’s not ripe, come back after the election.” We bring it after the election to the same court and they say “laches,” which is a legal doctrine saying “Your claim is too late.” It can’t not be ripe and then be too late. Those are the kind of gimmickry tricks that happened.

Really? Let’s check the record, shall we?

In August, the Trump campaign sued Nevada’s Secretary of State in federal court alleging that the state’s vote-by-mail law violated the Elections and Electors Clause by counting late-arriving votes, and that it abrogated the Equal Protection rights of rural Nevadans. U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan tossed the case on the ground that the Trump campaign lacked standing to assert the rights of Nevada voters.

To the extent that ripeness factored into the decision, it was the court’s description of the campaign’s alleged injuries as “impermissibly ‘generalized’ and ‘speculative’ at this juncture.” Because “Hey, mass mail-in voting’s a problem” is not a particularized harm giving rise to a cognizable cause of action. In no fashion did Judge Mahan invite them to “come back after the election.”

Similarly, the District Court of Clark County Nevada denied a preliminary injunction to the Election Integrity Project of Nevada, which sued in September to challenge the mail-in ballot laws passed by both houses of the state legislature and signed by the governor, writing that the plaintiffs had failed to allege any harm beyond speculation that someone, somewhere might at some future date break the law.

“Although Plaintiffs argue that certain provisions of AB 4 will make Nevada’s voting system susceptible to illegitimate votes, Plaintiffs present no concrete evidence that such events will occur,” District Court Judge Rob Bare wrote. After the election, the case was dismissed when the plaintiff failed to produce evidence of actual injury sufficient to overturn the result.

Pre- and post-election, the Trump campaign cheered on but did not join multiple suits challenging the signature-matching technology, all of which failed for reasons having nothing to do with laches. One federal case was voluntarily dismissed; a state case filed by a Republican state senate candidate was procedurally fakakta; and the District Court for Carson City Nevada held a hearing and ruled that the plaintiffs’ evidence was crap,

“Contestants did not prove under any standard of proof that any illegal votes were cast and counted, or legal votes were not counted at all, for any other improper or illegal reason, nor in an amount equal to or greater than 33,596, or otherwise in an amount sufficient to raise reasonable doubt as to the outcome of the election,” wrote Carson City District Court Judge James Russell. “Reasonable doubt is one based on reason, not mere possibility.”

Trump and his allies have lost election challenges in multiple states based on their failure to file in timely fashion, but Nevada isn’t one of them.

So, to sum up: The Trump campaign wasn’t actually a party to most of these suits; the suits were dismissed for lack of standing and failure to allege imminent harm, not for ripeness; no court said “come back after the election;” the claims asserted post-election were, in the main, different from those asserted beforehand; the suits were dismissed, not because of laches, but because they were junk; and they weren’t even filed in “the same court,” since Carson City and Clark County are two different places.

But other than that, great job, counselor.

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

There’s a reason why the gold standard at law firms is lockstep bonuses — hell, that’s true for all Biglaw compensation. It engenders collegiality, avoids potential problems of black box compensation (like favoritism and unconscious bias), and makes it makes it really easy for associates to anticipate what they’ll make in any given year.

But, alas, that’s not what’s meant to be at Perkins Coie. It’s been a bumpy year at the firm, with the firm announcing in April that the partnership was deferring ~19 percent of their compensation. Then beginning with their June paychecks, non-partner attorneys saw a 15 percent salary cut, staff making $200,000+ took a 15 percent cut, and staff making $125,000-$200,000 saw compensation cut by 10 percent. But things really seemed to be turning a corner when, in October, the firm announced the salary cuts were over and full restoration payments were the order of the day.

So, many associates thought they just might get full market bonuses. And while *some* associates did receive the year-end market rate, the special bonuses that became all the rage among elite Biglaw firms starting in the fall, given in appreciation of associates‘ hard work during the pandemic, were nowhere to be found. Those special bonuses range from $7,500 to $40,000, depending on class year, and, at other firms, are in addition to the year-end bonus numbers — so there’s a lot of cash Perkins Coie associates are missing out on compared with their peers at other firms.

And the reaction from tipsters has been understandably upset:

Individual memos were given to each associate with some making market bonuses and others not. The big headline is that they aren’t paying the special Covid bonuses that the other firms are offering. Also no additional dollars for top billers. Associates are pissed.

As has been done in years past, Perkins Coie is sending out individual bonus memos to all of its associates. While I’m pleased with my market bonus (though I’m not sure everyone is on the Cravath scale), Perkins Coie did NOT issue a special Covid bonus like so many of the other firms have done. As the 54th highest grossing lawfirm in the world, I’m pretty disappointed that they couldn’t pay the Covid bonus.

But like any firm with individualized bonuses, we depend on our readers to help fill out the details. So, are you a Perkins Coie associate? What do you think about bonuses this year? Feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

The moral of the story is, as always, our tipsters are essential to bonus season. We depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

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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).

Boutique law firms continue to blow Biglaw firms out of the water when it comes to giving their hard-working associates the bonuses they deserve. Case in point: Roche Cyrulnik Freedman, a New York- and Miami-based litigation boutique that’s existed for less than a year, is offering market-beating bonuses.

Founded by Kyle Roche, Jason Cyrulnik, and Vel Freedman, RCF is the first Boies Schiller Flexner spinoff since the latter’s inception more than two decades ago. The firm may be tiny — it has just 22 attorneys, total — but it is mighty, leading the charge in many cryptocurrency and cannabis cases. Roche Cyrulnik’s team has grown by more than 50 percent since January 2020, and because its associates have helped build “something special,” they’re being rewarded with overmarket bonuses.

Here’s what the 2020 year-end bonus scale looks like at RCF:

As you can see, bonuses at RCF are just a hair over the combined year-end and special bonuses being offered by Cravath and its peer firms at every level. (The classes of 2017 and 2018 receive the biggest bumps at $5,000 over market, while every other class year is receiving $2,500 over market.) Here’s what a happy associate at the firm had to say: “This is very exciting news from a new firm and demonstrates that the partnership is truly invested in its growing class of associates.”

Congratulations to all Roche Cyrulnik Freedman associates! It sounds like this firm is really going places, and they’ll be there to witness all of its success.

(Flip to the next page to read the Roche Cyrulnik bonus memo in full.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for all of your help!

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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.

The holidays are upon us, and 2021 is drawing to a close. While this year’s holidays may be markedly different from those of years past due to the effects of the pandemic, they’re nevertheless something to plan for and look forward to.

That being said, if planning isn’t your strong suit or if you’ve just fallen behind, last-minute gift purchases may be in order. If so, you’re in luck! In this post, I’ve gathered some of my top recommendations for last-minute holiday gifts for lawyers.

Apple AirPods

I’m a huge fan of my AirPods, and am not sure how I got by without them. The most obvious use cases are taking calls and walking around your office unencumbered or during Zoom meetings, which are things we’re all doing a lot now that we’re working remotely. Granted, AirPods aren’t cheap, but they’re worth it. The cost for basic AirPods with a wireless charging case is $199 and with a wired charging case the cost is $159.

Moft ‘Invisible’ Laptop Stand

With the Moft ‘Invisible’ laptop stand, you’ll have a laptop stand readily available no matter where you’re working. This laptop stand permanently attaches to the bottom of your laptop via an adhesive backing. When not in use it folds nearly flush to the bottom of your laptop, lays flat at one-ninth of an inch, and is barely discernible. It weighs only three ounces. Its dimensions are 170 x 224 x 3 mm. and it’s designed for use with laptops with screen sizes of 11.6 inches to 15.6 inches. It has two height settings, and costs only $24.99.

Legal Technology Books

Here are two new books that are perfect for lawyers seeking to streamline their practices. First, there’s A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research by Ann Walsh Long. This book is exactly what the title suggests: A how-to of legal research that provides an overview of the vast array of legal research tools available to litigators at each stage of a case. It’s perfect for lawyers working from home who need to be able to locate information quickly and easily.

Then there’s the 2020 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide, written by Sharon D. Nelson, John W. Simek, and Michael C. Maschke. This book is updated annually and provides a vast array of technology advice, ranging from how to choose hardware for your law firm to legal software recommendations. If your law firm is in the market for new hardware, including laptops, smartphones, printers, or networking equipment, this book has you covered. Similarly, if your firm is in need of legal software — whether it’s law practice management software, document management software, or legal billing software — to help your firm work remotely and manage law firm documents, improve productivity, or secure your law firm’s systems, you’re sure to find tips on how to choose the software tools that will be the best fit for your law firm.

Amazon Subscription Boxes

Speaking of subscriptions, Amazon offers access to hundreds of subscription box services. These are a great way to give someone a a recurring gift that they can look forward to each month. We subscribe to two different gift box services. I gave them to my husband (socks) and my family (a Japanese snack box) as gifts earlier this year. Amazon has over 400 gift box services available in countless categories, so no matter what the interests of your gift recipient, there’s bound to be one that is right up their alley!

Meditation App Subscription

Another gift subscription to consider is a meditation app subscription. Two of the most popular are Calm (my app of choice) and Headspace. These apps provide thousands of different meditations to their customers. You can search for meditations based on your preference. So, for example, you can choose anxiety-reducing meditations or meditations designed to help you fall sleep. There are also programs that consist of a series of meditations with an end goal in mind, whether it’s focusing on gratitude, increasing self-esteem, or improving concentration. You can purchase annual gift subscriptions for the lawyer on your list for a little over $60.

A Wine.com Membership

Last but not least, consider gifting the lawyer on your list a membership to Wine.com’s StewardShip program. It’s an annual membership that costs $49 per year, and gives customers free shipping for the entire year. That means you can have wine and other spirits delivered right to your door, at no additional cost to you. I really like Wine.com, since it’s a great site for exploring new wines and spirits via their “Discover” tab (for wines) and “Explore Spirits” and “Cocktail Recipes” sections under the “New Spirits” tab. The site offers free recorded wine tastings, wine tasting sets, wine and spirit guides, and much more. With the pandemic surging and lockdowns looming, it’s just one more way to avoid crowds while getting a little holiday cheear delivered right to your door!

I hope some of these last-minute gift ideas are a good fit for the lawyer on your list. I hope you have a joyful and safe holiday season, and I’ll see you in 2021!

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Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.