Category: News Feeds

Last week, I spent a four hot and humid days in sunny Orlando at ILTACON 2019. As always, it was a whirlwind of activity and the days passed quickly; and before I knew it, I was back on a plane and headed homeward.

But my time there was well spent. I had many opportunities to learn about the latest and greatest in legal technology, while also connecting with old friends and meeting new ones.

When I wasn’t networking or exploring the massive Exhibit Hall floor, I was meeting with representatives from a number of forward-thinking legal technology companies that caught my eye.

I’ll be covering these meetings in a 2-part blog post series. In today’s column, Part 1, I’ll share the latest news from ZERØ, Diligen, ALN and Fastcase.

One of the products I learned about, ZERØ, was of particular interest to me since it uses AI in a really interesting and useful way: to manage email. I learned from Ryan Steadman, ZERØ’s Chief Revenue Officer, that since its debut one year ago, the company now has nearly 50 percent of AmLaw 100 firms using its product either in production or exceptions testing. The reason it’s gained so much traction in such a short time is because it offers a solution to a gap in the market by providing AI natural language processing software — on both mobile devices and desktop computers — that scans all incoming emails and then facilitates the secure filing of the emails into a firm’s document management or billing systems. As part of this process, the software captures the billable time spent reading and responding to emails.

I also caught up with Erez Bustan, CEO of American LegalNet (ALN) and he got me up to date on the company’s latest news. ALN provides a number of useful software solutions, including: 1) court rules-based calendaring tools, 2) legal docketing and calendaring tools, and 3) automated court and agency forms. At ILTACON, ALN announced its integration with ZERØ. The integration combines ALN’s calendaring and docketing platform eDockets and its AutoDocket Pro feature so that litigation-related emails and documents from ALN’s software can be automatically filed into a law firm’s document management software using ZERØ’s AI technology.

I also learned about the latest Diligen news from Laura van Wyngaarden, Diligen’s co-founder and COO. Diligen provides AI-powered contract review software that is used by law firms, legal service providers, and corporate counsel. Using this software, teams can easily collaborate and manage the entire contract review process. At ILTACON Laura shared the recent news of the release of Diligen Prodigy, a new training system that is designed to quickly train Diligen to recognize new contract clauses in as little as 10 to 20 minutes. This allows its customers the ability to customize the software to meet their specific needs by expanding the range of concepts the contract analysis system can identify.

And last, but certainly not least, I met with Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase. We talked about their focus on expanding the types of content available to Fastcase subscribers. Over the past year, Fastcase has made the following treatises and data available via its legal research platform: 1) a catalog of bankruptcy publications through a partnership with the American Bankruptcy Institute, 2) expert witness profiles as a result of partnerships with JurisPro and Courtroom Insight, 3) paid access to certain ABA publications, 4) public records search and analytics through a partnership with TransUnion, and 5) James Publishing’s entire library of treatises, books, and practice guides. In other words, at Fastcase, content is king, and Fastcase  customers are the beneficiary of this newfound focus.

That’s just a taste of what I learned during press briefings at this year’s conference. Check back next week for the second installment of my ILTACON round up to learn the latest news from Intapp, NetDocuments, iManage, and LexisNexis.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist 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 @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

The California Supreme Court has hired a retired appeals court justice and his law firm to probe the State Bar’s disclosure of bar exam topics prior to the July test.

Arthur G. Scotland, a former administrative presiding justice of the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento, will lead the investigation. California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye served on the Third District bench with Scotland for several years.

The state Supreme Court also hired the Sacramento firm where Scotland works, Nielsen Merksamer, to assist with the probe.

The $60,000 contract runs through the end of 2019. Scotland will be paid $995 an hour for his work. The hourly rates for the other attorneys at Nielsen Merksamer expected to assist with the work range from $375 to $675. The State Bar will cover the costs.

The court’s announcement follows its July statement that it would conduct “a thorough and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disclosure, and that appropriate steps are taken to protect the integrity of the bar examination and identify and address any consequences.”

Just days prior to the July exam, the State Bar sent some law school deans a list of the general subjects to be tested on the essay and performance test portions. This early release prompted the bar to disclose the topics to all test takers.

The scandal was a significant setback for an agency that seemed to be making progress on other fronts.

The State Bar also recently announced the hiring of a former California employment lawyer and mediator to investigate the topics disclosure.

Jean Gaskill, an inactive California attorney based in Oregon, will be paid $200 an hour for work on the probe. 

Gaskill previously worked for the now-defunct Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison law firm.

As for former Justice Scotland, his career included more than 21 years on the appellate bench and almost two years as a Sacramento County Superior Court judge.

“After retiring from the Court of Appeal in 2010, he reactivated his license to practice law and represented the President pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly in a successful lawsuit against the State Controller, regarding the constitutional requirements for passage of a balanced budget bill,” the California Supreme Court said in a release.

Scotland joined Nielsen Merksamer in 2012.

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With a name like Atticus Finch is it really a surprise that you wind up going to law school? That’s right, there’s a real 1L at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, named Atticus Finch after the iconic character in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.

And while it may seem like an appropriate name since Atticus’s parents, Matthew and Ian Finch, are both lawyers, this really isn’t a case of fathers pre-determining their son’s career. See, as reported by Texas Lawyer, Matthew and Ian gave their son the name Angus at birth, but after reading Mockingbird at the tender age of 7 he was inspired to change his name.

Now the fictional Atticus is certainly inspirational, but that wasn’t the only motivating factor behind the name change. As a child the real-life Atticus had recently moved right around the time McDonalds started marketing its Angus beef burger. As he says, “It wasn’t a good time to be a kid changing schools with a name of Angus in Texas.”

So at 8 years old, and after using the name Atticus for about a year beforehand, his parents assisted him in getting his name legally changed;

“I used Atticus as much as I could. Even though my parents did all of the legal work, I had to show up in court and explain to the judge [that] I wasn’t running from the law,” Finch recalls of that court hearing when he was a child.

Finch said the fictional Atticus Finch inspired him, because of the respect the character commanded in the book and movie, and his dedication to justice. It also helped that both of Finch’s parents were lawyers, he said.

Atticus doesn’t regret the name change, but the somewhat unusual moniker didn’t stop kids from ridiculing his name. But now that he’s in law school he says, “The jokes definitely got better.”

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).

Donald Trump has ordered his subordinates to break the law in order to help his reelection campaign and promised to pardon them if they ever face prosecution. And yes, we’re all losing our capacity for outrage after 32 months of dozen-a-day dumpster fires. But this particular conflagration is a big one, so let’s not allow exhaustion to turn it into a one-day story. Because this is very, very bad.

At countless pitchfork MAGA rallies, candidate Trump stood at the podium and promised to build a wall on the southern border. He promised that Mexico would pay for it, too, but no one talks about that now. Maybe it’s going on China’s tab along with the tariffs, who knows?

The Washington Post reports that the President “directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules.” Eminent domain litigation can drag on for years, but Trump ordered his subordinates to just “take the land.” Which sounds illegal — because it is — but the President waved away those pesky concerns about future prosecution saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” to subordinates hung up on sissy stuff like knowingly violating multiple federal statutes.

He’s not even pretending this has anything to do with effective immigration enforcement. Trump has been told repeatedly that the $3.6 billion in defense spending he’s about steal after shouting “National Emergency” would be more effectively spent by ramping up immigration and deportation spending. But then Trump shut down his critics by noting the “loud cheers the wall brought at rallies,” and so our nation’s laws must yield to the MAGA applause-o-meter.

Timing is of the essence, of course, with voters heading to the polls in just 14 months. CBP officials told the US Army Corps last week that the new sections of Trump’s border wall must “completed before the next presidential election.” And if they have to violate the Administrative Procedures Act to do it, Trump will be more than willing to retroactively bless it by abusing his constitutional pardon power.

Trump also has many #Thoughts on the construction process. The entire wall is to be painted black, in accordance with the Mad King’s latest whim, despite the fact that this will increase the cost by $70 to $133 million. And the anti-climbing plates had to go after the President declared them unsightly, replaced by sharpened spikes the better to impale our enemies upon, one assumes. Oh, and Trump is leaning hard on the Army Corps to award contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company supported by his ally Sen. Kevin Cramer. Because when you’re this deep into corruption and lawlessness, what’s a little more blatant cronyism among friends.

So the construction equipment is rolling into environmentally sensitive areas because the President waived environmental impact studies due to the very serious emergency, and the Post reports that “CBP has suggested no longer writing risk-assessment memos ‘related to the fact that we don’t have real estate rights and how this will impact construction.’” How does one assess the risk of a blatantly unlawful government seizure of hundreds of parcels of privately owned real estate? Probably best to skip it entirely.

The White House is pushing back against the Post story, criticizing reporters for being such humorless losers who can’t even take a joke. Because who wouldn’t laugh if the Commander in Chief issued an unlawful order and then promised to make the consequence disappear like magic? LOL, that there is comedy gold!

Or maybe the Washington Post made the whole thing up, desperate for copy because they can’t get any of the consummate professionals staffing the White House to leak embarrassing details about the Maniac in Chief.

Except, whoops, CNN just confirmed the Post’s reporting that Trump dangled pardons to induce CBP employees to break the law. And Donald Trump would never, ever stoop to watching FAKE NEWS CNN, but five minutes after the broadcast, he was out there denying it again.

Who ya gonna believe, Donald Trump or your lyin’ eyes?

‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day. [WaPo]

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

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) is deeply concerned about the deteriorating socio-economic conditions and closure of democratic space in Zimbabwe.

State of Affairs

This media brief seeks to draw your attention to the socio-political and economic challenges currently facing the country. We are worried about the political situation in our country and with an escalation of human rights violations and the collapse of the economy and resultant social service nets resulting in the millions of citizens seeking refuge in neighbouring countries and beyond. Fresh cases of arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions and abductions of unarmed civilians and civil society leaders are being reported. Multiple threats and intimidation by government officials against trade unions, civil society leaders and ordinary Zimbabweans are continuing unabated. To date, about 22 civil society leaders and human rights defenders and opposition leaders have been charged with subversion since the beginning of the year.

In August alone, police arrested over 80 citizens in Bulawayo, Chitungwiza and Harare on allegations of committing public violence. In Harare, medical facilities have recorded more than 20 cases of people who were brutally assaulted by police including a journalist, Fani Mapfumo, who was covering a peaceful protest on the 16th of August 2019. The injured include women and children.

The democratic space continues to shrink and Zimbabwe with the banning of demonstrations in all major towns signalling a state of emergency. The judiciary is now heavily compromised and is being systematically used to deny the people their fundamental rights as enshrined by Section 59 of the constitution and the expansive bill of rights in the Zimbabwean charter. We fear that if the situation continues unchecked, there are greater chances of an escalation of social unrest and instability in Zimbabwe. This might result in regional instability as Zimbabweans seek food, shelter and refugee in neighbouring countries.

Consequently,  this month, the government of Zimbabwe, through their mouthpiece the Herald newspaper on the 16th of August 2019 made sensational allegations that civil society leaders who were attending the SADC People’s Summit in Tanzania were planning to demonstrate against President Mnangagwa and were being trained to commit acts of banditry. The state went on to publish over 20 names of civil society leaders that they claim were planning to smear the image of the country. The allegations resulted in the detention and harassment of the activists upon their return to Zimbabwe. We view this move as calculated and desperate tactics by the government to instil fear amongst activists and the civil society in general.

Regionally, we  participated at this year’s SADC Peoples Summit held at the National Museum in Tanzania from the 13th to the 18th of August 2019 and the summit urged  SADC to ensure the continuation and deepening of the political reform processes in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Lesotho and Zambia in terms of human rights, democratization, constitutionalism, free and fair elections and protection of the rights of the citizens.

It is our view, therefore, that the political processes in Zimbabwe must seek to promote and consolidate democracy, peace and human security and we also maintain that resolving the current political crisis in the country is a pre-requisite for democracy and economic development.

Similarly,  in May this year, Zimbabwean authorities arrested 7 civil society leaders upon their arrival from a meeting in Maldives and charged them with subversion despite the absence of evidence that shows that they were trained in banditry.

Turning to the economy, there is a perpetual economic meltdown (resulting from the current political crisis) which has resulted in high levels of inflation and an increase in domestic debt which has compromised the government’s capacity for the provision of social services and social protection for ordinary citizens. Zimbabwe’s economy is collapsing under the burden of a) grand corruption and b) the power of a military elite which is subverting constitutional processes. The recent 76% cost of living adjustment offer to civil servants which will see the least-paid worker taking home $1 023 (less than USD100) per month is inadequate due to the high cost of living. Equally, a majority of Zimbabweans are surviving on less than USD1 a day is impacting negatively on ordinary citizens and has the potential of fuelling more conflicts in Zimbabwe.

Thought the government through Statutory Instrument SI 142 of 2019 outlawed the use of multiple currency, prices and cost of living remains benchmarked in foreign currency, hence the need to peg wages and earnings to the united states dollar.

The country is also facing an extreme drought with estimated figures of nearly 5.5 million people–a third of Zimbabwe’s population  needing food assistance by 2020,  according to a UNICEF  report in June.

Going forward

Based on the above background, which should be understood in the context of the ongoing political and economic crisis bedevilling the country, we propose the following urgent interventions:

1)    We reiterate our call for internal and inclusive stakeholders’ dialogue in Zimbabwe. It is our conviction that the dialogue process must involve all stakeholders and a national visioning process that has a civil society, government, political parties, business, religious groups and labour unions among other critical stakeholders on board. As an import of the dialogue process should produce a clear timed roadmap to the demilitarization of civilian political processes and the restoration of normalcy by focusing on key political, economic and social reforms.

2)    We urge regional and international blocs to promote and support efforts at arresting the economic downturn in Zimbabwe based on a clear reform roadmap and encourage Zimbabwe to adopt and implement pro-poor and inclusive economic policies. Efforts at economic transformation, stabilization and growth should be aimed at achieving inclusive sustainable economic growth and development.

3)    We urge the Government of Zimbabwe to stop the crackdown on human rights defenders, activists, media and the opposition, uphold and guarantee citizens’ rights as enshrined in the Zimbabwean Constitution and other regional and international human rights treaties and statutes. The Global Political Agreement (GPA) issues guaranteed by SADC/AU remain at the centre of the crisis especially the constitutional reform process. Therefore, the full implementation of the country’s constitution is equally important in promoting democracy in Zimbabwe.

4)    We urge SADC and the AU to decisively ACT by urgently and adequately intervening in the Zimbabwe situation. We are concerned that SADC is focusing on the non-event of the so-called sanctions when the country is in flames as the regional body is rendering itself irrelevant as it surely is not showing leadership on the political question in Zimbabwe. Without addressing the political and legitimacy crisis, the socio-economic dislocations will send shock waves to the entire region.

5) Call upon the Zimbabwe, government to prioritize and prepare for humanitarian assistance programs for the millions facing starvation in Zimbabwe.

Post published in: Featured

Johannesburg – American entertainer Steve Harvey has been sucked into Zimbabwe’s fractious politics after the opposition MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa persuaded him to delete a tweet in which he posted a video of the Victoria Falls.

Matters came to a head after Harvey posted the video showing a rainbow over the Victoria Falls, with an emoji of clapping hands.

Harvey’s tweet gained some traction with positive comments until the MDC Alliance got wind off it. The opposition party then persuaded the American comedian to delete it.

Dr Nkululekho Sibanda, spokesperson for Chamisa, claimed he had persuaded Harvey to delete the tourism promo tweet.

“He is just making his money, I agree with you. Just got excited, the ZANU PF consultants in the US, got Steve Harvey @IAmSteveHarvey to tweet [email protected], we got to him and he quickly deleted the post. They are failing, that is how bad they are. They are losing fast!” tweeted Sibanda.

The MDC and the ruling Zanu-PF party led by President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa are at loggerheads. Hard-pressed Zimbabweans are restless. Discontent has been rising along with commodity prices.

Joblessness is rife. Electricity and water are in short supply in many urban areas.

Last week police clamped down on attempts by the MDC to hold demonstrations against the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, Harvey, the award-winning entertainer, businessman and philanthropist, is in South Africa where he will launch “Family Feud” the internationally acclaimed game show.

Zimbabwe imported almost $80 million’s worth of diesel last month, 30% less than in June, according to data published by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency. Diesel remains Zimbabwe’s biggest import, followed by unleaded gasoline, durum wheat and electricity.

The country is buckling under an economic crisis compounded by the introduction of a new currency that’s pushed up prices and led to shortages of goods from bread to fuel. However, even when these products are available, they’re often unaffordable. The government on Monday increased fuel prices for the fourth time this month as it seeks to boost its income.

The trade deficit narrowed to $57.5 million in July from a nine-month high of $218.7 million in June, according the statistics agency’s data. The biggest export was nickel ores and concentrates with $92.5 million worth of product being shipped out.

The International Legal Technology Association’s annual conference came and went this past week, so we were unable to record a podcast. But we have a treat from the archives — a conversation with Intapp board member and all-around law firm business expert Ralph Baxter about what the future holds for law firms.