Gender: Female
Industry: Law
Age: Unknown
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Brangelina baby and bloggers

This week’s biggest infotainment news item, the Brangelina baby, may have legal ramifications for some bloggers. For unknown reasons, the news that the celebrity couple had a baby sparked a major media event. There was nothing noteworthy about the baby itself, other than that it had two Golden Globe nominees as parents.

The baby had such pre-natal buzz that People magazine cut a multimillion dollar deal to be the exclusive distributor of the official baby pictures in the U.S. It wasn’t long before starry-eyed bloggers got a hold of the photographs and plastered them across the blogosphere. Baby-crazy web surfers could save the $4 for the People magazine and just check out the baby pics for free at the LiveJournal gossip blog (http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt ).

So, of course, legal action was threatened, this time by Hello! Magazine, the exclusive distributor of the baby photos in Europe. And, of course, this will only increase the profile of the blogs who posted the pictures.

The real victim in all this is Wilford Brimley, who sold the exclusive rights for the photos of his bunion removal surgery to Us Weekly, only to have the story dropped in favor of another Brangelina baby headline.

06-16-2006

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Attorney client privilege??

Police in Los Angeles County have violated the attorney client privilege by recording attorney-client consultations and handing the tapes over to opposing counsel. This, according to Public Defender Dude's blog (http://publicdefenderdude.blogspot.com).
The blog relates the tale of the Pasadena police who recorded a conversation between two co-defendants and their lawyer in which one co-defendant implores the other to take a plea bargain deal. The tape was damning evidence in their trial.

Public Defender Dude sees this as another example of eroding civil liberties.

06-15-2006

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Attorneys using MySpace for research and investigations

This week, Tales of a Public Defender Investigator ( http://pdinvestigator.blogspot.com/) offered up a blog post about using MySpace (www.myspace.com) to conduct investigations into witnesses and victims.

Tales of a Public Defender analyzes the ethics of culling investigatory info from the MySpace pages of adults and juveniles. While investigators owe it to their clients to conduct the most thorough investigations possible, attorneys must adhere to the code of ethics. In defense of using personal websites to gather investigatory info, the PDI blog mentions the case of the Woodland, California, teacher who was arrested for having sex with an underage male student and how her MySpace page led to her apprehension. The NSA also utilizes such resources, monitoring the information people post about themselves on the Internet. With the blogosphere growing exponentially, there is no limit to the amount of info people are willing to reveal about themselves online.

06-15-2006

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Judicial opinions citing blogs?

The 9th Circuit Court recently cited a blog post by one Sean Sirrine, a 1L law student, in a dissent. You can see the blog post that the court cited here (http://www.blogdenovo.org/archives/001073.html ).

While some have claimed that blogs aren't scholarly enough to merit citation from a judge, law blogger Eugene Volokh (www.volokh.com) has said that it is about time that law blogs receive the credit they are due.

Volokh, however, has some reservations about the practice of judges citing online sources. This particular citation refers to Sirrine as a member of the bar, though he is a law student. Volokh claims this is evidence of slipshod researching.

06-14-2006

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New law firm billing method

Several law bloggers and business analysts have come out in support of a new mode of billing clients known as value bidding. Proponents of value billing say it's more fair and preferred by clients. Rather than billing a standard rate for billable hours, under the value billing system, clients pay more for positive outcomes and less for other results.

Supporters of the new system claim it is a more sound economic structure than the contingency fee system. Value billing has its detractors, however. David Gialcone of the law blog Formerly Known as F/K/A (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/) claims the system will allow attorneys to bilk clients who don't understand how to assess the worth of a lawyer's service. Carolyn Elefant of Inside Opinions (http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/) finds the whole thing too complicated.

For now, the biggest advocate of value billing is Ronald J. Baker, who claims that 1/3 of small firms have already implemented the system.

06-13-2006

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