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When mentally ill defendants are found competent to stand trial, does that also mean they are competent enough to represent themselves in court? The Supreme Court struggled with that question Wednesday during an oral argument that weighed the Sixth Amendment right to self-representation against a state's interest in not having trials "descend into farce." Along the way, some lawyer jokes were also cracked.
The bankruptcy examiner's report on failed subprime lender New Century Financial raps O'Melveny & Myers for discovery delays and other actions -- but compared to New Century executives and their KPMG accountants, O'Melveny lawyers get off relatively unsoiled in the examiner's report. The widely anticipated document is a damning dissection of KPMG's failures at New Century and a veritable road map of what went wrong in the subprime industry. It also gives clues as to what the SEC may be probing.
Social networking Web sites have recently received a lot of media coverage, focused on novel privacy issues involving the sites and their members. Now, the "sharing" of members' personal data with marketers has drawn the attention of the FTC, particularly with respect to online behavioral advertising.
George Socha and Tom Gelbmann of Electronic Discovery Reference Model fame are touting EDRM XML as an industry lingua franca -- but EDD special master Craig Ball still isn't enamored with the markup language's EDD value. Why doesn't Ball love XML as much as the cool kids do?
Social networking firm and domain name registrar Demand Media hailed its latest acquisition Pluck as "the next step" in social networking. Pluck customers include traditional media companies and consumer-branded Web sites and allows users to comment on articles and products.
After losing in the latest U.S. spectrum auction, Google is pitching a plan to use TV "white space" -- located between channels 2 and 51 on sets not hooked up to satellite or cable -- to offer a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans."
Media critics have chastised PR consultant and reporter Duby McDowell for making a Web video for a client law firm look like a program on her longtime TV station. And grievance complaints have been filed against lawyers in the video. The episode is a striking example of how technology is changing the nature of advocacy.
In between LegalTech in New York and L.A., legal techies get their gadget fix at the annual ABA Techshow, says author and consultant Brett Burney. The show absorbed more than 2,000 attendees and 120 vendors and included educational sessions for Mac lawyers, corporate counsel and large-firm lawyers.
Paul Hastings will see four attorneys handling international energy and infrastructure legal work exit the firm as the market for lawyers with project development know-how heats up. The departures of the lawyers, who work on everything from energy facilities to highways to oil pipelines, will have the biggest impact on the group's Latin America team. "One of the reasons these guys are leaving is because they're in a hot market," says John Hawkins, who leads the global project development and finance group.
Nixon Peabody has opened an office in Shanghai, the firm's first China location and its second international shop, after the London office that Nixon Peabody opened last year. The Shanghai office is currently staffed with two attorneys on a rotational basis, but the firm has plans to hire more attorneys in the near future.
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