Editor and manager specializing in business, technology, innovation and legal journalism
By Angela Morris (ABA Journal) Chatbots have a place in a law office, says legal chatbot creator Tom Martin, because they can handle busy work that eats up precious time in a lawyer’s day. Martin is the founder of LawDroid, a company that creates legal chatbot apps that mimic human conversations when talking with potential …
As the nation in October celebrates National Disability Employment Awareness Month, statistics show that the legal profession as a whole either isn’t doing its fair share to recruit, retain and advance attorneys with disabilities, or it has failed to be inclusive enough for disabled lawyers to feel comfortable disclosing their impairments. Many law firms state …
Work-life balance is often pegged as the reason women leave traditional law firms. But for the growing number of women establishing their own firms, their departure is often rooted more deeply in gender inequality in the profession than in raising children or having more free time. “If women were feeling valued, were getting properly rewarded …
An exciting aspect of being general counsel of AdvoCare International Inc. is that Allison Levy occasionally meets celebrity athletes like New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and NASCAR champion Richard Petty. Meeting athletes who endorse AdvoCare is a nice reward for Levy, who shoulders a big load as the company’s sole lawyer. The Plano-based company …
In the midst of a hurricane season capable of producing half a dozen or so hurricanes, having a disaster recovery plan is tantamount for firms operating on the East Coast and gulf—whether you’re a solo lawyer or a big law firm. As Houston still recovers from Hurricane Harvey, several panels at the State Bar of …
by Angela Morris (ABA Journal, June 2018) Like many things these days, it all started with a tweet. On March 24, Harvard Law School lecturer Ian Samuel tweeted out select provisions of a leaked copy of a mandatory arbitration agreement from Munger, Tolles & Olson. According to the tweets, summer associates working for the firm …
Although she spent the first six years of her career in Big Law, California attorney Dorna Moini always knew that her true passion was in human rights and access to justice. After graduating from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law in 2012, Moini, who has dual citizenship in the United States and …
Many law firms support LGBT equality by donating money or doing cases pro bono. But one firm has taken it to a higher level—16 stories, to be exact. Nixon Peabody has donated 2,300 square feet of its 16th floor San Francisco office and partnered with StartOut, a nonprofit LGBT business accelerator, to launch the StartOut …
Hey companies, want to avoid litigation? Hire a lawyer as CEO. Want to make bold moves? Look elsewhere. In recently published research about how lawyer CEOs differ from nonlawyer CEOs, law professor M. Todd Henderson and colleagues sifted through data on 3,500 CEOs at nearly 2,400 publicly traded companies over a 20-year span. The researchers found …
Law firms in Texas need to change to address a crisis in the legal profession. As a follow-up to a shocking 2016 report showing that one in three lawyers are problem drinkers and one in four have depression, a national task force has made recommendations for law firms, judges, bar associations and law schools to …