Posts on ‘August 27th, 2009’

In deduplication, documents are assigned an algorithmically calculated alphanumeric value and compared to all other electronic files in a data set. As simple as this seems, there are two different ways to “dedupe”: by custodian and by case. Both have their advantages and pitfalls.

When the SEC appointed Dallas attorney Ralph Janvey as the receiver charged with recovering any money left over from R. Allen Stanford’s alleged $8 billion Ponzi scheme, the choice triggered surprise in legal circles; Janvey had worked on only a handful of other receiverships, none close to the scope of Stanford. Now Janvey is being accused of bungling the job. And the fact that the lawyers and accountants working for him are trying to collect millions in fees isn’t likely to make the investors feel better.

A rare joint letter to the SEC from a group of defense law firms over shareholder proxy access is receiving an even rarer response from nine of the country’s largest plaintiffs law firms. The letter supports the SEC’s proposal to allow shareholders to nominate directors, exactly what the defense firms argued against last week. If approved, public companies would be required to include in their proxy materials shareholder nominees for directors that could comprise up to a quarter of the board.

The Justice Department’s aggressive steroids probe has led the 9th Circuit to enunciate a new set of Fourth Amendment protections for the digital age. In an en banc opinion Wednesday that split conservatives on the court, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski said federal agents were wrong to seize an overly broad swath of computer files containing drug test results, which included results for Major League Baseball players. Kozinski’s opinion provided specific guidance on applying the plain view doctrine to data searches.

In these turbulent times, you must always be on your best behavior at Big Law — and during those rare hours when you are outside the office, cautions The Snark. You work with hundreds of others, many of whom you have never met. So even when you think it’s safe to let loose, kick back or go crazy, someone is always watching, and these days, looking for any excuse to reduce the payroll. The Snark gives advice for possible awkward encounters and lists some common situations where you need to keep your guard up.

President Barack Obama this fall will have his first opportunity to put his stamp on the patent-heavy U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Judge Alvin Schall told the White House he will take senior status in October, creating the first of what could be as many as eight vacancies on the court in the president’s first term, as eight of the court’s 12 judges will be eligible to retire or to take senior status in less than two years. Such a changeover would be the greatest since the court was established in 1982.

Welcome to Corporate Counsel’s revamped Web site, which now includes the old In-House Counsel section on Law.com. Check here every day for breaking news from the in-house world, practice updates on a wide variety of substantive law topics, and links to all major Corporate Counsel surveys and special reports. Our most recent: the 2009 “Who Represents America’s Biggest Companies” package.

Convicted murderer Reynaldo Dungo is getting a retrial, but killers Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt are not, all because two California appellate courts issued rulings one week apart that reached completely opposite conclusions on a crucial Sixth Amendment issue. In both cases, the defendants had argued that expert testimony violated their Sixth Amendment right to confrontation because the coroners who testified, one on an autopsy and one on drug tests, weren’t present when the procedures were performed.