By Paul J. Moorman

IALL 2022 was chockablock with wonderful programs and one of the best was saved for the last day with a program on “Business & Human Rights” by Stanford Law School Lecturer Jamie O’Connell.  O’Connell’s program described the origins, development, and status of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“Guiding Principles”). The Guiding Principles are the most authoritative human rights standards businesses are expected to follow. And while they are not binding, they have been shown to have significant and increasing normative force and practical effect on the behavior of businesses.

The first attempt to identify the human rights obligations of businesses began in the early 2000s with a group of experts, largely from academia, who drafted a set of binding rules.  These rules included, most controversially, a guarantee that businesses were not only responsible for following human rights obligations but also

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Dillonyang Sq

Dillon Yang, a third-year student at Notre Dame Law School, has been awarded one of the highest scholarships from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) Law Foundation. The foundation promotes the development, advancement, leadership, and public service of Asian Pacific Americans in the legal profession and supports law students through its scholarship programs. The $7,500 Presidential Scholarship is awarded to two law students each year. Recipients are selected based on their demonstrated outstanding leadership to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

“Uplifting and serving the AAPI community is a cause that I will work to make a change in the entirety of my legal career. I am happy that I’ve been able to positively impact my communities, and I am deeply honored that the NAPABA Law Foundation and NAPABA president AB Cruz III found me worthy of this high recognition,” said Yang.

Yang currently serves as

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The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a transformative, historic investment in lives and livelihoods across America. It represents a new opportunity for farmers, ranchers, small businesses and rural communities. It is helping the US Department of Agriculture deliver 21st century, high-speed internet for better access to markets, jobs, telemedicine and distance learning. It is increasing community resilience to climate change, drought and wildfire risks. It’s also providing innovative solutions to economic, environmental and social challenges across the nation.

“Investing in infrastructure is essential to American competitiveness and ensuring hard working Americans have the tools and opportunities to build a good life—especially for rural and underserved communities,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Since being signed into law, President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is demonstrating how building up American infrastructure enhances competitiveness and improves climate resilience while building a stronger, more equitable and inclusive economy.”

The USDA continues to be a critical part

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AffiniPay, the parent company of payments platform LawPay and practice management platform MyCase, today named Catherine Dawson, a lawyer with 20 years of experience in data privacy, cybersecurity and mergers and acquisitions, as its general counsel. The news comes a week after AffiniPay named another woman to its executive suite, marketing and software executive Ana Villegas as its chief marketing officer.

The company’s C-suite already included a woman CEO, Dru Armstrong, and a woman EVP of people resources, Erin Brooks. The company was founded by a woman, Amy Porter, who remains its executive chairperson.

This news is particularly noteworthy given that women and people of color remain underrepresented among legal technology founders and executives. A survey last year by Kristen Sonday, cofounder and COO of legal tech startup Paladin, found just 57 women founders of legal technology companies.

Dawson (pictured right above)

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Civil LawWhile there is no strategy to predict precisely low lengthy a civil lawsuit will take to go from beginning to finish, there are a variety of steps that one can ordinarily expect to undergo. Tort is the realm of legislation which deals with civil wrongs, as opposed to legal acts A civil mistaken or “tort” is an act that results in harm or hurt, for which courts impose legal responsibility on an individual. As the sale of substandard breast milk might lead to injury or hurt, it may fall beneath an area of tort regulation referred to as product legal responsibility or the regulation on faulty products The courts do not impose a “punishment” for committing a tort, nonetheless, they usually order defendants in tort cases to pay financial compensation to the wronged particular person (generally known as the plaintiff). The thought of monetary compensation is to place the plaintiff …

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Grab a coffee on us! Join Sage on September 14th at 1pm ET (or every month!) for a brief overview of the Sage Timeslips solution. During this session, you will get a $5 gift card to enjoy the coffee of your choice while you see the product in action, plus a live Q&A to get all your questions answered by our experts. Register today and find out why Sage Timeslips has been trusted by lawyers like you for 37 years.

Last month, Desi Williams, our Sales Engineer for Sage Timeslips, presented five must-have features in any time tracking and billing management solution:

  1. Intuitive time entry
  2. Flexible client-based billing
  3. Simple, yet robust reporting
  4. Integration with the Apps you know and use
  5. Mobile time entry

Desi taught us not just how each of these functions work in Sage Timeslips, but also how you can customize each of them to

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Mike Suchsland, a veteran of the legal technology industry and the former president of Thomson Reuters’ legal business, today was named interim CEO of SurePoint, a company that provides practice management, financial and client relationship products for law firms.

Suchsland will serve in the role while the company searches for a permanent CEO. He replaces Tom Obermaier, who had been CEO since 2018.

Suchsland has served on SurePoint’s board since 2018. He is also a venture partner in two firms that have invested heavily in the legal tech sector, The LegalTech Fund and Bridge Venture Fund.

More about SurePoint on the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.

Suchsland was with Thomson Reuters from 1998 to 2014, progressing through the management ranks to ultimately become president of the legal business, where his accomplishments included the acquisition of Practical Law Company.

“SurePoint is a fast-growing leader in the legal technology

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Dinner of friends thanksgivingWhen was the last time you skipped lunch to line dance to Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman”? Did I mention it was with a group of 50 lawyers at a CLE in Nashville? For me, it was two weeks ago! Very few things are as satisfying as getting the grapevine right to three heel toes to a quarter turn down pat.

Attending the 2022 Clio Cloud Conference reminded me of the importance of friendships as an entrepreneurial lawyer. I connected with lawyer friends from all over the world (yes, even some from the U.K. and Down Under!) I get so excited whenever I have the opportunity to meet with attorneys I’ve met in various phases of my career. These lawyers are awe-inspiring tech founders, law firm owners, professors, and inventors. Fun fact: I met most of the lawyers through social media!

I felt isolated and unsure when

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News

ALI Elects 32 New Members

ALI Elects 32 New Members

The American Law Institute has elected new members who will bring their expertise to ALI’s work of clarifying the law through Statements, Principles, and Model Codes.

“The American Law Institute’s mission to clarify and modernize the law continues to occupy an important space in today’s legal landscape,” said ALI President David F. Levi. “The work that the Institute produces—to assist the judiciary, to aid legislative reform, and to assist the legal profession and the public—depends on the diverse knowledge and viewpoints of our members as well as their dedication, expertise, and wisdom. It is the collective membership that allows us to produce work that is seldom matched. I have no doubt that this impressive group of newly elected members will help ensure that the Institute’s work remains a reliable resource to the legal community.”

Visit the Newly Elected Members Page to view biographical sketches

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CASE PREVIEW


By Noam Biale

on Oct 28, 2022
at 8:05 pm

On Tuesday, the justices will hear argument in Jones v. Hendrix, the latest in a string of cases that raise profound questions about the rights of prisoners who claim to be innocent to challenge their convictions. Last year, the court restricted the ability of state prisoners to develop new evidence to support claims that their attorneys failed to investigate leads that could have shown they were factually innocent. Jones involves a federal prisoner who is legally innocent – the conduct a jury found he committed isn’t a crime. But should that fact relieve him from his 27-year prison sentence? In the Supreme Court’s habeas corpus jurisprudence, the answer is never simple. Indeed, the case comes before the court as a three-way split: the petitioner, Marcus DeAngelo Jones, challenged his conviction in a federal habeas petition under 28

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