Is it just us, or has April flown by? This is our final April edition of the Top 10 in Law Blogs and, as it is every week, it is chock-full of the best law blog posts from the past seven days. Ballard Spahr continues their excellent coverage of all the goings-on at the CFPB, with Barbara S. Mishkin’s post on Acting Director Mick Mulvaney’s criticism of their public disclosure policy; Tim Sitzmann at Duets Blog discussed a new lawsuit against the latest Han Solo movie; the National Whistleblower Center wrote about how Facebook has increased the spread of wildlife trafficking; and Amanda Van Hoose Garofalo published an update about new legislation for anti-harassment policies and training in the workplace.

Mulvaney takes aim at CFPB public disclosure of consumer complaints – By Barbara S. Mishkin: In remarks earlier this week at an American Bankers Association conference, CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney is reported to have strongly criticized the CFPB’s policy of publicly disclosing consumer complaint information and suggested that the policy is likely to discontinued. As initially adopted, the CFPB’s policy statement on the disclosure of consumer complaints limited  the complaint data fields the CFPB would publicly disclose in its database to non-narrative fields such as the name of the company that is the subject of the complaint, the date the complaint was submitted to the CFPB and the date it was submitted to the company, the consumer’s zip code, the product type, the issue the consumer is complaining about by category, and whether or not the company provided relief.  View Full Post

Game-maker Sues Lucasfilm over Han Solo Movie – By Tim Sitzmann: You may have heard of a little movie called Star Wars. If you haven’t, well, I’ve got some movies for you to borrow. The film was released in 1977, and soon spawned a trilogy of movies that are among the most popular film franchises in the world. View Full Post

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Business Curriculum – By Michael Hunter Schwartz: Having spent time with a wide variety of senior partners in major business law firms throughout California and Arkansas, I have lost count how many times I have heard them wish that law school graduates who enter into a business law practice would better understand the business aspects of business law, including finance, business strategy, and business analytics.  View Full Post

Two More Circuits Find Data Breach Standing without Proof that Plaintiffs’ Data Was Misused – By Michael R. Pennington and Niya T. McCray: Data breaches have become commonplace. Despite the best efforts of many, identity thieves and hackers always seem to find a new vulnerability somewhere in the system of virtually every company that conducts business online. And, as the recent Facebook debacle reveals, sometimes data is even shared with legitimate third parties in ways customers neither realized nor anticipated. View Full Post

Recent Decision Re-Enforces the Legal Framework for Sexual Harassment Claims – By Seyfarth Shaw LLP: In recent months, sexual harassment has seized national headlines and raised significant questions about company policies, procedures, and culture. In response, many companies and HR personnel have questioned how to appropriately respond to complaints of sexual harassment. A recent decision out of the Western District of Wisconsin provides a helpful summary of the state of Title VII, the federal anti-discrimination and harassment law, and the appropriate company response to harassment. View Full Post

Streamline Your Law Firm With Legal Software in the Cloud – By Nicole Black: Did you know that in 2018, more lawyers than ever use cloud computing legal software to run their law firms? It’s true! According to the results of the ABA’s 2017 Legal Technology Survey Report, the many benefits of cloud computing have won over the majority of lawyers. View Full Post

CLOC: Change Agent In a Change Resistant Business – By Stephen Embry: “I am well traveled but sometimes I think I’ve landed on Mars”. Connie Brenton, CLOC President. The CLOC 2018 Institute kicked off yesterday in appropriately enough in Las Vegas, home of the big, the sprawling, the decadent, the atypical in the land of straight laced morals and tradition. View Full Post

Facebook Wildlife Trafficking Report Spreads Around World – By Aaron Jordan: News outlets around the United States have picked up and expanded upon anAssociated Press story about the whistleblower complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lodged against Facebook. The story has also been picked up internationally, including publications in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.View Full Post

Budget Bill Imposes Sweeping Requirements on Employers Related to Sexual Harassment – By Amanda Van Hoose Garofalo: The #MeToo movement is not finished making waves just yet. Governor Cuomo signed a 2019 Budget Bill on April 12, 2018, but the bill did not limit itself to budgetary issues. Instead, it included sweeping revisions to several statutes, resulting in several new requirements for employers doing business in New York State: Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies and Training The law mandates that byOctober 9, 2018, all New York employers enact an anti-sexual harassment policy that meets or exceeds the standards set by a model policy, which will be drafted by the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) and New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR).The model policy, although not yet drafted, will reportedly include: (1) a prohibition against sexual harassment, with examples of what sexual harassment is; (2) information regarding employees’ rights and potential redress to adjudicate sexual harassment, including administratively and judicially, and the remedies available to victims of sexual harassment, including references to the federal and state provisions and a statement that there may be applicable local law; (3) a complaint form; (4) a confidential investigation procedure and a commitment to due process for all parties involved; (5) a clear statement that sexual harassment is misconduct and that any employee engaging in such misconduct, and any supervisory or managerial personnel knowingly allowing such misconduct, will be sanctioned; and (6) a clear prohibition against retaliation for those who complain or who assist in any sexual harassment proceeding. View Full Post

Blockchain for Data Protection: A Double-edged Sword or a Techno-regulatory Oxymoron? – By Avi Gesser, Trevor I. Kiviat and Carolin L. Raspe: In January 2018, at the Eleventh Annual International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (the “Conference”) in Brussels, one panel that made some headlines centered around blockchain technology in the context of data protection. The core inquiry of the panel was two-fold: (1) whether blockchain technology can facilitate data protection regulatory objectives and (2) whether the same technology makes it more difficult to enforce data protection laws. View Full Post