Welcome back to another Top 10 in Law Blogs–the last installment of 2018! As we close out the year, Legal bloggers have paused to reflect on significant developments, analyze trends, and make predictions for 2019. According to Bob Ambrogi, it was a big year for legal technology; investments in legal tech hit $1 billion, artificial intelligence became one of the most dominant technologies in the legal field, and blockchain gained applicability within the law. While public perception understandably saw food outbreaks increase in 2018, this was largely thanks to technological advancements in whole genome sequencing (WGS). According to Carol Beach, WGS enabled scientists to better predict and detect outbreaks, resulting in more recalled products. Sara Xia reported on the success of China’s emerging internet courts in resolving online disputes, which raises questions about the future of internet courts within China and the rest of the world. Happy reading and have a wonderful new year, LexBloggers!
China’s Internet Courts are Spreading; Online Dispute Resolution is Working–By Sara Xia: Following on the heels of China’s first Internet court in Hangzhou, two other Internet courts have recently been established respectively in Beijing and Guangzhou. In the meantime, China’s Supreme People’s Court published the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Cases by the Internet Courts…View Full Post
Two Thumbs Up − The Ten Best Prescription Drug/Medical Device Decisions of 2018–By Bexis: Ending the year on a high note is one thing that the Blog tries to do – with the top ten drug/device product liability decisions of the year. Occasionally, a court will do something that ruins the party, with an eleventh-hour awful decision…View Full Post
Fingerprints don’t lie: Experts say 2018 outbreaks reflect value of Whole Genome Sequencing–By Coral Beach: Editor’s note: Today Food Safety News takes a look back at the most significant outbreaks in the United States in 2018. As in the past, our year-end coverage is not merely a list of individual stories by individual writers. Generally, significant events are the other way around. Multiple stories by multiple writers are involved in our outbreak…View Full Post
Likely FDA Impact of the Government Shutdown: Regulatory Submission Reviews, Inspections, and Research Projects–By Randy Prebula, Philip Katz, David Horowitz, Janice Hogan and Jonathan Kahan: The U.S. government shutdown that began December 22, 2018 affected only about a quarter of federal agencies, because most had already been funded for FY 2019. Unfortunately, FDA is one of the agencies with at least some functions shut down, as was announced yesterday. Among other things, FDA has furloughed 42% of its employees, according…View Full Post
Biggest Arbitration Stories Of 2018–By Liz Kramer: As we close out 2018, it is a good time to reflect on the year in arbitration law. Overall, I would characterize the year as another in which everyone was mildly obsessed with class actions, the U.S. Supreme Court again showed its willingness to enforce arbitration agreements of all kinds, and lower courts and groups of citizens…View Full Post
The 20 Most Important Legal Technology Developments of 2018–By Bob Ambrogi: What a whirlwind of a year it has been for legal technology. Barely a week into 2018, industry-changing news broke of Avvo’s sale to Internet Brands. Legal tech news has been nonstop ever since – so much that it’s a struggle to keep up with it all. For several years now, I’ve closed out the…View Full Post
Senate Introduces Data Care Act of 2018–By Rachel E. Ehlers: A new bill in the Senate proposes to hold large tech companies, specifically “online service providers”, responsible for the protection of personal information in the same way banks, lawyers and hospitals are held responsible. The Data Care Act of 2018, which was introduced on December 12, 2018, is designed to protect users information online and…View Full Post
CNIL Fines Uber for Data Security Failure Related to 2016 Data Breach–By Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP: On December 20, 2018, the CNIL announced that it imposed a fine of €400,000 on Uber France SAS for failure to implement some basic security measures which resulted in the 2016 Uber data breach….View Full Post
What is Blockchain’s Impact on the Legal Profession?–By Erika Winston: Before we get into the meat of this post, let’s answer the question that most of us are still asking. What is blockchain? Well, it is simply a chain of blocks. The chain is a public database and blocks are pieces of digital information. Still confused? Blocks store transactional data, such as date, time, and…View Full Post
DOJ False Claims Act Recoveries Hit Ten Year Low–By Farhat Muruwat: Despite Slowdown in Prosecution, Whistleblowers Continue to Play the Critical Role in Detecting Fraud. In statistics published this week by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. government’s recoveries under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) hit their lowest mark since 2008, the last year of President Bush’s administration. According to the DOJ statistics, published…View Full Post