I have been derelict in updating this blog most of this summer, despite the promise to myself that I’d have fresh and exciting new content every 10-14 days and quick hits in between. Of course, when I made that promise to myself it was October 2019. And I do have a bunch of half-written entries and prompts floating around, ranging from a February piece-in progress on the illusion of work-life balance (which, to be fair…

Under normal circumstances I’d be in Chicago right now, checked into the Hotel Palomar, hanging out with my nerd friends from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers at the Annual Meeting. This blog would be quiet but I’d be annoying everyone on Facebook with out-of-context giddy snippets from the conference. Instead, it’s Yet Another Zoom. I’ve signed up, because of course I did–the program is still valuable even if the best things about it have…

First, many sympathies to my friends at Holland & Knight. For those of you not in my little nerd world, H&K has one of the biggest and most robust legal ethics and risk management practices in the country. Unfortunately, it is now facing a lawsuit alleging that it was hacked and a fraudster posed as a stock seller, leading to a diversion of a $3.1 million wire transfer. I know nothing about the merits of…

Todd Banks’ valiant attempt to invalidate Al Johnson’s Restaurant’s Goats on the Roof trade dress as “demeaning to goats” (chronicled here in December) has ended not with a bang, or a whimper, or even with a fish fry, but with a denial of a cert petition. (Photo is a blurry picture of my son, last year on his 9th birthday, rocking in the Al Johnson’s waiting area, patient for his meatball platter, with mad…

I am not an IP attorney and my knowledge of fair use is minimal. So I won’t comment on the merits of Craig v. Pop Matters Media Inc. in the Southern District of New York which involves publication of a photograph. But I don’t think you need to be an ethics attorney or an attorney at all to know you generally need your client to be a client and to know that they’re a client…

I graduated from Marquette University Law School and aside from a couple of federal court admissions, I practice exclusively in Wisconsin. (I’ve applied to Illinois, but that’s still pending; I guess I’ll need to update my blog tagline eventually..) Wisconsin is the only state in the country to offer diploma privilege to graduates of its law schools (though New Hampshire has a limited honors-style program)—that means, by virtue of graduating here, we get to practice…

Facebook has been available to the general public for more than a decade; before that it was MySpace and after that it was Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and a bunch of apps my 9-year-old who doesn’t even have a phone seems to know about but I don’t. Lawyers have been using these platforms to varying degrees since their inception, both personally and professionally. Judges, too—here in Wisconsin judges are elected and use social media for campaigning…