Philip W. Thomas Law Firm

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Philip Thomas

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The Legal Skills Prof Blog ran this post about the legal industry losing 2,400 jobs in November. This followed gains in September-October. Overall, the industry lost 100 jobs in the last 12 months. My Take: Another reason to avoid law school. I don’t know why the industry isn’t growing. My guess is technology is eliminating jobs. But the reason doesn’t matter. It’s hard enough to get a good job in growing industries. Going to professional…
There is an interesting case before the California on the issue of whether that state’s pension benefits are guaranteed. The Sacramento Bee reports here. The State’s argument: “Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the California Constitution requires the state to mismanage its affairs and continue a broken system for decades, even after the state has concluded the program is severely (if not fatally) flawed and cannot be implemented as originally intended.” Participants disagree. The case…
The Clarion-Ledger reports today on the record-breaking class of new judges taking office in January. According to the article: …40 new judges who will take the bench across the state, the largest number of new judges in modern times…. The new judges include 18 chancery judges, nine circuit judges, 10 County Court judges and three Court of Appeals judges. They will be sworn in Jan. 7. The new judges have spent this week at the…
A proposed amendment to Fed. R. Civ. P. 30(b)(6) is drawing fire from the defense bar and their clients. Here is the proposed amendment: FRCP 30(b)(6). Here is the Lawyers for Civil Justice’s comment: Lawyers for Civil Justice Comment. Lawyers for Civil Justice is a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense trial lawyer organizations. Based on their comments, it’s a group that thinks discovery is about gamesmanship and keep-away instead of…
The Hinds County Circuit Court will see two new judges in January, with election runoff winners Faye Peterson and Adrienne Wooten joining the bench. Three of the county’s four judges will have something in common–and I’m not talking about being African-American women. Peterson, Wooten and Circuit Judge Tomie Green all held elected office before winning judicial elections. It also applied to Judge Jeff Weill when he won his seat that Wooten is filling. Voters were…
I recently posted about the latest PERS annual report. Last week Kingfish weighed in on Jackson Jambalaya with a great summary and explanation. Here are some of his observations: The funding level has fluctuated between 60.4% and 61.8% over the last five years even though the PERS portfolio generated an average rate of return of 9.4% during the same period. A comparison of the funding level and rate of return graphs show that the…
Above the Law posted about Michelle Obama telling Oprah how great being a lawyer was how terrible document review is: …she preaches about the soul-crushing nature of document review. “I was doing document production in Washington, D.C., and I was like, ‘I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I can’t sit in a room and look at documents.’ I won’t get into what that is, but it’s deadly. Deadly. Document production.” My…
Here is a preview of the November 2018 issue of the Miss. Jury Verdict Reporter: $291,331 verdict- Madison County breach of contract case (10/12/18); $147,745 verdict- Jackson federal court breach of insurance contract case (9/20/18); $24,012 verdict- DeSoto County underinsured motorist case (10/3/18); $20,000 verdict- Jackson County car wreck case (3/15/18); $13,000 verdict- Forrest County car wreck case (9/25/18); $500 verdict- Gulfport federal court civil rights case (9/27/18); defense verdict- Warren County medical malpractice case…
I can’t remember how much I’ve written about it here, but I’ve talked at CLE’s about my strong recommendation of using a Microsoft Surface Laptop as a work computer. Wired has a review of the latest model, the Surface Laptop 2. As far as options, if you are an attorney, you want the most expensive one. I’m quoting a professional technology consultant to law firms here. And I agree. The problem for attorneys picking…
Trying to get election results for down ballot races in Mississippi is tough. I watched WLBT’s website last night and early this morning. Now (5:20 a.m.) it’s results are down. And now back up here. Before I get into it, take all this for what it’s worth. The way results came in for local races has not bolstered confidence that the early reports will be 100% accurate. Also, I’m not trying to cover every…