Living Above the Fold

Across the country, curious jurors are defying court instructions and causing mistrials as they text, Tweet, and surf the Web about the cases they’re deciding. The issue has created such a disruption that it’s generating new court policies and even California legislation.

Banning Google From the Jury Box (California Lawyer, August 1, 2010)

When Andy Morrison started law school, he expected to find a job as soon as he graduated. But after earning a JD from the University of San Francisco in 2008, Morrison found himself confronted by a narrowing recruitment pipeline. A study released by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) found that in the past year, law firms have cut on-campus recruiting by up to 30 percent, and a number of offices nixed 2010 summer programs outright. The rate of offers for entry-level law firm positions to summer associates also fell by 20 percent.

Dreams Deferred for Law School Graduates (California Lawyer, July 2010)

Consumers have plenty of online services they can use for locating a lawyer to hire. But when litigators need to employ specialists—such as arbitrators, mediators, or expert witnesses—they often fall back on leads from colleagues they trust.

Rating Litigation Services (California Lawyer, May 1, 2010)

In today’s weakened economy, lawyers across the country are looking for new ways to drum up business—and Web-based tools are expanding in response. Alongside established online legal directories, new Internet-based businesses that provide assistance with marketing and referrals offer lawyers even more ways to land new work.

Attorneys Use New Online Tools to Find, Refer Work (California Lawyer, April 1, 2010)

When fortunes shrink during tough economic times, estate and tax planning may not be a top priority. But many expect pent-up demand for such services—and a quirk in the federal tax code—to make 2010 a bumper year for lawyers in this specialty.

Estate and Tax Planners Expect a Bumper Year (California Lawyer, March 2010)

Cases in which employees allege they were forced to work through legally mandated meal or break periods are taking off in the already fast-growing niche of wage-and-hour litigation.

No Break in Worker Suits (California Lawyer, February 2010)

It’s a problem we’ve all faced at some point: What do you do if you have noisy, inconserate, sloveny neighbors? In this piece, I looked at some of the ways you can get your neighbors to behave.

The Dump Next Door (East Bay Express, June 8, 2005)

The East Bay is a pretty urbanized area, so you wouldn’t think that there would be much wildlife around here. At least, not outside of Sibley or Tilden Regional Parks. But the truth is, there are a lot of animals living in our midst that we rarely see – critters like wild turkeys, raccoons, deer.  In this article, I spoke with a woman who rescued a possum that had been hit by a car and a man who had some legal entanglements involving a skunk…

Wild Kingdom (The East Bay Monthly, March 2007)

If anyone reading this hasn’t yet seen it, go watch “Sita Sings the Blues.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfS2p1vFics) Nina Paley’s comic retelling of the Ramayana — spliced with episodes from her own life — is by turns hilarious and heart-breaking and always utterly charming. Paley spent six years and $200,000 creating “Sita Sings the Blues,” and it almost never saw the light of day due to copyright constraints. Paley took the unusual step of distributing her feature for free online. In my latest Mediashift article, I had a chance to talk to Paley about a new distribution plan that seems to be paying off:

Animated Film Takes Donations, DVD Sales to Pay Music Costs (PBS Mediashift, August 5, 2009 )

Every year, 5,000 California foster kids turn 18 — and age out of the state foster care system. Many suddenly find themselves forced to navigate the world all on their own without any adult help. In a country where most youth still rely on their parents for financial and moral support well into their late 20s, former foster youth face an uphill battle to find jobs, education and even homes.

For this article in the East bay Monthly, I had a chance to speak with some former foster youth about the challenges of dealing with the adult world on their own for the first time — and what’s out there to help them. This was a great opportunity for me to really learn about a pressing issue that I really didn’t know much about to start, and I hope it will interest you as well.

Fostering the Future (The East Bay Monthly, August 2009)