Blogs

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Online piracy of copyrighted works isn’t going away soon. There are just too many reasons why downloading digital content by various means remains attractive to people. For one thing, it fulfills a basic need in our time: instant gratification...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Thomas Edison was an astute businessman. He is repeatedly credited for things he did not actually invent , which by itself attests to his capacity for improving on the impractical or undeveloped ideas of others and reaping the benefits of patenting...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Good Housekeeping is a venerable standard-bearer for American values. The Hearst-owned publication was founded in 1885 and is still going strong today . In 1900, before there was a Food and Drug Administration, the magazine established the predecessor...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team State lawmakers are in a mood to try something different . That view is explored in the top story of the April 22, 2013, edition of State Net ® Capitol Journal , a weekly collection of “news and views from the 50 states” that’s...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Laws don’t often get their own parties. But for the irresistibly named Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, President Obama held a rare public ceremony in the White House’s Rose Garden in its honor. Even more notably, this party was...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team When it’s finally gone, no one will miss loose-leaf filing. It’s unlikely that anyone will mourn the disappearance of CD-ROMs. And massive deskbooks will be bid a fond farewell. They are all cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming to...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Technology is changing the role of law librarians. That reality recently prompted LexisNexis to hold a Twitter contest asking law librarians 10 questions about their profession for the chance to win a trip to the Presidential Library of their choice...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team In the 1970s, the expression “future shock” made its way into common use. It started, of course, with Alvin Toffler’s hugely successful book with that phrase as its title. Like others, Toffler had observed the overwhelming effects...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Our circumstances are often defined by fateful decisions. Those decisions can be our own, those made by others (with or without our knowledge or consent), or both. That’s particularly true with regard to our personal health. You climb a wonky...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Some things just aren’t supposed to happen. In health care, they are referred to as “never events” and include hospital-acquired infections or injuries, medication errors and objects left inside patients during surgery. Yikes. The...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Captain Corcoran was never, never sick at sea. Well, hardly ever —as audiences familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan’s beloved 1878 comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore know so well. Indeed, they eagerly await the moment early in the opera when, challenged...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team One of the most influential lawyers in American history wasn’t real. Atticus Finch, the protagonist in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird , has been credited with prompting many lawyers to take up their profession. That a character...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Whether it’s “ Mr. Las Vegas ” or crazy actors , celebrities always seem to have financial troubles. That’s part of what makes them so entertaining. Understandably, the large amounts of money they make (and owe) can sometimes...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Asked why he robbed banks, “Slick Willie” Sutton supposedly replied , “Because that’s where the money is.” Banks today are well protected because they are the obvious choice. But less obvious targets often remain vulnerable—like...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Think about transparency for a moment. As a property of physical objects, it is easy to define and understand. According to Merriam-Webster, for example, it’s the result of light that is transmitted “without appreciable scattering so that...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team As the story goes, congressional candidate Lyndon Johnson wanted to make an outrageous charge against his opponent. His campaign manager was shocked. “We can’t say that, Lyndon,” he said. “It’s not true.” “Of...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team In her departure email, she referred to herself as simply “Ms. X.” Many of her coworkers knew who she was and, probably, why she was leaving the prestigious global law firm, but summarizing her decision under the guise of anonymity gave...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team This summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) means that there will be sweeping changes throughout the land of health care. One small corner of the PPACA is the Physician Payment Sunshine...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Two of the dirtiest words in business are usually associated with patents: “unpredictable” and “expensive.” Now that the America Invents Act (AIA) is being implemented, three surprising new words will be used to describe the...

Compiled by Korey Clark and the Real Law Editorial Team Last month was an extraordinary one for the U.S. Supreme Court. Rarely has the nation’s attention been so focused on the proceedings on Capitol Hill, and Justices indeed delivered three landmark decisions on hotly contested issues that...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Social media is as popular in the legal world as everywhere else. It is getting pulled into discovery for various cases, and new privacy laws now limit businesses’ access to their employees’ social media accounts. Even law firms, which...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Book and other titles sometimes find their way into everyday language . For example, it’s not surprising to hear references such as “catch-22” (originally “catch-18” but changed shortly before the publication of Joseph...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Misfortune is a venerable teacher. Whenever an accident or mistake occurs, or someone suffers a defeat, those affected by the outcome may be prompted to ask why it happened and what can be done to avoid repeating it. Those in the legal profession...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Marshall McLuhan’s profound observation that “the medium is the message” is often misunderstood. It is assumed the 20th-century communications theorist meant that channels of mass media eventually take precedence over the content they...

Brought to you by the Real Law Editorial Team Law has perhaps always been a data-driven business. A good attorney, librarian, or even judge can be measured by his or her ability to draw from up to thousands of potentially relevant cases and synthesize knowledge and insight from hundreds of years...