Administrative/Regulatory, Construction
A dangerous loophole in CSLB’s mechanical suspension policy
By Kenneth J. Freed, Jakob Sergei Weitz
There are far too many cases in which the Contractor’s State License Board has wrongly failed to suspend related licenses, ins...
Entertainment & Sports
Stream It Tonight! 'The Burial' (2023)
By Paul Bergman, Michael Asimow
The filmmakers passed up a golden opportunity to portray the ineffectiveness of the defense team in the actual case. In a post...
Torts/Personal Injury
Third-party liability in negligent security cases
By Mary E. Alexander
To succeed in holding these entities liable, the crime must be reasonably foreseeable, giving rise to a duty to protect the pu...
Family, Judges and Judiciary
A call for effective change in California’s family law courts
By Mark E. Minyard
Thirteen years after the Elkins Family Law Task Force created a series of recommendations to ensure access to justice and due ...
Constitutional Law, Torts/Personal Injury
First Amendment triumphs over Prop 65 warnings
By Amber Trincado, David M. Barnes
Developments on California Proposition 65: First Amendment, short-form warnings, and food products.
Legal Education, State Bar & Bar Associations
Latest bar exam results – continuing a decade-long decline
By John Schunk
For those interested in statistics, the median test taker’s score has declined by about one-third of a standard deviation. Whe...
Letters
Second Amendment preserves other amendments and our freedom
By John K. Haggerty
The Second Amendment helps preserve our other amendments and protect us from criminals, invaders, rebels, and wild animals. Lo...
Law Office Management, Law Practice
The evolution of distributed law firms
By Jacob Stein
The legal community has seen the emergence of a new law firm structure – virtual or distributed law firms – which allows lawy...
Torts/Personal Injury
Why LA County’s talc litigation misses the mark
By Lauren Sheets Jarrell
LA County’s talc litigation represents a colossal waste of taxpayer-funded time as public lawyers collaborate with private pla...
Ethics/Professional Responsibility
Does serving on an outside board of directors create risks for attorneys?
By Alanna G. Clair, Shari L. Klevens
It is common for attorneys on boards to serve only in their capacity as board members. However, lawyers may feel tempted, ofte...
Ethics/Professional Responsibility
Cleaning up the mess of sloppy attorney accounting practices
By James I. Ham
Today, the State Bar is likely to treat complaints about money, including bank reports of bounced checks, as worthy of a full ...
Expert Advice, Litigation & Arbitration
You can’t be an expert in everything
By Jae Lee
Legal work is very much a team sport these days, and optimally serving clients in complex matters almost always requires a tea...
Practitioners may wish to consider if the relation back doctrine applies to PAGA claims. The court in Hutcheson v. Superior Co...
Government, Tax, Real Estate/Development
'Socialism' by Judge Arthur Engoron
By Victor S. Dorokhin
How Trump’s fraud case could be an invasion of freedom of contract and a threat to market transactions
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Mediation preparation and negotiating strategies
By Michael D. Marcus
“Sell” your case in the brief and impress the mediator with your grasp of the facts and law. Do not rehash obvious legal princ...
Women’s collegiate sports are more popular than ever. A recent volleyball match’s attendance even broke a world record for int...
Chief Justice John Roberts was more insightful than he probably realized when, in 2011, he said that “at the end of the day, n...
Constitutional Law, U.S. Supreme Court
What is an infringement of speech?
By Erwin Chemerinsky
Two cases pending before the Supreme Court are not examples of government infringing on free speech, and to rule otherwise cou...
Entertainment & Sports, Torts/Personal Injury
Hockey player’s death is a textbook primary assumption of the risk case
By Michael E. Rubinstein
California courts define sporting activities broadly. You name it; if it’s an activity that requires even a minor amount of ex...
Labor/Employment, Tax
Simplify tax breaks: maximizing employee retention credit for businesses
By Linda Honey, Irasema Rocha
The credit’s popularity unwittingly resulted in an uptick of ERC scamming companies that persistently misinform taxpayers of t...
Ethics/Professional Responsibility, Judges and Judiciary
How much can judges socialize with lawyers?
By Wendy L. Patrick
A recent judicial opinion provides sobering guidance.
Although The Hague Convention is not a topic we deal with every day, the core values of the Convention are topics that we deal...
In the summer of 2019, I wanted to go beyond fiction and write a play where – through actors – I could more fully humanize the...
Alternative Dispute Resolution, Technology
Will AI mediators soon replace humans? The simple answer is no
By Leonid M. Zilberman
Human mediators have their own personal life experiences and in almost all cases, a successful outcome hinges on the parties f...
Administrative/Regulatory, U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider potential governmental earthquake
By Jared L. Kopel
In Jarkesy, with oral argument scheduled for Nov. 29, the Justices will consider the legality of SEC administrative hea...
Consumer Law, Intellectual Property
E-commerce platform liability for trademark infringement
By David Martinez, Zac Cohen
As online shopping continues to surge, nonparty e-commerce platforms can be held liable for helping merchants sell and adverti...
Intellectual Property, U.S. Supreme Court
In Nealy, Supreme Court set to resolve circuit split on Copyright damages
By Nate Shafroth, Zoe Kaiser
Due to the significance of the Second and Ninth Circuits in copyright litigation, the existing split has raised concerns about...
Alternative Dispute Resolution, Ediscovery
Mediating E-discovery can save time and money
By Daniel B. Garrie, Gail A. Andler
While e-discovery mediation can take many different forms depending on the scale and complexity of the discovery dispute, ther...
Government, International Law
The US drug control dilemma is just another war with China
By Xinying Huang
True, China exports chemical precursors to the United States. And true, that exportation can complicate and even exacerbate th...
Constitutional Law, U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court examines civil asset forfeiture and due process in Culley
By Brook Dooley, Cody Gray
Practitioners should keep an eye on the case because it has the potential to make it easier for so-called “innocent owners” to...