Moritz Legal Information Blog

Looking for insights into solo practice? Try reading MyShingle.com. The site has tips on starting your own practice including information you may not have considered, like the difference between your firm trademark and corporate names and whether solo practitioners are eligible for loan forgiveness . For more comprehensive guidance, check out these books in our collection: Run your firm like a business : an operations guide for the solo practitioner and small law firm Practicing law in small-town America Minding your own business : the solo and small firm lawyer's guide to a profitable practice

Two stories provide an unfortunate reminder that lawyers (and law students) may have a higher-than-average instance of substance abuse . One story frames the fears of a new, drug-addicted attorney who doesn't know how to tell his firm he needs to go to rehab. The other is the incredibly moving story of an attorney's recovery and reinstatement to the practice of law following disbarment. Paired together, the narrative for law students is that if you have a substance abuse problem (or frankly a mental health issue or other troubles), getting help doesn't have to mean the end of your career. Ohio has an excellent Lawyers Assistance Program  and Moritz provides links to a variety of resources that may help you get back on track.

Attending the CALI Conference last week, I heard Jason Scott of Internet Archive   talk about his work preserving everything you put online as a stopgap against start-ups that delete your digital identity without much thought to whether that digital content is the very only photo you have of your baby's first steps or your law school graduation, or an audio file of your great grandmother's last interview. As an aside, Jason also mentioned the Internet Archive's television preservation project , which enables you to run keyword searches to find news clips from all US TV news for the last 3.5 years. Curious about whether a witness or a client made headlines you didn't see? Interested to know if that product you claim is defective has been mentioned for the same reasons in another state? Search the Internet Archive's television archive to find out.

Recently, we posted about the Supreme Court's invisible red pen .  If the Court's opinions change to revise mistakes, how do you keep track of these edits?  As the ABA Journal reported, one lawyer has developed a solution.  David Zvenyach, general counsel to the Council of the District of Columbia, crawls the opinions and posts changes to Twitter.  If you'd like to receive updates, here's the address to follow:  @Scotus_servo

From the New York Times : "[J]udges with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of women’s rights than ones with only sons. The effect, a new study found, is most pronounced among male judges appointed by Republican presidents, like Chief Justice Rehnquist."

You've likely seen predictions like this:   Computers could replace law clerks.   Maybe you've read more in depth forecasts about how the practice of law will change, like those of Richard Susskind . What's in your crystal ball?   It could pay off! One law firm is offering a $10,000 essay prize for law students writing on this topic: "a pragmatic plan on how lawyers can re-engineer the way they interact with and serve their clients, so that our legal system can better serve the public."   See this announcement for more details.

Finally! Slate brings us a use for Big Data we can all endorse: "In his blog, Matt Daniels, a data scientist, compared the lyrics of 85 rap artists using a method called token analysis. A computer program counts the number of unique words that appear in a text of a given size." Using this program, one can determine which Supreme Court justices in history have the most complex vocabularies and how those justices compare to rappers. For those of you wringing your hands, troubled you may have a less complex vocabulary, take heart. "[N]ot all great justices are great writers. John Marshall, who scores even lower than DMX, was the greatest justice of all time."