Technology Media and Telecom

The legal industry hasn't been known to be the most innovative industry when it comes to cutting-edge interactive marketing. But a handful of firms are challenging that assumption.

Legislation signed last month will allow New Jersey judges to restrict Internet access for convicted sex offenders and make it easier for law enforcement to monitor their online activity.

A recent Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling enforcing an e-mail settlement agreement of a contractual dispute is a reminder to lawyers that e-mail settlements carry the same weight as deals on paper.

In the current litigious environment, what happens when an employee sends personal, allegedly confidential communications from work to his or her attorney or spouse? Can the employer lawfully access those e-mails, or do the attorney-client and marital privileges prohibit the employer from doing so? In answering this question, the key inquiry is always whether the employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the e-mails at issue.

In the days of only paper documents, smaller companies could afford to wait until they became involved in a lawsuit to worry about pre-trial discovery, but today's reliance on digital information makes that a risky and unnecessarily expensive strategy.

If you use software and work for or with a company subject to Sarbanes-Oxley ('SOX'), then 2007 was an interesting year for you. How interesting? I'll raise some issues arising from the intersection of the topic of software use and SOX from last year to help you keep to a minimum the risk that 2008 will be an interesting year in some very bad ways.

The controversial German draft bill designed to amend legislation on communications surveillance and other secret investigation measures, and to implement the European Directive 2006/24/EC ' which was set to introduce mandatory retention of communications traffic data ' went into effect on January 1.

In the months before his death from cancer in 1991, Beaumont, TX, lawyer Rex Conrad Woodard helped Thomas Gaetano DeVito, an original member of the pop group the Four Seasons, write an autobiographical book, Woodard's widow alleges. Woodard died before the book could be published. Now, with the work allegedly partly the basis for the hit Broadway musical 'Jersey Boys,' Woodard's widow has sued DeVito for a share of income stemming from the work.