From federal surveillance of social justice protests to facial recognition technology that results in inordinately high false positives for certain demographic groups, recent surveillance trends have deep historical roots and troubling future implications for traditionally marginalized groups. These trends threaten our core constitutional values, democratic principles and the rule of law.
The year was 1990, and Stu Webb, a Minneapolis family law litigator, had had enough. He was burned out after 26 years of practice. He wanted to quit the law in an outrageous manner (his words) and came up with something that was contrary and antithetical to everything he had ever been taught as an attorney.
During my firm’s annual review meeting to discuss a tumultuous 2020, luckily, my phone rang. It was a law firm partner curious about the state of the lateral partner market.
Happy anniversary. It’s been about one year now since the world was introduced to the coronavirus pandemic. What else can we say? This is as good a time as any to reflect on the changes to the world, especially to the world of law.
Here in Oklahoma, I’m watching snow flurries continue to dump in a manner I haven’t witnessed in a decade (2011 was the last time we came close to anything blizzard-like). I lived in Eagle County, Colorado, for a while after undergrad, and this current snowstorm is the closest thing I’ve experienced to that kind of weather since I left. To be completely honest, we aren’t built for this type of temperature.
On Jan. 7, in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol building, the front page of The New York Times read, “Trump Incites Mob: Rampage in Capitol Forces Evacuations; It's 'Part of His Legacy,' a Republican Says.” Indeed, it is striking that former President Donald J. Trump concluded his term of office on a note similar to the one when he launched his election campaign: inciting violence and lawless action against fellow Americans.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in important cases concerning the meaning of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Arizona Republican Party v. Democratic National Committee. The cases involve Section 2 of the act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or language.
I like to start the new year by cleaning out my life, more or less. It’s kind of a ritual for me. I take time to send out file destruction letters to clients whose cases were closed out more than five years ago and permanently delete client communications from my email inbox that are just as old (five years is the rule in Oklahoma). Generally, I try to give myself a bit of a fresh start.
Sometimes you just have to tear something down and start over again—like when you were a child and built a house of blocks or constructed a bridge with your Erector set, and it came tumbling down. You discovered too late that the foundation was not strong. It needed a redo.
Since last March, I’ve been revisiting some of my past columns on legal software with an eye toward providing lawyers with the latest updates on the legal software that their firms will most likely rely on when working remotely.
