Technology

Expert Analysis

• Opinion

  ADA Protects Lawyers With Disabilities, But We Must Do More

  

  As an attorney with cerebral palsy, Danielle Liebl at Reed Smith says that while the 30-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act has protected her against discrimination, the legal industry must do more to accommodate lawyers with disabilities and make them more comfortable in self-identifying.

• Perspectives

  Legal Deserts Threaten Justice In Rural America

  

  Many small towns and rural counties have few lawyers or none at all, which threatens the notion of justice for all Americans and demands creative solutions from legislators, bar associations and law schools, says Patricia Refo, president of the American Bar Association.

• Unusual TikTok Review Calls CFIUS Processes Into Question

  

  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has departed from established processes in its national security investigation of TikTok, with comments from across the Trump administration casting doubt on the interagency committee's confidentiality, apolitical nature and focus, says Paul Marquardt at Cleary.

• Timing IPRs To Avoid Discretionary Denial Or Damages

  

  For patent defendants determining how long they can wait to file parallel inter partes reviews to avoid discretionary denial under the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's recent Apple v. Fintiv ruling, a data-driven approach using recent district court and U.S. International Trade Commission timelines can provide guidance, say Syed Fareed and John Williams at Baker Botts.

• CFAA Decision May Raise Bar On Scraping Liability

  

  A D.C. federal court recently held in Sandvig v. Barr that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act does not prohibit scraping publicly accessible portions of a website, even when doing so violates the website's terms of service, which is similar to the Ninth Circuit's 2019 hiQ v. LinkedIn decision and may influence scraping law in the coming years, say attorneys at ​​​​Perkins Coie.

• Using Blockchain To Settle Trades Could Alter Litigation

  

  On the heels of Paxos Trust's and the Depository Trust Clearing Corp.’s recent interest in using distributed ledger technology to settle equities trades, analysts at The Brattle Group explore how having a record of every transaction can help answer a thorny damages question in securities class actions.

• Analyzing Upward And Downward Trends In Legal Tech

  

  Advances in legal technology are often accompanied by bombastic overstatements, but it is important to separate the wheat from the chaff by looking at where various technologies stand on the hype curve, says Lance Eliot at Stanford Law School.

• Bid Protest Spotlight: Availability, Removal, Entity Confusion

  

  In this month's bid protest roundup, James Tucker at MoFo looks at three recent Government Accountability Office decisions considering an offeror's obligation to report the preaward unavailability of key personnel, grounds for removal from the Small Business Administration's disadvantaged businesses program and the importance of determining what "the offeror" means in each solicitation.

• What You Missed At PTAB: Contours Of IPR Institution Denial

  

  Recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions illustrate the factual circumstances that the board finds compelling when exercising its discretion to deny institution of inter partes review based on copending district court litigation, with practical takeaways for petitioners and patent owners, say Andrew Holtman and Melissa Gibson at Akin Gump.

• Opinion

  ABA's New Guidance On Litigation Funding Misses The Mark

  

  The American Bar Association should revise its recently approved best practices on third-party litigation funding as they do not reflect how legal finance actually works and could create confusion among lawyers, says Andrew Cohen at Burford Capital.

• 3 Cases Spotlight Shareholder Interest In Public Co. Diversity

  

  Recent derivative claims filed in a California federal court over diversity and inclusion shortcomings at Oracle, Facebook and Qualcomm demonstrate shareholder willingness to hold directors and officers accountable for public companies' failure to deliver on environmental, social and governance commitments, say attorneys at Cleary.

• Regulatory Concerns For US Cos.' Offshore Service Centers

  

  As more U.S. companies open and use offshore service-delivery centers amid the pandemic, assessment of important tax, intellectual property, cybersecurity and employment considerations can help mitigate regulatory risk and maximize the company's return on investment, says Sonia Baldia at Baker McKenzie.

• New IT Restrictions For Gov't Contractors Bring M&A Hurdles

  

  Prohibitions taking effect next week on the use of certain Chinese telecommunications technology by government contractors will have an immediate impact on M&A involving companies that do business with the federal government, and will require prospective buyers' careful consideration in four areas, say attorneys at Covington.

• What Firms Should Ask Before Hiring Attorneys From Gov't

  

  In the final year of any presidential administration, there is an undeniable appetite on the part of large law firms for government-savvy legal talent, but firms need to first consider how they will actually utilize their new star hire, says Michael Ellenhorn at Decipher.

• The Ethics Of Using Chatbots For Legal Services

  

  Delegating legal work to robots involves several risks, including running afoul of statutes dictating unauthorized practice of law, but with the right precautions, law firms can lawfully employ artificially intelligent chatbots that can imitate human conversations, say attorneys at Haynes and Boone.