The Plain-Language Non-Compete

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Even if you’re not a lawyer, you’ve probably had some occasion to read court documents and come across stock phrases like this: TO THE HONORABLE JUDGE OF SAID COURT COMES NOW PLAINTIFF . . . WHEREFORE, PREMISES CONSIDERED, PLAINTIFF PRAYS . . . And yes, they are usually in ALL CAPS. You may have wondered if there is some legal purpose to these formalisms. The answer is no. Leaving these traditional incantations out of a court document would have zero legal effect. They are no more necessary than drafting a court document in Papyrus font. So why do lawyers use […]

Social Media in Litigation Part 2: Cleanup Time

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A senior lawyer once said to me that “practicing law would be great, if it wasn’t for the clients.” It’s a joke, of course. Lawyers couldn’t practice law without clients, and the clients pay the bills. So we definitely appreciate our clients. But there’s no question that practicing law would be easier if we didn’t have to worry about the bad decisions our clients sometimes make. Take social media, for example. In Part 1 of this series, I talked about lawyers using social media to do opposition research, i.e. to dig up dirt on the opposing party. Ethically, that’s generally […]