Cooley Law Alumni Sues Alma Mater in Class Action Suit

A class action law suit was filed against the Cooley Law School this week in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan.  In addition to legal counsel from Gotham, attorney Steve Hyder from Monroe, MI, himself a Cooley graduate, is local counsel on the suit.

The 45-page complaint reads like an indictment on the issue of student loans versus available law jobs in this protracted economic downturn.  The complaint alleges that Cooley intentionally uses false statistics (i.e. graduate employment rates and graduates' salaries) to lure and retain prospective law students .

The New York law firm handling the heavy lifting in the suit, Kurzon Strauss, is also suing the New York Law School on nearly identical grounds, but in state court.  Each suit seeks hundreds of millions in tuition refunds from the respective law schools.

Last month, Kurzon Strauss was on the receiving end of a law suit filed by Cooley, alleging defamation.  The firm had been trolling around Craigslist and Facebook soliciting candidates for its class action suit.  Understandably, Cooley wanted to get the drop on the firm and steal the negative publicity thunder such a suit would generate.  Always the publicity gurus over there at Cooley.

Cooley will probably use the same law firm on defense as they do on offense; Miller Canfield.  One way or another, this litigation will siphon-off some of Cooley's rich profits as they continue to tap deeply into the American Dream, lawyer-style.

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Privacy & Intellectual Property on Facebook

This post is the original content of Geoff Livingston, a blogger from the Washington D.C. area recognized as a social media and blogging "expert" by the Washington Post.  His 2007 book, Now is Gone was hailed by the WSJ as a valuable resource for those interested in mining social media.

The topics of privacy and intellectual property relative to Facebook are intertwined and receive recurring attention.  Here is Geoff's recent post:

Have you read Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities? I decided to after talking to a Facebook IP lawyer. There are some serious dangers for content marketers on Facebook:

“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”).”

AND

“You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.”

If someone is using content as a means to market to their potential customers, the first statement presents huge issues. It’s clear that protecting IP is hard on Facebook given these terms.

While the same statement offers IP protections, Facebook is clearly soft on enforcement. Basically, for someone to get in trouble for using your copyrighted content without your permission, it requires someone to “repeatedly infringe” for Facebook to take action.

All in all, your content is not safe on Facebook, IMO. It’s best to use secondary services such as a blog, a video site or a photo site, and link back in if protecting copyright is an issue.

On the tagging front, I was particularly interested as this is a common form of marketing wares on Facebook, one I often interpret to be spam. Apparently, if you tag someone in a manner that they do not approve, it REALLY IS spam.

Reading the same policy, “You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.” Facebook has demonstrated it is adamant about policing spammers on its network. It is actively prosecuting abusers of its spamming policy and suing them.

In essence, if you use tags with your content or posts to market your services, you are spamming people. No ifs or ands about it. If the people who are being tagged decide to report you, it’s likely that you will find little leniency from Facebook.

The lesson for content marketers, don’t hard sell on Facebook. Tagging should be soft, clearly benefiting the community members mentioned. Otherwise it’s best to try other social network services to achieve your goals.

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Judges Cannot "Friend" Lawyers Via Social Media Says Florida Supreme Court

A few of my Facebook friends are judges.  They've taken a low profile on the news feed.  Will Michigan's Judicial Tenure Commission, formed in 1968 via constitutional amendment, seek to outlaw such social network connections like the State of Florida?

In Florida, the Supreme Court's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee issued a 11/17/2009 decision, holding that judges may not connect with attorneys on Facebook, or similar social networking media.  The Committee's decision is based on a Florida's judicial canon prohibiting the appearance that a lawyer, or anyone else, is in a special position to influence the judge.

Floridian judges, however, remain free to post comments to their non-lawyer "friends", and can develop "fan pages" to help with their reelection campaigns.  Only the attorney-judge connection is now taboo in Florida.
The Ethics Advisory Committee stated that, "judges cannot isolate themselves entirely from the real world and cannot be expected to avoid all friendships outside of their judicial responsibilities, some restrictions upon a judge’s conduct are inherent in the office."


Ethics are catching-up slowly with attorneys and judges in the web 2.0 world.  Some states, like Louisiana, New York, and now Florida, have taken a restrictive view of lawyer's and judge's permissible activities on such sites.  


Linked-In, Twitter, and Facebook remain available to our judges.  You can expect Michigan's never shy Judicial Tenure Commission to address the situation as soon as the right case rolls around.  Shouldn't be too long... Stay tuned.


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Divorce and Facebook: Privacy Be Gone

Is there any privacy among partners in a marriage; among parties to a divorce proceeding? In this web 2.0 era, some people are their own worst enemy.

Photos or statements posted on the web lose all aspects of privacy. Deleting a post does not remove it from cyberspace. The Internet is rich terrain for discovery-seeking divorce lawyers.

In a divorce, it is advisable to maintain privacy and restrict confidences to one's professional counselors. Why then, are so many people drawn to plastering their every move -including their horrible gaffs- on the Internet via the web's easily accesible variety of social networking platforms?

A recent Time magazine article analyzes this trend in the divorce context:
http://tinyurl.com/m9n6lh
The article includes a link to five "Facebook Don'ts":
http://tinyurl.com/nml7vq

No doubt, lawyers can and do take advantage of web postings in custody battles and in the property division contest. If you need to have a web posting preserved, or have the source of a post tracked, contact our firm to assess your options.