- law.dawg
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- Nevada targeted in ransomware attack; some data taken out of state, official say. [TNI; Nevada Current]
- How long were the cyberattackers in Nevada’s state network and what was actually affected? [KTNV; 8NewsNow]
- Judge orders remote appearances for Israeli official in child luring case. [RJ]
- Strip room rates “lower than expected” in third quarter, analyst says. [RJ]
With the data breach its a good reminder to freeze your credit if you haven’t already. Its free and took maybe 5 minutes to setup accounts for all 3 credit agencies.
It’s also a good reminder to have 2FA (two factor authentication) set up on any accounts where it is offered.
Nevada needs more robust cybersecurity defenses. This means we need to pay for the best and the brightest. It’s going to suck when major infrastructure goes down.
Nevada voters don’t want to pay for better public education, better transportation, public infrastructure, or anything else that would be a tangible and direct benefit on their lives. How would you convince them to pay for such a nebulous concept as cybersecurity? Even assuming voters did approve tax money for the most military-grade, high-end security possible, the benefit would be that nothing gets hacked, which is easy to ignore the benefit of. Wait one or two election cycles and someone will run on getting rid of that kind of “government waste” and then we’re right back where we started.
I’m defense counsel, but even I’m not that defeatist.
Nevada still doesn’t have a technical competency requirement for attorneys. That’s not a good thing, folks.
RPC 1.1 requires competence and follows the ABA language. Its comment suggests that includes technical competence 🤷♂️
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_1_1_competence/comment_on_rule_1_1/
I’ve seen too many attorneys in their 50’s and 60’s who ACTIVELY go out of their way to refuse to learn even the basics with regard to computers, Word, Excel, time management software, etc. It’s a joke honestly.
60-something here. Started out on WordPerfect (and and WordStar before that if you must know). Basics? Yes. Complicated sh*t? That’s why I have a millennial paralegal!
Goddamn, I miss WordPerfect
Wordperfect is still around, but the owners are not doing anything with it. Even the scripting language has become useless.
But, it was rock solid for legal work. Have suffered through all of MS interations of Word,
I still refuse to use Word. WordPerfect has always been much better.
Y’all are my people. I’ve been saying this for years
WordPerfect was PERFECT. I sure miss it!
I remember one of my jobs (in the 2010s) one of the partners still never made any attempts to learn OFFICE Suite and used dictaphone for everything and had the secretaries enter all his billing from a spiral notebook that looked like it was from 1980. He also very much encouraged only using dictaphone for all your work.
And to 1:38, i also suffered through an extraordinary amount of Wordperfect instructions and classes.
I do think there is a time and place that dictation can be helpful but not in the way he was encouraging.
I used a dictaphone for years and loved it. Could turn out letters and easy motions/briefs off the top of my head in no time.
140 here. I do use the dictation function from word for all my long form letters and reports.
Word dictation function
..and you spend a lot of time correcting and editing.
You guys are gonna have our mind blown when you figure out how to use the transcription feature in microsoft word and ChatGPT together.
Dictation was a fast way to get out a letter or motion. Having practiced in both eras, I know that you now spend more time doing clerk typist functions and less time lawyering.
There’s far more to technical competence than Word.
you are kidding, right? I’m 74 and I go out of my way every day to learn about new technology. Not all of us are old and sitting in our rocking chairs.
I call BS. Like some of the other commenters I started with WordPerfect and have been using tech before some of you were disappointing glimmer in your daddy’s eye.
WordPerfect and Word both suck, folks. Straight markdown, export to Word just bc you gotta for the final product. Thanks for comin’ out.
Any lawyers out there drafting documents in LaTeX?
Overkill. That’s much more for technical and scientific markup. As a lawyer, using markdown or multimarkdown is literally all you’d ever need. Unless you’re a scientific or patent lawyer. Then maybe. There’s always exceptions!
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6pAXGA4/ says there was information on August 12 that the Nevada DMV had been compromised. Big if true.
I type my
own complaints, motions and appeals. I used to dictate everything but I can crank it all out by myself on the computer even though i have multiple assistants. Old dogs can learn new tricks.
Is the Nevada Supreme Court website one of the ones subject to the hack/outage? I can’t get the search function to work at all today on the main page.
They use the state network.
From the United States Bankruptcy Court for Colorado:
“We are aware of a service disruption affecting national access to Bankruptcy CM/ECF. Some e-filers may encounter an Object Not Found error message. The national technical teams are actively working to resolve the issue. We appreciate your patience.
Thank you!”
The Nevada Supremes, sitting en banc, decided on en banc reconsideration In re Sull yesterday. The en banc Court, in an opinion by Justice Bell, consistent with the earlier panel opinion, reversed the disciplinary panel’s order dismissing disciplinary charges and imposed a reprimand. Readers may recall this case concerned whether a flat fee must be deposited in a client trust account and debited against as work is performed. The en banc court says that’s the only way to handle flat fees. The vote was 6-1.
Justice Stiglich, dissenting, says the Court’s opinion does not grapple with the widespread use of advance payment retainers paid as a flat fee. “In concluding that flat fees may only be security retainers and not advance payment retainers, the court deprives practitioners and clients of the flexibility of a valid means of structuring client agreements. . . . Because the effect of this opinion is to deviate from majority practice with uncertain consequences for other
practitioners and to deprive clients and attorneys of valuable flexibility, I
respectfully dissent.”
https://caseinfo.nvsupremecourt.us/document/view.do?csNameID=66810&csIID=66810&deLinkID=1022504&onBaseDocumentNumber=25-37659
She is correct.
So if I agree to do a thing for a flat fee of $500.00, I put the money in my trust account, and then move it to my general account the minute i do the thing. Doesn’t seem that bad, unless the flat fee includes more than one thing, correct?
It is bad (now) and you will get disciplined. Just stay away from flat fee work.
“Because the effect of this opinion is to deviate from majority practice with uncertain consequences for other
practitioners and to deprive clients and attorneys of valuable flexibility, I
respectfully dissent.” Justice Stiglich NAILED IT. This decision removes flexibility from the FREEDOM TO CONTRACT. What the majority, and Dan Hooge (who has never personally taken a retainer in his life) fail to understand is that I don’t have to do flat fee work. Because of Sull, our firm no longer offers flat fee options. We work hourly on a retainer, period. Clients sometimes like the certainty that a flat fee offers, and, over many cases, I can forecast an EV of my time that allows me to be profitable and offer the flat fee. Not anymore. My analysis is macro, but the rules under Sull are micro. Under Sull, I can do a flat fee, but I also have the disadvantage of not taking the money until I am absolutely sure I can justify it. Even worse, if in an individual case, I spend $5,000.00 of time, but take a flat fee $10,000.00 payment, my fee is unreasonable EVEN THOUGH this is balanced out against flat fee agreements where I take $10,000.00 but end up spending $15,000.00 of time. The whole point of a flat fee is that the client gets certainty and I get the incentive to work efficiently. Not anymore. No flat fees for me. The more profitable practice is to just take an hourly retainer and bill against it. So good job, Nevada Supreme Court. You have limited access to justice and reduced the options for clients.