Law students say online classes just as good, Baker Botts adds M&A team head, anti-patent troll law upheld, NLRB sets sights on employer surveillance
Reuters Legal
From the courts to law firms, we bring you the latest legal news. Subscribe to our newsletters: https://bit.ly/3nhgllA
?? Good morning from the Legal File!
According to a new survey, online classes earned high marks from law students, suggesting that remote learning has improved over the past two years and that it can be just as effective as in-person instruction when done right.
Among survey respondents who took online classes last year, 76% rated those courses as good or excellent, according to the latest Law School Survey of Student Engagement — an annual research project housed at Indiana University's Center for Postsecondary Research. That tracks closely with the 77% of the 13,000 surveyed students who said their overall law school experience was either good or excellent.
While it's the first time the survey has focused on online learning, previous research found that law students were largely dissatisfied with online classes. A 2021 survey by AccessLex Institute found that just 43% of second and third-year law students rated their online classes as good or excellent.
About a dozen law schools now offer hybrid J.D. programs in which part-time students complete the bulk of their coursework online but come to campus several times a year for in-person instruction. And St. Mary's University School of Law launched the first American Bar Association-accredited J.D. program in which all credits are earned online. And most schools without such programs still offer some online classes.
Baker Botts said Monday that it has hired a new cross-border mergers and acquisitions practice leader, Arman Kuyumjian, from Holland & Knight in New York.
Kuyumjian, who spent the last five years at Tampa-based Holland & Knight's New York office, will join Baker Botts' corporate department and co-chair the cross-border M&A practice.
Kuyumjian represents international conglomerates who do business in the U.S. and Central and South America and works on private equity matters in addition to cross-border M&A.
He said he expects most, if not all, of his clients to make the move with him, though he declined to name them.
领英推荐
A Washington state law that penalizes companies for making bad-faith patent claims does not violate the U.S. Constitution, a Seattle federal court said Friday.
Landmark Technology A LLC cannot dismiss the state's claims that the company's practice of making broad infringement allegations against "every kind of business under the sun" violates the law, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington decided.
The Washington state government said in its lawsuit last year that Landmark is a "patent troll," a company whose sole business is collecting patents and making infringement claims to force settlement payments. The state passed a law in 2015 banning what the lawsuit called "predatory patent troll activity."
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez said Friday that Landmark had cited "no authority" to support the idea that the First Amendment protects "bad faith assertions of patent infringement."
The U.S. National Labor Relations Board's top lawyer said on Monday that she will seek to limit employers' use of "intrusive" electronic monitoring using tools such as GPS and webcams because of its potential to discourage workers from unionizing.
In a memo to regional staff, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said she plans to ask the five-member board to rule that using technology to monitor and manage workers is illegal if it tends to interfere with their rights to advocate collectively for better working conditions.
Abruzzo said she is concerned that increasingly prevalent electronic surveillance and software used to set production quotas are preventing workers from having discussions that serve as a necessary prelude to collective action, including union campaigns.
Abruzzo said in the memo that various types of surveillance and management tools pose a threat to workers' rights. That includes wearable devices used in warehouses that record workers' conversations and track their movements, GPS used to track drivers, and "keylogging" software that records keystrokes on company computers.
?????????????????????????????????????????
?? That's all for today! Thank you for reading?The Legal File!
For more legal industry news, read and?subscribe?to?The Daily Docket.