Any litigator tasking interviews of potential witnesses needs to know about the no-contact rule (ABA Model Rule 4.2)[1], which forbids talking to represented people on the other side of a case. This also goes for most current employees of the other side — certainly any employee senior enough to make critical decisions or
Why Your Investigator Should Have a Sense of Humor (Seriously)
In a partially hilarious, partially disturbing article this week in The Wall Street Journal, “Facebook Has No Sense of Humor,” the Editor in Chief of the satirical website The Babylon Bee related that two patently ridiculous “news” stories had recently been fact-checked by Snopes: The Onion’s “Shelling From Royal Caribbean’s M.S. ‘Allure’ Sinks Carnival
The Small Business Landlord-Tenant Wars Have Begun
The big guys have been going bankrupt, but the real carnage is yet to come:. Among America’s small businesses. Potential creditors need to get organized for the fight which appears to have been kicked off in New York this month with a fascinating case.
We have seen the big names going down including JC Penney,
The Bumbling Spies of Black Cube: Lawyers Beware
If you haven’t seen the amusing and disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about Black Cube, the band of former Mossad (Israeli secret service) agents, it’s worth a look.
The article explains that Black Cube’s people run around the world pretending to be people they are not, in order to investigate private,
AI and Legal Investigation: Seek the Good, Avoid the “Perfect”
Artificial intelligence doesn’t equal artificial perfection. I have argued for a while now both on this blog and in a forthcoming law review article here that lawyers (and the investigators who work for them) have little to fear and much to gain as artificial intelligence gets smarter.
Computers may be able to do a lot
EB-5 Visa Due Diligence: How to Spot the Warning Signs of Fraud
Another EB-5 visa fraud, more burned investors. For people outside the United States trying to pick a reputable investment that will get them permanent residency in the U.S., sorting through hundreds of projects is often the hardest part of the job.
There is plenty written about what you should do before you invest, one of
3 Ways to Improve Law Firm Innovation
Lawyers need to find witnesses. They look for assets to see if it’s worth suing or if they can collect after they win. They want to profile opponents for weaknesses based on past litigation or business dealings.
Every legal matter turns on facts. Most cases don’t go to trial, fewer still go to appeal, but
FEAR OF FLYING, FEAR OF DUE DILIGENCE
A wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal here called “The Logic of Our Fear of Flying” does a great job explaining our irrational fear of flying using concepts from math. We all know that our chances of dying in a plane crash are much lower than dying in a car accident, and yet many
How to Tell Fake News from Real
Every day now, we hear about the woes of readers unable to distinguish between “fake news” and real news, as if undependable news reporting is anything new. Readers and fact investigators have always needed to know how to figure out for themselves what to believe and what to question further.
I am proud to have
Lessons from the Kardashian Stickup
This blog may be one of the few publications in the Western world that has never written the word “Kardashian,” but that has now changed. In the stories about the robbery in Paris of Kim Kardashian we found numerous issues that touch on the work we do.
After my recent book The Art of Fact