litigation

Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Picking Your Practice Area

/ Isabella Calise / Leave a comment

No, this is not a BuzzFeed quiz.

There won’t be a personality type at the end telling you that you’re a “natural-born M&A associate” because you picked spreadsheets over courtrooms. Unfortunately, I also can’t promise that answering three questions will magically reveal your dream practice area.

I actually came into law school with a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to litigate, and I was already interested in white-collar defense. But if I’m being honest, I hadn’t really stopped to think about it on a deeper level. I knew I had experience in criminal law and liked the idea of it, but I wanted to make sure I liked the actual work too. If you took away the cool-sounding practice-area name, would I still want to do the job?

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Supreme Court Considers FCC’s Jury Trial Problem

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has loomed large on the Supreme Court’s docket recently. Last term, the Justices addressed E-Rate fraud prevention efforts, the agency’s authority to bind courts, and the constitutionality of its Universal Service Program. Now the Commission is before the High Court. This new case, FCC v. AT&T, asks whether the FCC’s power to levy punitive fines violates the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury—a question whose resolution could reshape not just telecommunications regulation but the balance of power among agencies, courts, and juries.

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Supreme Court Questions Broadband Provider Liability for User Misconduct

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Intermediary liability—when a company should be liable for users’ misuse of its product by users—has been a long-standing issue in tech policy. Two years ago, the Supreme Court dismissed a case alleging Twitter aided and abetted terrorism by allowing ISIS to recruit on its platform. This week, the Court weighed in again, hearing argument in a case involving a billion-dollar judgment against broadband provider Cox Communications for failing to terminate accounts suspected of copyright infringement. The case raises significant questions about copyright enforceability, broadband providers’ role as gateways to the internet, and digital equity concerns. The justices seemed doubtful that notification of user misuse was sufficient to trigger liability, although they struggled to find an alternative that balanced the equities of the case.

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