Stem Client Roundup for January ’09

2009 is off to a great start for Stem clients, and here’s our monthly roundup of their successes, news, and achievements to prove it!

• Our law practice management SaaS client, Clio was highlighted in a recent edition of the Texas Bar Journal.  D. Todd Smith praised Clio for its document management functionality and unlimited document storage. Themis Solutions, which owns Clio, also gave a presentation at the Nevada Bar’s Ethics and Practice Management Institute. You can view the slides of their presentation, “Ethics and Practice Management“, and read more about on the GoClio blog.
• Legal document sharing service JD Supra’s big news this month was their new partnership with News(tex), a premier provider of real-time news across numerous legal, business, and media channels.  More syndication channels means better distribution of law firm content. Hence the slogan: “Give content. Get noticed.”
• Contingent fee litigation firm McClanahan Myers Espey scored a big victory recently in the decision Havenstrite v. Hartford. In this case, the judge found that employees whose lives were insured by their employer’s secret corporate-owned life insurance policies had a valid claim against the insurer for misusing their identities and personal information.
• Jonathan Rosenfeld, a nursing home abuse lawyer based in Chicago, was interviewed for both the Mr. Eldercare radio show and Lawyers USA magazine.  Jonathan also renamed and relaunched his Nursing Homes Abuse blog in January, which we covered in a post about the process.
• Stem launched the Lawyer Addiction Blog, which is sponsored by our Arizona client The Meadows Addiction Treatment Center. The blog highlights the work of lawyer assistance programs across the US and Canada, and we’re excited to forge relationships with these organizations and help them extent the reach of their content.
• Lawyers at BC law firm Clark Wilson LLP celebrated a huge Supreme Court of Canada success in Shafron v. KRG Insurance (Western). The case deals with restrictive covenants in employment agreements and you can read all about it in the latest edition of Workplace Post. The firm also has a new Twitter feed that combines content feeds from all the firm’s online sources: practice group newsletters, posts from the Canadian Trademark Blog and Megawatt: BC Renewable Energy Blog, and feature articles from BCRELinks.com.
• Phoenix DUI attorney Lawrence Koplow points us to an interesting post that discusses the “source code issue“: the ongoing fight between criminal lawyers and breath tester manufacturers, who refuse to disclose the source code used in the machines, and the current Florida litigation over this issue.
• Product injury law firm Hissey Kientz LLP has a new linkblog, Drug Recall Watch, where they post news items on FDA drug, medical device, and general product warning and recalls. Some recent topics include the peanut butter recall and Digitek manufacturer Actavis’ plant shutdown.
• Intellectual property lawyers at China law firm King & Wood recently wrote about a PRC Supreme Court study on judicial protection of IP rights. The post, on the firm’s China Law Insight blog, covers potential policy development for 2009.
• Florida Lawyer Blog Watch, the site we created with West Palm Beach attorney Ron Chapman, had a major update earlier in January. The site now aggregates 85 blogs from Florida legal blogger, including Ron’s blog, West Palm Beach Criminal Lawyer Blog. Ron blogs about federal crimes, criminal records, and other related topics.
• New Jersey criminal lawyer John Marshall, who blogs at the New Jersey Criminal Defense & DWI Blog, recently wrote about two notable DWI cases. State v. Rastogi deals with the issue of DWI plea bargains; State v. Spell addresses breath test refusal.

Many thanks to all of Stem’s clients for keeping us energized with great work. And not to foreshadow too much, but February is only going to be short on days, not projects! :)