Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%

Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.

Legal Incubators and Legal Hackers

By Dan Lear
May 02, 2015

The seminal book on the origins of hacking and the hacker culture is Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. One of my favorite stories from the book is of an early hacker at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bob Wagner, who was not content to use a wimpy, clunky electromechanical calculator to complete homework for a Numerical Analysis class. Consequently, Wagner wrote a program of almost three thousand lines of code that made the computer emulate the calculator's exact functionality. Then, Wagner used the calculator program on the computer to do his math homework.

His grade when he turned in his homework: Zero. “You used a computer!” The professor told him. “This can't be right.”

Read These Next
The DOJ's Corporate Enforcement Policy: One Year Later Image

The DOJ's Criminal Division issued three declinations since the issuance of the revised CEP a year ago. Review of these cases gives insight into DOJ's implementation of the new policy in practice.

Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar Investigations Image

This article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.

The DOJ's New Parameters for Evaluating Corporate Compliance Programs Image

The parameters set forth in the DOJ's memorandum have implications not only for the government's evaluation of compliance programs in the context of criminal charging decisions, but also for how defense counsel structure their conference-room advocacy seeking declinations or lesser sanctions in both criminal and civil investigations.

CLE Shouldn't Be the Only Mandatory Training for Attorneys Image

Each stage of an attorney's career offers opportunities for a curriculum that addresses both the individual's and the firm's need to drive success.

A defendant in a patent infringement suit may, during discovery and prior to a <i>Markman</i> hearing, compel the plaintiff to produce claim charts, claim constructions, and element-by-element infringement analyses.