Learn how to write code for apps

When V. David Zvenyach was general counsel for the Council of the District of Columbia, a local activist named Tom MacWright asked for help making the Code of the District of Columbia accessible to the public online. Zvenyach thought it was a simple request—until he took a look at the actual law, which was nearly impossible to work with due to copyright and formatting complications.It turns out that making the law accessible online demands more than just publishing the words as written. Computers must be able to index the text, make connections, and understand hierarchies and interrelationships between the sections.MacWright “asked me for the data underlying the laws, and I spent months trying to understand what he meant,” Zvenyach says. “I had to learn about the difference between the underlying structure and presentation of the law.”The result was the website at dccode.org, which is maintained by a team of volunteers, including MacWright and Zvenyach. … [Read more...] about Does learning to code make you a better lawyer?

The We Company's big reveal is finally here: After months of anticipation, the company more generally known as WeWork has released its updated S-1 prospectus in advance of a potential September IPO.The We Company had previously made some results available to investors and the media, but the new prospectus released Wednesday paints the clearest picture yet of its current position and its future prospects.As for the headline numbers, the company's revenue jumped 106% last year to $1.82 billion and has continued to grow briskly through 2019, rising 101% through the first half of the year to $1.54 billion. As expected, however, it is experiencing massive bottom-line losses. Last year, its net loss reached $1.93 billion, while in the first half of this year, it lost $905 million.The We Company also offered plenty of juicy nuggets and valuable data for potential investors to pore over. Here are 11 points in particular that investors should be aware of before the office-sharing juggernaut's … [Read more...] about 11 things we just learned about the WeWork IPO

One of the essential elements of a contract is the consent of the parties.  Cal. Civ. Code § 1550(2).  When a party is a corporation, there is always a question of whether the person or persons signing the contract have the authority to do so on behalf the entity.  There is also the question of who can challenge the authority of a corporate signatory to bind the corporation.In re Holy Hill Cmty. Church, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2352 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 5, 2017) involved a challenge to the validity of a contract executed by a church.  The bankruptcy court, however, found that appellants, as corporate outsiders, lacked standing to pursue these claims, basing its decision on (1) Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church v. California Presbytery, 77 Cal. App. 4th 1069 (2000), and (2) California Corporations Code Section 208(a).  U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, affirmed, writing:Although the Court finds this to be a close … [Read more...] about California Corporations Code: Do Outsiders Have Standing?

Will Ha, author of the book Quit Law and Code, is good with numbers.In this blog post, he compares earnings and possible lifetime savings for lawyers and software developers, based on average salaries, student loan payments, years of work, and interest rates. His conclusion: The average paid lawyer, after student loan payments, will make about $1,400 less money in a month than an average paid software developer. Over a lifetime of work, the software developer will save about $833,000 more than the lawyer.Above the Law notes Ha’s conclusions and interviews him about his career change from law to coding. Ha says a lawyer who wants a career change could make the transition after about a year of training.Ha felt bored and trapped as an associate. He intended to become a criminal law practitioner, but his career took a turn when he took a temporary job at an ad agency that worked on website development. Those working on an iOS app were making a good salary and leaving work “on … [Read more...] about Fed up with law practice? In about a year, you can be a computer coder, says lawyer who made switch

This article is the fifth in a series summarizing construction law developments for 2010. A. BiddingGreat West Contractors Inc. v. Irvine School District, 187 Cal. App. 4th 1425 (4th Dist. Aug. 2010)In Great West Contractors, the Fourth District held that a public agency's rejection of a bid for a public works project on the basis that a corporate bidder did not list its officers' licenses is a question of bidder responsibility, not bid responsiveness, and therefore a due process hearing was required. The Court of Appeal said that the case is important for two reasons. First, it presents a challenging problem in public contracting law: how to distinguish a "non-responsive" bid from a de factodetermination that the bidder is not a "responsible" bidder. Second, the case presents what the court called "an object lesson in how evidence that, at least on its face, tends to show favoritism – indeed, on this record, favoritism most foul – never got squarely … [Read more...] about The Year 2010 In Review: Public Works Projects (CA)