There are 800 million Facebook users; 100 million on LinkedIn. And there are billions of users worldwide on social media sites. Social media is the future of e-commerce, laid out Rob Holmes, of IPCybercrimes.com, during a recent American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law panel.

An effective antitrust compliance program does not mean everyone in the company becomes a legal expert, said moderator Kathleen Beasley, of Haynes & Boone LLP, at a “General Counsel Roundtable on Compliance” program, in recapping thoughts from the guests. Rather, it means that there is an atmosphere, a culture of compliance; there’s a dialogue and ongoing communications about abiding by the rules.

Aileen M. McGill, a 2010 graduate of University of Pennsylvania Law School and a second-year litigation associate at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York City, displays the plaque she received as winner of the 2012 Bert W. Levit Essay Contest, sponsored by the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability. Her winning essay was a legal memorandum to the general counsel of an international law firm on ethics questions concerning how the firm handles engagement letters, office restructuring and taking on new matters in a cross-jurisdictional scenario.

For the first time ever, an American Bar Association commission will formally honor lawyers who have considerably advanced lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the legal profession and successfully championed LGBT legal causes.

A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, if enacted, could be the “death knell” for federal court consent decrees to which state or local governments are parties, according to the American Bar Association, which is recommending its defeat.

A panel of women corporate lawyers told a standing-room-only audience of women lawyers at the ABA Midyear Meeting program, “Visible Invisibility,” to be visible, bold and present, in order to excel in positions of leadership.

“We all accept the premise that one branch can’t kill the other off,” said Covington & Burling LLP partner Thomas Barnett—but politicians, judges and lawyers at the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Preservation of the Justice System hearing cautioned that cuts to state court budgets are all but lethal.

“There is no target in the U.S. that cannot be successfully attacked today,” said Stewart Baker, talking about cyber security. Baker is a partner at Steptoe & Johnson and served as a panelist at a program on the issue at the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting in New Orleans.

When the Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaska Natives started in 1967, its leaders could only locate 25 Native American attorneys in the country. “That was out of 560 tribes,” says Heidi Nesbitt, PLSI director and the American Indian Law Center’s assistant director.

ESI stands for “electronically stored information,” but, in effect, the “E” also means “evidence,” noted Illinois lawyer discipline counsel Wendy Muchman at an ABA Midyear Meeting session Feb. 3 on e-discovery, public records and metadata sponsored by the ABA Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division.

In a time when demand for legal aid has never been higher and funding for legal aid providers is being slashed across the country, national and local experts who have devoted their careers to law and policy for the public good shared their perspectives about careers in public interest law Feb. 3 at the ABA Midyear Meeting in New Orleans.

American Bar Association President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III, in a letter sent Tuesday to Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Charles E. Grassley (R-IA)—chair and ranking minority of the Judiciary Committee —emphasized the association’s support of the Violence Against Women Act.