Lawyers are great procrastinators, and “I say that as a great procrastinator myself,” says Paula Frederick, general counsel for the State Bar of Georgia in Atlanta. Because Frederick is disciplinary counsel, she sees how procrastination can cause problems in attorney-client relationships.

The Lawyer’s Guide to Building Your Practice with Referrals is a book intended not for natural rainmakers, according to author Stephen J. Shaer, but “for the rest of us.” It is for lawyers who are motivated to be successful and efficient at business development but who also recognize that they need to work at it.

The American Bar Association’s Section of Science & Technology Law, the premier global authority on science and technology law, will release its anticipated special double issue of The SciTech Lawyer next month. The issue charts the future of the “mobile transformation.”

In 2011, Facebook users discovered that when they “liked” certain products or services, their profile pictures were used to promote those goods to their friends. This new premium advertising service called “Sponsored Stories” prompted a class action lawsuit against Facebook for damaging their right of publicity.

A woman who becomes a man but identifies as gay can legally marry his same-sex partner in Ohio, even though the state bans civil unions, domestic partnerships and same-sex marriage. How is this possible? In Ohio, the only documentation needed for marriage reflects an individual’s gender at birth.

An officer tasked with supervising inmates at a Michigan correctional facility warehouse repeatedly raped Jan Lastocy during the last few months of her prison sentence. Fellow prisoners sexually assaulted 12-year-old Troy Eric Isaac in a juvenile detention center.

Trans people, individuals whose sex or gender identity is different from the one assigned at birth, often face challenges in areas such as family and relationship planning. Lawyers who represent them should set aside assumptions, stay current with terminology and provide a welcoming environment.

The 2012 Women in Law Leadership Academy attracted more than 300 women lawyers seeking to improve their leadership and business development skills and network with prominent practitioners from around the country. The academy was presented by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession and Young Lawyers Division at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Dec. 6 – 7.

No other area of adoption law is evolving faster than that of second-parent adoption or adoptions involving same-sex parents, said Phillip Tucker, a family law and adoption lawyer from Oklahoma, at an American Bar Association program on the ABCs of Adoption.

Clients, even at the very earliest stages of developing a business, have a lot of slogans, logos and other things they would like to trademark, says Jonathan Rubens, partner, Javid Rubens LLP, in San Francisco. As a result, managing client expectations — and budgets — becomes key.

A client is launching a business complete with carefully designed logo, specially named products and catchy marketing slogans. The client wants to trademark all of it, but his budget is limited. What to do?

Existing clients are a rich but often overlooked source of business for law firms. Mary Vandenack, founding and managing partner of Parsonage Vandenack Williams LLC in Omaha, Neb., explored this topic in a recent edition of Law Practice Magazine.