• Michael Lufkin has joined Fowler White Boggs as an associate in the employment law practice group within the Jacksonville office. His concentration is in labor and employment law. Lufkin earned his bachelor’s degree from Rowan University and juris doctorate from Michigan State University.
• There’s an app for that: Florida Coastal School of Law launched a smartphone app last month designed as a mobile guide for faculty and students. It features news items, directories, a calendar of events and more.
• One more about Florida Coastal: Professor Roger Groves is now a contributor to Forbes magazine. You can catch the third-year Florida Coastal sports and business law professor’s insights at www.blogs.forbes.com/people/rogergroves.
• The Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes reports that home prices in the Jacksonville area plunged 32.1 percent from the second quarter of 2007, before the recession began, and the second quarter of this year. The national recession officially ended in June 2009. Jacksonville home prices dropped 4.5 percent from the second quarter of 2009 to this year. Fiserv, a financial research service, projects that home prices will drop another 6.4 percent by next year’s second quarter.
• Jacksonville’s drop in home prices exceeded the national decline from 2007 to this year, but Fiserv predicts that the national price will drop 7.1 percent the coming year, more than the local decline. Among 20 markets, Orlando’s prices are projected to drop the most, at 13.4 percent, while prices in Louisville, Ky., and Raleigh, N.C., are expected to drop the least, at 0.4 percent.