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“To every thing there is a season,” the saying goes, and as in-house counsel there’s a season coming up that you’ll want to be prepared for: H-1B visa season. As in-house counsel for a company that may hire professionals outside the confines of the U.S. border, H-1B visa season is big business. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) issues H-1B visas to nonimmigrant workers engaged in a “specialty occupation” with a “bachelor’s degree or higher degree or its equivalent....

It almost goes without saying, but let’s say it anyway: you could do a lot for a company with $1 billion. A company like Wells Fargo, which has been fined $1 billion for auto and mortgage loan abuses, could have spent that money training employees not to take advantage of consumers. Even with some 260,000 employees, that’s almost $4,000 of training per employee. Of course, money can’t solve everything. But better training, hiring, and policies can help avoid even a $1 billion fine....

Despite what you’ve been hearing for years, email isn’t “dead” and it’s not “dying.” What is happening? Thanks to a bevy of new services, email – once the universal online communication method – has a very specific purpose. The new hotness (which actually isn’t that new): chat and instant-messaging programs, which allow employees in the same office to communicate with each other in real-time. There are a lot of different solutions, some corporate, and some not....

When it comes to ADA compliance, businesses are often a little bit confused about what to do. It can be difficult enough deciphering whether some new or modern design element in a brick and mortar establishment will meet ADA accessibility requirements, but businesses must also figure out what that means digitally as companies are facing an increasing number of lawsuits over ADA website accessibility. ADA access cases are taking a new form across the country....

A division of Working Mother Magazine, The National Association of Female Executives, recently published its 2014 results for the Top 50 Companies for Executive Women, reports Forbes. Methodology The methodology is simple: for-profit companies with over 1,000 employees and with at least two women on their board of directors are invited to complete an application consisting of over 200 questions on “female representation at all levels, but especially the corporate officer and profit-and-loss leadership ranks....

It’s clear that Wendi Deng Murdoch has catapulted into internet stardom as a result of slapping the pie-tossing prankster who deigned to attack her husband Rupert last week. But there is an unsung hero in this story of pie vigilantism and tabloid phone hacking, and her name is Janet Nova. She’s News Corp.’s interim general counsel. And she was the first to protect her boss. If you’ve yet to see the Rupert Murdoch pie video, it depicts the media mogul testifying before British Parliament early last week after being hauled in to explain the recent phone hacking scandal plaguing his News of the World tabloid....

Oregon will soon have a majority of women on its highest court. Gov. Kate Brown has elevated Judge Rebecca Duncan to fill a vacancy that will be created when Justice David Brewer retires in June. Duncan’s appointment marks the first time in the court’s history that women will comprise a majority. “No one is better suited than Becky Duncan to this historic appointment,” Gov. Brown said in a statement. “Throughout her career, Becky Duncan has been a model of intellectual rigor and professionalism....

Dismissal of a class action relating to interest rate charges on late bank credit card payments is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff’s transactions took place prior to August 2009 when the statutory changes and the revised regulations took effect; and 2) the increased APR is not an illegal penalty Read Shaner v. Chase Bank USA, No. 09-1157 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts...

The following story serves as a lesson in common sense for corporations everywhere: don’t cover up how much money you donate to judicial candidates. This is especially true if the judicial candidate you donated money to ends up voting in your favor in a billion-dollar case. State Farm Insurance is learning this lesson the hard way. State Farm allegedly gave campaign donations to Judge Lloyd Karmeier during one of the nation’s most expensive judicial races in 2004....

We’ve known for a long time that companies are just exhausted from paying $500 an hour for a BigLaw firm they don’t need so that senior partners can spend the day golfing. Now there are some numbers to back this up. Inside Counsel recently reported on an HBR Consulting survey showing that, even as legal spending in total increased 2 percent over last year, inside spending increased 5 percent while outside counsel spending decreased by 2 percent....

If you are an illegal immigrant, put down your cell phone now. If you are slightly paranoid about government snooping, put down your cell phone now. But if you have accepted the idea that immigrants and personal privacy are at risk in the Trump-tech era, then keep reading. It’s getting real and the story is in your phone. Stung by a Stingray Poor Rudy Carcamo-Carranza blew the cover off this one....

You know that anxious feeling you get when you tell your client exactly what they shouldn’t do, knowing full well that they aren’t going to listen to you? Well, if you practice in Utah, a recent Utah State Bar ethics opinion will be of interest. Recently, the state’s ethics committee opined on whether an attorney can require a client to indemnify them from third party claims arising out of the client’s conduct or negligence....

Motion practice can often be a very fast-paced and harrowing experience, particularly when someone’s life or livelihood hangs in the balance. In motion practice, timing is everything. So what would you say to a defendant who waited two and a half years to file a motion for relief from judgment after the court handed down a decision? You’d say that was an unjustified wait, right? We’re glad you agree. That’s how the Fourth Circuit ruled in Moses v....

Certain practice areas are like a leather jacket: They never go out of style. Personal injury, estate planning, and criminal defense will always be there. But is there something more you could be doing? As it turns out, there is. Changing technology, government policies, and legal environments mean that there are more opportunities than ever to expand your practice into new areas. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:...

Everybody loses clients, but what if you literally lose a client? Losing track of a client can be more distressing than losing the client’s business. Lawyers have a duty to protect the legal rights of even those clients they can’t find. When they go missing, you may find yourself in an ethical minefield as you go about searching for them. “If an attorney is having trouble contacting a client, the attorney should make all reasonable efforts to locate the client,” according to the Washington State Bar newsletter....

Keyloggers are like knives. They can be very useful, but also very dangerous. It depends on who is using them. When anyone can get a keylogger for $10, it’s a good idea to know how to use one. Even if you don’t want to use keyloggers, at least you should know how dangerous they can be. Keylogger Crime Unless you have permission, it is against the law to install a keylogger on a computer without the user’s knowledge....

Your legal writing style, believe it or not, matters. Judges, and their clerks, appreciate clear writing devoid of unnecessary terms and phrases. However, when it comes to legal writing, court and local rules, and even individual judges’ standing orders, tend to focus on formatting, citation, presentation of exhibits, and other more logistical matters. One of the great stylistic legal writing debates involves whether to capitalize party designations. Unfortunately, though seemingly logistic, this is not something courts usually provide official guidance on....

Mentors for in-house counsel may be especially important, as an in-house attorney is oftentimes the only attorney in the corporate office. But without someone to bounce ideas off of or to get some direction, an in-house attorney may be going in the wrong direction and have no idea until it is too late, reports Corporate Counsel. So if an in-house attorney is the only attorney in the building, how does that attorney go about getting a mentor?...

When someone is “livid,” has he turned red with anger, white with anger, or purple with anger? As lawyers, words are our currency, and there are many other lawyers and judges out there who will know if you use a word to mean something that it doesn’t mean. The 10 words we’ve listed below aren’t being used in a new, accepted way (like “decimate” being used to mean “decrease” instead of “decrease by 10 percent”); rather, they’re words that are routinely used contrary to their definitions....

Riding the (once-trendy) coattails of the term “metrosexual,” there’s a new modern description for people – including lawyers – obsessed with all things digital: “datasexual.” “The datasexual looks a lot like you and me, but what’s different is their preoccupation with personal data,” the website BigThink.com explains. “They are relentlessly digital, they obsessively record everything about their personal lives, and they think that data is sexy. In fact, the bigger the data, the sexier it becomes....