If there was one major trend in big law firms in 2015, it was mergers. BigLaw spent 2015 getting even bigger, largely by absorbing its competitors. Last year saw more than 91 large law firm mergers, according to Altman Weil. That’s the most ever recorded. And now, it seems, that trend is trickling down, as more moderately sized law offices have begun merging with increased frequency. Pressure to grow is nothing new....
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that the absolute priority rule still applies to individual debtors in possession filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. This is a significant decision, because the Fourth Circuit is the first appellate court to consider the issue since the enactment of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). The Supreme Court articulated the earliest version of the absolute priority rule in response to widespread collusion in the context of railroad reorganizations....
Looking for more and better qualified clients than your current client development strategy is producing? Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have pulled ahead of the printed Yellow Pages as the leading source for local business information. Three out of four Americans now use the Internet on a regular basis. Join a free webcast next Thursday, November 12, to learn how your firm can create an effective Web presence. The one-hour webcast will show you how to develop your firm’s Web site into a valuable marketing tool that will drive more well qualified clients to your firm....
Executives have been axed. Thirty-five million dollar fines have been imposed. Lawsuits have been filed. And legal reinforcements have been called in to make arguments in bankruptcy court about New GM’s liability for Old GM’s defective ignition switches. Legally, it’s a nightmare (unless you are outside counsel). And the nightmare is about to get worse for GM’s legal department as federal investigators turn their attention to the company’s in- house attorneys, who quietly settled a series of cases, refused to turn over documents, and either refused to investigate or kept a lid on the defective ignition switches that have led to at least thirteen deaths, possibly hundreds of accidents, and millions of recalled vehicles....
Facebook gave us endless ‘friends,’ although most Facebook friends are fake. So in the evolution of social media, has networking turned into “fake-friending”? Or has it always been that way – “hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name?” It is the networking game, and it’s understood that the relationships are first about business. But if you want to do better than the necessary evil, stop networking and start giving people something more....
You don’t have to represent a celebrity to end up trying or defending the case of the century. The press and the media can take almost any case, and with enough work, force the public’s attention towards it to the point of sensationalizing the case into popular culture. In high profile cases, attorneys will face ethical dilemmas that don’t befall most litigators. For the most part, the public doesn’t really seem to care about what’s happening in the majority of cases....
What seems like good old common sense scored a victory over drug furor last week when a U.S. District Court ruled that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick does not, in fact, outrank the FDA when it comes to deciding which drugs can be sold in Massachusetts. What’s it About? This squabble was over Zohydro, an opioid pain reliever approved by the FDA in 2013. It is unique in two ways: First, it is the only form of hydrocodone that does not contain acetaminophen, a drug that can cause liver damage when too much is taken....
Wage and hour lawsuit. Did that phrase just send a chill down your spine? In house counsels face a myriad of legal issues every day. Employment law is one of these thorny subjects. Violations of wage laws can result in costly litigation. It’s a lesson that drugmaker Novartis found out the hard way. The company is now paying $99 million in order to settle a class action lawsuit filed by its sales representatives....
There is a limit to the government’s patience after all. Tuesday, the Supreme Court announced in Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical that hospitals can’t rely on equitable tolling to extend the time limit for appealing Medicare reimbursements. Instead, they must discover and appeal federal underpayments within three years of receiving a Notice of Program Reimbursement (NPR). In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could limit the time for a Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB) appeal to three years....
As e-discovery compels more corporate legal departments to work in collaboration with their IT department, a need for a document management platform arises. StoredIQ offers the StoredIQ Intelligent Information Management Platform. This platform allows law firms or in house counsel to manage things such as e-discovery, information governance, records management and storage management. StoredIQ is also user friendly. Its platform boasts features such as: While these are just a few features, there are plenty of other features that StoredIQ offers....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. The Seventh Circuit recently upheld the firing of a school teacher who briefly viewed pornographic images in violation of the school district’s computer use policy, despite his argument that his firing really related to constitutionally protected critical speech. The teacher here had been a biology instructor for the eleven years for the school district....
We’re in the middle of a crowdfunding golden age. Individuals have raised thousands of dollars to make potato salad ($55,000), create inflatable Lionel Richie sculptures ($12,500), and conduct a squirrel census ($9,000). When it comes to fundraising, it seems like people are just giving money away. Should lawyers and litigants looking to finance a suit hop on the crowdfunding train? What about working with litigation investment companies? The answer, of course, is maybe....
Data breaches aren’t going away. Now even kids’ toys aren’t safe from hackers. First it happened to Barbie. More recently, on November 30th, VTech Holdings pulled the plug on several of its affiliate websites because hackers invaded customer data at VTech Holdings Limited, makers of electronic learning toys. The silver lining to this story is that the breach is on a smaller scale and does not contain personally-identifiable information (PII) such as credit cards and addresses....
The social media privacy wars have been in the news with sites like Twitter and Facebook being subpoenaed by law enforcement officials seeking information on criminal suspects. At stake in the privacy wars is your personal information, tweets, and messages made available on these sites. Twitter is now taking a stand against what it calls “invalid government requests” by appealing an order by a New York City criminal court requiring the site to turn over user information relating to Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris, reports PC World....
As if the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s top law schools did not draw enough ire and fire from alumni and the legal community as a whole, attorneys can now look forward to the U.S. News-Best Lawyers Best Law Firms Rankings. The first salvo of Best Firm Rankings is due to be fired this coming September. For those interested in just how U.S. News plans to rank law firms, the paper has released some information regarding the methodology it will use in ranking firms....
“In your face!” Often shouted by sports enthusiasts when they score on an opponent, the expression took on new meaning in a recent court decision. The case involved a video game, NBA 2K, that enables users to scan their faces into a computer to create their own avatars in a virtual basketball game. The end result is that you – or at least a digital rendering of you – can slam dunk a basketball and exclaim: “In your face!...
Are contract in-house attorneys necessary? Fenwick & West thinks so. The Silicon Valley law firm offers a unique program for its clients who are not ready to hire a full-time in-house attorney, but still need an affordable lawyer for licensing and contract work. The “Flex by Fenwick” program is also an opportunity for attorneys looking to be in-house at a range of Silicon Valley startups. Their “Flex Plans” offer their clients options of hiring a Flex attorney on a quarterly or a weekly model....
To many people, the word contract still evokes images of two parties coming together to put their signatures to paper. Now? Business moves far too quickly for that old fashioned nonsense. Today is the age of the electronic signature. If you’re feeling nostalgic about the simpler times before electronic signatures became a mainstay of business transactions, who can blame you. At least the Federal Rules of Evidence could rely on witnesses who had personal knowledge of what a “real” version of your signature was supposed to look like....
More than twenty-four years ago, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert S. Vance was tragically murdered by a bomb mailed to his house. His murderer, Walter Leroy Moody, is currently sitting on Alabama’s death row and is seeking habeas relief in federal courts. At the time of his original prosecution, the Eleventh Circuit found it necessary to recuse themselves, as well as the local district court judges, from the federal case....
In the age of viral videos and social media, what happens in-house doesn’t always stay in-house. That’s especially true when it comes to telling bad or offensive jokes, which have recently gotten some notable corporate counsel in trouble. This spring, a former in-house counsel sued his ex-boss at insurance giant AIG over allegedly racist jokes that compared him to the cartoon character Fat Albert. Weeks later, Safeway’s general counsel made an allegedly offensive joke during a shareholder’s meeting that soon went viral and cast a negative light on his company, the San Francisco Chronicle reports....
