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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: New Report Reveals Opportunities for Improvement on Digital Marketing Strategy for Law Firms
Jamie Diaferia and Jennifer Johnson Scalzi
For those of us who have devoted more years in legal marketing than we’d care to admit, it’s heartening to see the field receiving the recognition it deserves. The demand for top talent has never been higher and marketing plans are getting more attention from firm management. Still, there is more work for law firms to do. That’s particularly true in digital marketing.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
Supreme Court, Finally, Takes Up Google v. Oracle
Scott Graham
The U.S. Supreme Court has jumped into a titanic copyright battle between Oracle Corp. and Google LLC with both barrels. The court’s involvement is sure to reignite a 50-year-old debate over how much, if any, software should be subject to copyright, and the contours of the fair use defense in the digital age.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Effectively Managing Increasing Client Security Requirements
Christopher Perrotta
Gone are the days of naively assuming our confidential data is secure. Increasingly, clients, stakeholders, regulators and others are demanding proof that firms are actively protecting the PII to which they have access, and this evidence is being demanded both before and after security incidents. It is imperative law firms have the positions and processes in place to handle security incidents with urgency, accuracy and completeness.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Law Firms Enter the Golden Age of Data Mining
Doug Stansfield
As a matter of practice, law firms generate and store incomprehensible amounts of data. Most, if not all, of that data has been digitized and many firms that recognize the untapped value of their data have begun to leverage sophisticated technologies to mine it for reusable work product and valuable insights.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Can Artificial Intelligence Fix Security Issues?
Nina Cunningham
There is great enthusiasm about what AI can do to promote better living conditions, evoking wisdom, providing business intelligence through deep analysis of behavior and habits, by signaling trends and anticipating demand. But there are other considerations as well. A critical one is cybersecurity.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
How the Healthcare Industry Can Fight Rising Cyber-Attacks
Jason G. Weiss
The healthcare industry is facing an alarming proliferation of cyber perils. Why? Because our healthcare system is a “soft target,” and particularly vulnerable because of its lifesaving work, where time is of the essence. It’s a recipe for disaster from a cybersecurity standpoint.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Cybersecurity Experts Needed in U.S.
Scott R. Malyk and Lin R. Walker
The Country Is In Dire Need of Experts Who Possess the Advanced Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required to Combat Cybersecurity Crimes
In an effort to protect our financial, personal, medical, and otherwise confidential data, as well as our election systems, we need to continue to attract and employ the services of the most qualified cybersecurity experts from around the world. However, at present, there is a dire shortage of such qualified experts in the United States.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Unique Cyber Risks Faced By the Cannabis Industry
Victoria Hudgins
All companies face cybersecurity threats, but the legalized cannabis industry’s storage of personally identifiable information and reliance on seed-to-sale tracking software can place it firmly within hackers’ crosshairs.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: New Data Types Challenge E-Discovery to Keep Pace
Cliff Dutton
Expanding the Scope of Data Has the Potential to Slow Down Discovery and Increase Cost, But If New Data Types Contain Uniquely Dispositive Content, It Will Be Necessary to Include Them In Order to Achieve Just Determinations
Data types evolve faster than law. New data types are expanding the scope of discoverable data. The variety, velocity and complexity of electronic evidence challenge legal processes and the technology-enabled legal applications that are designed to support them.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Safeguarding Your Intellectual Property
Matthew Calcagno
The documents that a firm produces are its greatest asset, yet firms historically have not made sufficient efforts to safeguard those documents from both internal and external threats. Law firms have typically had an open-door approach to document access. This means that anyone in your firm can likely access any document at any time, leaving your firm’s intellectual property entirely unprotected.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
What Is the Appropriate Statute of Limitations Period for BIPA Claims?
Sean Wieber, Patrick O’Meara and Eric Shinabarger
The BIPA compliance lag has led companies using or collecting biometric information to consider how far back their liability may extend. The Illinois General Assembly, however, did not include an explicit statute of limitations period in BIPA. As a result, the statute of limitations has become one of BIPA’s primary battlegrounds as litigants argue about potential class sizes and damages awards.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
The California Consumer Privacy Act: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask — 100 Days Out
Alan L. Friel
Part Two of a Two-Part Article
Part One of this article, last issue, covered how the CCPA applies to businesses — both in and outside California, the revenue threshold, proposed amendments and other open issues. Part Two continues with the rights that CCPA grants to Californians, the CCPA’s impact on company privacy policies, how other states’ privacy laws compare to the CCPA, exceptions and penalties for violating the Act.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
As Hackers Get Smarter, Can Law Firms Keep Up?
Christine Simmons and Xiumei Dong
“It’s Not the Hardware You Worry About, It’s the Mistake That Someone Makes That Inadvertently Gives a Bad Actor Access.”
The legal industry has poured significant resources into cybersecurity, leading to huge leaps in progress in the last decade. But there are areas where large and small law firms can do much better in preventing and reacting to data breaches, and the legal sector may risk falling behind other industries. That’s partly because hackers are learning how to circumvent law firm security systems, leading to a continuous game of cat and mouse.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
New Study Shows Which States Lead in Privacy Protection Laws
Sue Reisinger
General counsel who navigate the mishmash of state privacy laws may relate to a new study showing that individual U.S. states’ privacy statutes are spread across a broad spectrum.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
The California Consumer Privacy Act: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
Alan L. Friel
Part One of a Two-Part Article
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a comprehensive new consumer protection law set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020. In the wake of the CCPA’s passage, approximately 15 other states introduced their own CCPA-like privacy legislation, and similar proposals are being considered at the federal level. Part One of this article covers how the CCPA applies to businesses — both in and outside California, the revenue threshold, proposed amendments and other open issues.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Crisis Control: Best Practices for Emergency E-Discovery and Incident Response
Andrew Johnston
A set of steps and best practices that legal teams can follow to ensure thorough and efficient handling of e-discovery in crisis situations.
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The Bankruptcy Strategist
Faster, Shorter, Smarter, Better: Strategies for a New Era of Bankruptcy
Chris Updike and Joseph Zujkowski
Faster, Shorter, Smarter, Better
Among other trends, practitioners are increasingly using pre-packaged and pre-negotiated cases, drafting clearer and more concise pleadings, employing smarter deposit management practices, and harnessing improved technology — strategies for a new era of bankruptcy.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Podcasts Are the New Black for Law Firm Business Development
Gina Rubel
Before jumping into the podcast foray, law firm leaders must think strategically about podcasting as a tool for marketing and business development. Resources, bandwidth and buy-in are needed to produce a successful podcast — along with patience as podcasting success is determined by long-term results.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: A Closer Look At 3 Summer Cases Concerning Lost Data
Mike Hamilton
Summer 2019 put some interesting case law into the books. We’ll take a look at three cases having to do with lost data and whether spoliation sanctions were levied.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Digital Dive: 9 Best Practices for Blogging that Gets You New Business
Larry Bodine
Becoming a renowned expert in your field will bring you the best files from the most profitable clients — and the shortest path to becoming a thought leader is to write a blog.
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The Intellectual Property Strategist
Exploring the Nebulous Boundaries of Trade Dress
Nicole D. Galli
Now that we are in the digital age, questions have been raised about the trade dress of websites and apps.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Book Publishers’ Lawsuit Against Amazon’s Audible
Dan Clark
A coalition of publishers has sued Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, over a new feature announced last summer that will display the text of a book to listeners while it’s read to them by their device.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Security Worries for Online Video Game Companies
Victoria Hudgins
Fortnite video game developer Epic Games Inc. isn’t just dodging digital adversaries — now it’s been slammed with a class action lawsuit over a data breach.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
The California Consumer Privacy Act: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask — 100 Days Out
Alan L. Friel
Part One of a Two-Part Article
Responses to questions businesses frequently ask about the impacts of the CCPA. Implementation challenges inevitably will arise as a company works to apply these new requirements to its business practices. The time is now to start preparing for the CCPA, as well as for other new U.S. privacy laws that are likely to follow.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Increasing Client Requirements: Securing Law Firms for the 21st Century
Debra Gray
Gone are the days of “basic security.” What used to be optional is now standard: two factor authentication, complex passwords, clean desk policies, data encryption at rest and in transit, mobile device management and up-to-the-minute patching. Clients expect these items to already be in place and are further expanding their expectations.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Cybersecurity False Claims Act Cases: The Next Frontier
Andrew Mohr and C. Kelly Kroll
A new wave of False Claims Act cases is crashing ashore. Based on the federal government’s inclusion of toughened cybersecurity requirements for government contractors, numerous FCA cases will undoubtedly be filed and litigated in coming years against prime contractors and their major subcontractors for allegedly failing to comply with their contractual cybersecurity obligations.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Why Data Competency Is a Requisite for Tomorrow’s Practitioners
Josh Becker
Whether they like it or not, lawyers interact with data every day. While there is no need for them to seek advanced degrees in data science or statistics, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to provide adequate representation without being skilled in the uses of data.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Data Privacy Reviews: The Cornerstone of a Data Breach Response
Andrew Goodman
Including a managed document review vendor in your incident response plan is critical.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
What Is Your Dashboard Report Telling You? Chances Are, Not Much.
Jim Jarrell
Firms are struggling to capture compelling business intelligence about themselves. Until recently, most operated with a cadre of legacy operating systems, financial platforms and reporting technologies from different manufacturers that have no mechanism for connecting with each other. The disparate nature of these technologies has exacerbated the struggle to leverage data and display results in a reporting mechanism that helps direct the firm’s decision-making.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Marriott Moves to Dismiss Data Breach Lawsuit, Says Passport Numbers Useless to Hackers
Amanda Bronstad
In Its Motion To Dismiss, Marriott Insisted the Breach Caused No Harm to Its Guests and Attached a Declaration By a Former Government Official Who Wrote: “A U.S. Passport Is Virtually Impossible to Forge Successfully.”
Marriott is insisting that last year’s cyberattack did no harm to its hotel guests, not least of which because hackers cannot use stolen passport numbers.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: New Cases Provide Insights on the FRCP 37(e) ‘Reasonable Steps to Preserve’ Requirement
Philip Favro
The Franklin and Culhane Cases Demonstrate the Importance of Both Implementing and Then Following Corporate Litigation Readiness Measures for Purposes of FRCP 37(E)
An evaluation of FRCP 37(e) necessarily entails examining key motion practice flash points that have arisen since the implementation of the rule. One of the most significant of these flash points is what constitutes “reasonable steps to preserve” relevant ESI.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Demystifying Social Media Discovery
Todd Heffner
Social Media Escapes an Easy Definition, But You Know It When You See It
While it would be helpful to understand the technical details of collecting data from various social media platforms, what’s more important is what parts of social media might be relevant to a dispute and what that means for both the requesting and producing parties.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Cybersecurity In the Legal Space: Is Your Organization Prepared?
Sundhar Rajan
Organizations that continue to be complacent about data security ignore the considerable risks posed by a breach: extended downtime, loss of billable hours, destruction or loss of sensitive data and work product, and the potentially catastrophic costs associated with repairing the damage — both to their technology infrastructure and to their reputation and brand.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
GDPR & CCPA Are Just the Beginning
Karen A. Schuler
How Middle Market Companies Can Shore Up Their Data Privacy
The most significant overhaul to the EU’s data privacy policies in over 20 years, with extraterritorial reach, forced American businesses to remediate, and in some cases, overhaul their data privacy governance programs. But the GPDR was just the beginning. Organizations seeking compliance with the growing number of data privacy regulations will need to remain vigilant, especially for organizations that rely heavily on personal data.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019: Part Two
Jared Coseglia
A Reflection on the Year Behind, the Years Ahead, and Why Privacy Means So Much to Us
Part Two of a Two-Part Article
Part two of The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019 will outline what is happening within service providers, consultancies, and vendors will touch briefly on government agencies and will predict the near-future state of the U.S. privacy job market.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Summer 2019 E-Discovery Case Law Review
Mike Hamilton
A review of recent cases involving e-discovery.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Litigation Support, E-discovery and the Recovery of Costs
Nathan Curtis
The Data Explosion vs. Recovery Model Stagnation
For law firms, the pace of exponential growth of data is a substantial problem — mainly due to the fact that the law firm business model of processing, hosting and storing this avalanche of client data, however, has not evolved as quickly as the data itself.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: What GCs Want from Legal Technology
Gina Passarella Cipriani and Zach Warren
Legal Tech Companies Have to Get Out of Their Own Way In Vying for Law Department Adoption
The legal technology industry has some significant hurdles to overcome in its increased push to sell into legal departments, general counsel say, admitting they themselves are part of the problem.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
It’s Time to Take Third-Party Risk Seriously
Mark Sangster
The use of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile and cloud by vendors add to the question: Where is my data, and how can I protect it when it is in someone else’s hands? In the hustle and bustle of daily business, third parties often become the overlooked or unwitting accomplice in criminal activities.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Data-Driven Law Firm: The Next Frontier
Marcie Borgal Shunk
The next generation of elite law firms may have little in common with today’s leading global providers of legal services. Whereas historically top-performing law firms combine stellar talent with marquee clients, brand reputation and client-focused excellence to rise to the top, future leading law firms are equally likely to rise to power using a distinctly different recipe: namely, a mixture of market savvy, strategic agility and operational effectiveness powered by data.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019
A Reflection on the Year Behind, the Years Ahead and Why Privacy Means So Much to Us
Part One of a Two-Part Article
In just over a year since GDPR Day, privacy by design has made privacy as a profession one of the fastest growing and hottest verticals in and outside of the legal job market.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legislative Heat Wave: A Mid-Year Review of Upcoming Cybersecurity Laws and Enforcement Activity
Michael Bahar, Sarah Paul, Mary Jane Wilson-Bilik and Ali Jessani
While legislation to enhance data privacy rights and obligations continue to make headlines, regulators and legislators are also stepping up their cybersecurity expectations. In the first half of 2019, a number of states have updated their existing data breach notification laws and passed new cybersecurity requirements.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
How to Keep Mobile Data Safe: The Case for On-Device AI
Gevorg Karapetyan
Bring Your Own Device is one of the biggest compliance-related issues companies face today, and when it comes to security risks, law firms are prime targets. Considering law firms are built on their reputation, firms must make every assurance that the technology they use will protect their data.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Cybersecurity Spending on the Rise in 2019
Debra Frank Montero
As data security challenges continue to escalate, many law firms and corporate legal departments are upping their efforts to strengthen cyber defenses and minimize risks.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
SHIELD Act Signed in NY
F. Paul Greene
Defines Data Breach and Requires Data Security Controls
New York has brought itself into line with a number of states concerning how they define a data breach, and, where applicable, what substantive security controls they require.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Just Say No to Hackers
Frank Ready
Conference of Mayors Resolution Calls for Cities Not to Pay Ransomware
The underlying logic is pretty straightforward: if bad actors realize that there’s no longer any cash waiting for them at the end of the rainbow, they’ll eventually pack up their ball and go home.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
EU Court Rules Adding Facebook ‘Like’ Button Triggers GDPR Data Collection Obligation
Caroline Spiezio
Websites with embedded Facebook “like” buttons must inform users their data will be collected and processed by the social media giant, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Tech: Smart Speakers and E-Discovery
Brian Schrader
For businesses that own such a device, or for individual employees who might have a personally owned one on their office desk, the question of who owns any recorded data remains murky.
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Business Crimes Bulletin
Tech Companies Snapping Up White-Collar Lawyers
Xiumei Dong
As Silicon Valley technology companies face increasing government scrutiny, experienced white-collar practitioners are becoming hot commodities among the law firms seeking to represent tech-focused clients.
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Entertainment Law & Finance
Perspectives on Blockchain and the Music Industry
Stan Soocher
A Q&A with Entertainment Lawyer Leslie Zigel
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