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The Cultural Calculus of Competitive Advantage
Strategic planning is a firm's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and human assets. It is the formal consideration of a firm's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:
- What do we do?
- For whom do we do it?
- How can we do more of it?
For most firms, the answer to this third question results in the decision to grow the firm geographically, through the development of niche practice areas, through industry focus, through practice specialization or through some combination of the above. Strategic options typically fall within two choices: Buy it or build it. Grow inorganically or grow organically. The emphasis in many firms is weighted toward buying growth (inorganic growth) through laterals, acquisitions and mergers, primarily because this growth path is quicker, more manageable and returns on the investment easier to substantiate.
Inorganic growth strategies accept the premise that clients benefit from a law firm's faster-than-market growth and bigger-than-average size, and in many respects they do. But in numerous ways, clients do not benefit from an expanding and increasingly complex law firm. In fact, one could argue that a lack of attention to organic growth initiatives in firms is at the heart of the disconnect many in-house counsel feel for their outside law firms.
The reality is that in-house counsel are not crying out for more lawyers or bigger law firms with more offices and more practice areas. They are asking law firms to become better aligned with their business interests, to understand their businesses more deeply, to become familiar with their technology and their processes, to continuously improve their efficiency in delivering legal services and to elevate their levels of service. They are asking firms to build better, more client-focused firms. And that's good for law firms because strong client-centered firms attract and retain clients like the gravitational pull of large planets.
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Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Stranger to the Deed Rule
In 1987, a unanimous Court of Appeals reaffirmed the vitality of the "stranger to the deed" rule, which holds that if a grantor executes a deed to a grantee purporting to create an easement in a third party, the easement is invalid. Daniello v. Wagner, decided by the Second Department on November 29th, makes it clear that not all grantors (or their lawyers) have received the Court of Appeals' message, suggesting that the rule needs re-examination.