Features

Estate Professionals Can Be Compensated for Services Performed Before Entry of a Retention Order, Even Without Nunc Pro Tunc Orders
Bankruptcy professionals should be relieved by a recent decision holding that although nunc pro tunc orders approving a professional's retention are now considered "inappropriate" in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan, there is nothing in the Bankruptcy Code, Bankruptcy Rules, or applicable case law preventing an award of compensation before a retention order is entered.
Features

Introducing Pricing Transparency to Legal Services
The COVID-19 crisis has caused a money crunch across industries, and CLD budgets are tightening. This downturn demands that CLDs stop writing blank checks for services of indeterminate scope and duration. Here are some ideas for law departments looking to do better.
Features

Legal Analytics and the Evolving Practice of Law
While we may use analytics differently in our respective companies, one thing is certain: Legal analytics is the future and it's time to jump on board.
Features

Corporate Resiliency: How to Ensure Financial Health Ahead of an Economic Downturn
Proper planning is key to ensuring a company's financial health when facing an economic downturn. Although companies will come into such planning with different levels of financial health, the same considerations can be helpful in determining the best path forward.
Features

Small Law, Big Changes: The Coming Disruption in the Legal Industry
The billable hour is still profitable from a transactional perspective, but from a strategic perspective, in today's economy, that profitability has begun to erode. That's because our economy has fundamentally transformed into a service economy that is based on leverage and scale.
Features

COVID-19 Downturn Likely Won't Impact Health of Law Firm Billable Hour
Not even the economic downturn imposed by the COVID-19 virus may be able to take credit for eliminating the billable hour. While attorneys could be relying more on legal tech to help defray costs, transitioning to a new pricing infrastructure in the midst of so much uncertainty could prove to be a bridge too far.
Features

Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics
Firms Are Applying Communications Lessons from the Great Recession As They Deliver Bad News During the Coronavirus Pandemic. Many firms have appeared in recent weeks to be signaling compassion, embracing (relative) transparency and sharing sacrifices across lawyers and staff. That can help make even painful cuts less harmful for a firm's internal morale and outside reputation.
Features

How a Law Firm's Comp System Affects Profitability and Partner Satisfaction
Compensation systems are typically a strategic afterthought, seen as the means by which to allocate the spoils of a successful strategy. They're viewed as affecting the level of grousing among partners, but not a firm's performance. The data, however, indicates the reverse is true.
Features

How to Survive (and Even Thrive) During and After the COVID-19 Lockdown
The ability to adapt, be nimble and pivot as necessary is crucial to surviving and thriving in ever-changing economic climates. Communicating in the age of social distancing requires a new way of thinking and being — not just in the virtual workplace with our peers but also how we communicate and partner with our clients.
Features

Linking Partner Pay to Strategic Firm Objectives
In general law firms have been slower to adopt pay for performance systems. What law firms need now, and this article describes, is an approach to partner compensation that closely links a partners pay to their ability to contribute to the achievement of the firm's strategic objectives.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›