If your firm has a number of legal departments, how does one determine the profitability (or economic contribution) of each? Delving further into a specific department, how do you measure the profitability of a practice area?
The Practice Support Department has long recognized the importance of project management to promote cost-containment strategies and to ensure compliance with discovery requirements during the discovery phase of a litigation case. While the firm developed its own sophisticated project management database, the newly implemented iFramework software takes project management to a higher level.
Moving to an apprenticeship model holds great promise in helping young lawyers transition into practice and in helping firms show that their young associates can make valuable contributions to client service.
Even though there are signs that the economy is starting to recover, this recession will have a far great impact on the legal profession than any previous recession in the last 70 years. Here's why.
Soft skills training is typically delivered live so that all may observe and learn from one another's body language. Interpretation of non-verbal cues is an important dimension in soft skills training. A look at three case studies.
As the marketplace for legal services has become more and more competitive, law firms have hired business development professionals to develop targeted responses to RFPs. Is it working, though? Has the firm brought in more business, and has it capitalized on its success?
Last month, we highlighted the Top Five firms from The Fifth-Anniversary MLF 50. This month, Numbers Six and Seven from the Top 10 are featured. Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto and Pryor Cashman are profiled here as firms that literally "made a move" and used marketing in ways that increased their exposure and their business.
With 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.
Insiders (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.
At 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.
This 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.
While 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.
