The International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) recently conducted its 2015 Inside/Outside Counsel Relationship Survey in order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between lawyers in corporate legal departments and lawyers in law firms. The results are reported herein.
The American Land Title Association (ALTA) recently announced it has expanded the availability of its Best Practices Framework resources to non-members. Title agencies can use the framework to demonstrate compliance to lenders, who need to meet regulatory requirements regarding oversight of their third-party service providers. Law firms that have a title agency and those that are considering adding one in the future should be aware of ALTA Best Practices.
The practice of law is constantly evolving, thanks to emerging technologies on which businesses now rely. Fortunately, technology to support the legal profession has stepped up to this challenge, bringing automation to tedious processes.
Professional legal marketers are by and large responsible for the creative and labor-intensive effort involved in developing a strong law firm brand. After all, a brand does not develop by chance, but rather is strategically planned, crafted and 'communicated.
A cooperating witness in the Dewey & LeBoeuf criminal trial, Dianne Cascino, testified last month that she didn't believe she was breaking the law when she made accounting adjustments as the firm's director of revenue support.
Attorneys rarely think about billings and collections in the summer or early fall. Instead, those are topics often left to the year-end collections push. By waiting, however, attorneys lose money, assume risks and otherwise miss important red flags for potential problems that can be avoided or resolved.
Professional service organizations traditionally have elected a pass thru entity status (S Corp., LLC, LLP, partnership) in order to reduce double taxation at the principal's level. Similar additional taxation may occur with C Corps. and accumulated earnings tax as well as other confiscatory grabs. These issues create an impediment for the current accumulation of funds to satisfy a principal's buyout in future years.
In this article, we bring the views and opinions from the client's perspective into focus on issues involving pricing, service, marketing, strategy, differentiation and more.
Reporters are under tremendous pressure to publish their stories quickly and attract readers. That makes it even more imperative for communications professionals to make it easy for journalists to remember which of your firm's attorneys are available for comment on key issues, have something to share that is both insightful and has bottom-line impact, and are readily accessible for comments.
Summer has just passed, and we are all heavily involved in the final months of the year. Nevertheless, now is the time to prepare for next summer, and here is why.
