Features

When Does Zero Equal More? The Add-In Budget
This article is about putting more money into the distributable income line on your monthly financial report; how to rethink and profit from your annual budget-planning cycle, which should be underway now and not postponed for January after the "year-end" collection silly season.
Features

Unleashing the Power of Flexibility In Law Firms for Recruitment, Retention, Diversity and Client Expansion
Embracing flexibility can provide law firms with a range of competitive advantages, from attracting and retaining top talent to fostering diversity and expanding their client bases.
Features

The Visibility Factor: Overcoming Not Being Seen
In most law firms, there are walls that can prevent all of us from being both seen and heard by all within an organization. However, these obstacles can be overcome in most settings, despite the different factors that may keep employees, supervisors and team members from prevailing over them.
Features

Outdated Compensation Plans Leave Young Lawyers Disenchanted About Leadership Roles
Without recognition for their varied contributions, young lawyers are likely to feel more disenchanted or disinterested in career longevity or leadership duties at a law firm.
Features

Mastering the Art of Handling Negative Comments On Social Media
Just as organizations prepare for disaster recovery and data breaches, having a well-thought-out social media response plan is equally critical. In this article, we delve deeper into dealing with negative comments on social media and shedding light on the intricacies of managing your online reputation.
Features

Law Firms Might Meet Budget, But Uncertainty Looms
With the end of the year in focus, most law firms may well finish in line with their budget plans. But analysts and observers also described the end-of-year profitability picture in Big Law as "tepid," "flat-ish" and "volatile," with 2024 promising plenty of uncertainty as well.
Features

Are Professional Associations Really Valuable?
In the legal profession, joining and maintaining membership in various professional associations is common practice. However, lawyers often overlook the critical question of whether their affiliation with these organizations yields substantial benefits, such as quality referrals and new clients.
Features

'Do More With Less' Is Theme from New Legal Ops Report
The overarching finding of Thomson Reuters Institute's "2023 Legal Department Operations Index" is that workloads are increasing but budgets aren't. The phrase "do more with less" appears three times in the report and similar sentiments appear on nearly every page of the its 25 pages.
Features

When Should Law Firms Speak Out On An Issue?
In an era of ESG characterized by heightened awareness of social justice issues, including terrorism, racial injustice, and reproductive rights, the question of whether law firms should take a public stance has become a significant discussion among firm leaders, businesses, and their employees.
Features

Embracing Drivers of Performance Other Than Billable Hours Can Be More Efficient and Resilient to Change
By shifting some focus away from input (billable hours) and embracing output (results), law firms can become more efficient and resilient to industry changes, improve client satisfaction, attract top talent and be better equipped to meet other, more long-term financial targets.
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- 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 ›