LJN Newsletters

The legal industry continues to treat business development as though it is primarily an attorney behavior issue. It is not. The firm absolutely has the expertise, but what it lacks is retrieval speed and accuracy.

The next real divide in the legal market is unlikely to be intelligence. The divide will be between institutions that can reliably retrieve and deploy what they already know and those that cannot. The firms that win will be the ones that can surface the right knowledge, in the right hands, before anyone else does.

A current work-for-hire dispute over rights to the musical adaptation, cast album compositions and sheet music based on the children’s horror novel Goosebumps: Phantom of the Auditorium explores the inter-relationship of work-for-hire and copyright-ownership language in agreements signed both before and after the Goosebumps play was created.

In a closely followed venue dispute, the Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey recently held that venue in the District was proper in the Chapter 11 cases of Multi-Color Corporation and its affiliates. The decision is significant because it offers an analytical framework for determining a debtor’s “principal assets” under section 1408 of the Bankruptcy Code.

In a decision that could reshape the landscape for landlords across the country, New York’s Appellate Division unanimously ruled that the State Human Rights Law violates the Fourth Amendment to the extent it mandates landlord participation in the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.

If managed with purpose, a patent portfolio can be one of a company’s most valuable strategic assets. Too often, portfolios grow without a clear connection to business objectives, consuming time and money without delivering meaningful value. A thoughtful patent audit helps companies refocus their efforts, reduce waste, and ensure their intellectual property supports long-term growth. Here are practical tips to guide an effective audit.

Administrative services should be one of the easiest areas for a law firm to get right and one of the most impactful when they do. But that is not what we see in the market today.

By the time they pick up the phone or fill out a contact form, many perspective clients have already formed a strong impression of your firm and your attorneys. For law firm marketers, that shift has real implications for how we think about search and discoverability. That’s where answer engine optimization — AEO — comes in.