The Treasury Department's Guidelines on Executive Pay
President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner stood together on Feb. 4, 2009, to announce the Treasury Department's new set of guidelines restricting executive compensation at financial institutions that receive governmental money. Here's what this entails.
Giving 'Til It Hurts
Even with firm cuts and layoffs, no firm can afford to give up a community-related giving practice. It can, though, and should be, controlled.
New ABA Ruling on Lateral Hiring
The American Bar Association's House of Delegates voted on Feb. 16 to amend its Model Rule of Professional Conduct governing conflicts of interest stemming from lateral hiring. Here's a brief discussion of the amendment and what it means.
Issues Facing Law Firm Ethics Counsel
Many law firms, particularly larger ones, designate attorneys or committees to address and resolve a variety of issues, from hiring, legal and insurance concerns to ethics issues. This article focuses upon the ethics function, and the unique ethics issues that are faced today by law firm ethics counsel.
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How to Safeguard Employee Data
Employers should be aware of the rapid growth of data privacy and security laws, which may affect their methods of conducting business and handling personal employee information. The new laws carry with them a private right of action in some cases, civil penalties as much as $500,000 and in some states, administrative investigations.
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The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and What It Means for Employers
When is history simply that: "history"? Perhaps never under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which sailed through the House and Senate in January and became the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Obama.
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The Importance of Performance Evaluations
It is that time of year when many managers are either presented with the daunting and time-consuming task of completing performance appraisals or have just finished their appraisals and are waiting to communicate the results to the employees. In either situation, the process is usually coupled with questions from managers as to why evaluations are necessary. Employees often wonder themselves.
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The Employee Free Choice Act
The proposed Employee Free Choice Act ("EFCA") would dramatically alter the landscape of labor-management relations in favor of unions seeking to organize employees of non-union employers. Businesses that do not prepare soon for the impact of this prospective law, as well as their employees, will be significantly affected.
Legal Economics
The upward spiral of legal costs, including the demands of Electronic Database Discovery (EDD) and the impact on early case assessment, puts pressure on departmental legal budgets. Artificial floors created by budgets derived from prior-year expenditures will give way to application of traditional return on investment (ROI) analysis to set appropriate cost levels.
The Whole Foods Antitrust Saga
A couple of years ago few people would have thought that a socially conscious company that specializes in selling organic groceries would find itself in a knock-down, drag-out brawl with the Federal Trade Commission. But that's just what has unfolded as a result of the FTC's challenge of the merger between Whole Foods Market, Inc. and Wild Oats Markets, Inc.
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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 ›
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- 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 ›