LJN Newsletters

Last spring ,i>The National Law Journal reported that firms are taking steps to make it harder for headhunters to poach associates, primarily by removing information about associates from their Web sites ' information as basic as direct-dial numbers, e-mail addresses and biographical or practice-group data. More recently, Law Firm, Inc. reported that only four of the top 10 firms deserved an "A" for the completeness of associate information on their Web sites (see, www.lawfirminc.com/texts/0505/dls0505.html). The first question this raises is simply whether "cloaking" associate information has any effect; and the second, more interesting, question is whether firms' cloaking associates - but not partners - tells us anything about how the market for lateral associates differs in structure and function from the market for lateral partners.

With globalization and the increasing number of mergers; with the opening of more branch offices by the national firms; and with record number of lawyers leaving law firms, competition in the legal profession has become more intense and cutthroat. As a result, are there more law firm bankruptcies on the horizon? If so, what are the ramifications? What procedures must be followed? The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the basic issues likely to surface in a law firm bankruptcy case.

Symantec Corp.'s acquisition of startup IMlogic Inc. underscores increased corporate instant messaging (IM), and highlights two small firms' major role as messaging technology providers.

The law and communications advances ' and the boundaries of current technology ' sometimes combine to slow or otherwise impinge to some degree on commerce of all kinds, including e-commerce, and even the publicly accessed commerce of ideas in the at-large forum of discussion that forms such a solid and critical foundation for democracy.

Recent cases in e-commerce law and in the e-commerce industry.

The traditional wisdom, "failing to plan is planning to fail," has been transformed into a rule of thumb for the tech sector: "plan for failure." Firms that do not explicitly anticipate systems failure run the risk of being unprepared for a catastrophe, just as Floridians must plan for hurricanes in August ' and New Orleans must now be prepared for potential dike breaches.

e-Commerce businesses must be particularly careful about how consumer information is collected and used, and whether such practices comply with the varying state laws ' especially considering that their Internet-based business more than likely reaches consumers in all 50 states.

Corporate management ' at traditional high-rise bricks-and-mortar enterprises and at e-commerce undertakings ' is afraid these days of destroying documents, and that's certainly easy to understand in the current climate of tightened regulation and increased use of technology for discovery.
Also, for some sectors, the rise in use of electronic commerce adds a dimension to the need for oversight of document management, as documents are deleted and moved among various parties electronically.