Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%

Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.

Features

Associate Development ' A Singular Proposal

Elaine Barlas

Law firms carry on a juggling act when it comes to associate development. Associates grumble that they receive insufficient training. They worry not only about their competence to deal with their current assignments, but whether they will have marketable skills for the future. Partners find this frustrating and bewildering. Their firms have large catalogs of courses, provided both in-house and externally at significant cost to the firm. What more can associates want? <br>Is there a way to break the cycle? Sure, but someone's got to have the courage to do something different. Here's one approach.

Baby-Boomers in Transition

Sheldon I. Banoff

Much has been written about the popular culture of the "baby-boom" generation (those born in the post WWII era and now in their 50s-60s), but not much about that age group in law firms and how to take them into account in long-term firm strategy. Part One of this article looked at a model (Model 1) with Partner A ' a full-share equity "baby-boomer" partner (BBP) and rainmaker with a substantial client base. Part Two looks at a BBP who is well-respected, and while not a great business generator, has technical skill.

Features

Covenants Not To Compete: For Everyone At The Firm Except Attorneys?

Debra L. Raskin & Stephanie A. Darigan

A covenant not to compete is an increasingly popular device employers use to bind employees not to work for, or as, a direct competitor. Such covenants are most often found in employment contracts, but they can also be a separate document, signed by the employee at hiring, during employment, or upon leaving. However, in many states, a covenant not to compete cannot stand alone as a binding agreement, but must be ancillary to an employment or other type of contract that provides some benefit to the employee. <br>While covenants not to compete may be used by employers in certain court-delineated circumstances, ethical rules specifically bar the application of such restrictive covenants to attorneys.

Around the Firms

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

Ex-partners Lose Bid To Speed Funds from Fish &amp; Neave<br>Nixon Peabody Employees On Board at Piper <br>Pillsbury Strikes Oil

Features

New Frontiers for Baker Donelson's KM

John D. Green

So much has been written about knowledge management in the past 10 years and so many products purporting to enable knowledge management have been pushed on the legal community, that I am not sure that the term is relevant anymore. However, I have always thought some of the main tenets of KM make a lot of sense.<br>An exciting project that we are rolling out at Baker Donelson starting this month conforms to those main tenets of KM.

Features

Legal Acrobatics A Review of Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0

Marc Lauritsen

If you haven't already seen a couple reviews of Acrobat 7.0, you must not be reading much legal tech trade literature! I've caught at least half a dozen already. Adobe Systems has accompanied the release of their latest version with quite a media blitz, at least in the legal sector. And for good reason. The Acrobat product family encompasses a host of features highly useful for legal professionals.

Features

Product Review Using Ringtail CaseBook to Manage Complex Litigation

Mark Brennan

Bryan Cave LLP is an 800-lawyer firm with litigators in eight U.S. cities and London. In 2002, the firm asked me to evaluate our litigation technology and litigation support services. For better or worse, we had neither budget nor staff during the first 9 months. While we could not affect any immediate change, this was the ideal opportunity to do a needs assessment, survey the available technology, evaluate the trends in the market, and ultimately plan and budget for implementation.

Practice Tip: What You Need to Know About Fighting Spyware and Adware

Sarah Gordon

While obvious security threats like fast-spreading worms have a tendency to garner news headlines, other stealthy security risks threaten law firms and other businesses every day. An increasing amount of spyware and adware programs have the ability to facilitate the disclosure of business information and risk privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and system availability. Law firms ' like other corporations ' usually accumulate a vault of information that could cause serious problems if it were shared with the wrong contacts or, even worse, stolen. Spyware's evolution from simple cookies to a range of sophisticated user-tracking systems has left many businesses without the control over their proprietary data and <br>A recent survey by IT industry analysts IDC identified spyware as the fourth greatest threat to enterprise security.

Counsel Concerns

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decided that a former associate in a law firm can continue to represent one-time Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King in a fee dispute between King and the associate's former firm.

Features

Decision of Note: <b>Grateful Dead Photos In Book Is Fair Use</b>

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decided that incorporating several thumbnail reproductions of concert posters into the book "Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip" without a copyright license from the plaintiff archive constituted a fair use.

Need Help?

  1. Prefer an IP authenticated environment? Request a transition or call 800-756-8993.
  2. Need other assistance? email Customer Service or call 1-877-256-2472.

MOST POPULAR STORIES