Jonathan Bick
Law firms use Internet technology to communicate in ways that were not possible 10 years ago. <br>This boon in client-to-counsel and internal firm communications has allowed lawyers to share information as never before. But, more important, the technology associated with the Internet allows law firms direct control over Net communications because they own the individual networks that allow information to be shared, a situation that brings increased liability for copyright infringement, unless firms comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The good news for practitioners is that compliance requires little investment of time or money. Similarly, e-mail protection is readily available at little or no additional cost.
Features
Monica B. Richman
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Melanie Bradley
Consider this tempting business scenario: Your e-commerce marketing manager has a new, and effective, method to drive traffic to the company Web site ' purchase your competitors' trademarks as keywords to match Internet users' searches to a "sponsor" listing for your company. The sweet spot of the proposal is that as a sponsor, your listing will appear before all other relevant search results. That will give your company an advantage over competitors. <br>So, do you tell your manager to purchase third-party trademarks as keywords? And how have the courts dealt with this situation in this country and abroad? Most important in advising e-commerce clients, though, is this consideration: How can you reduce risks associated with buying third-party trademarks as keywords?
Features
Stanley P. Jaskiewicz
Collecting taxes from remote sellers has long plagued tax collectors ' in fact, since well before e-commerce of any kind came onto the scene. On the seller side, everyone ' catalog and mail-order merchants, as well as e-commerce sites ' would all welcome relief from managing the rules of more than 7,500 taxing jurisdictions. <br>Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked states from requiring sellers to collect and turn over sales tax, unless the seller has sufficient in-state presence. But e-commerce has called new and very visible attention to the problem.
Features
Stephen W. Skonieczny
What does the in-house lawyer need to be doing today to be prepared for the upcoming Proxy Statement season and to ensure that his client's deferred compensation plans and agreements are in compliance with (or exempt, <i>ie</i>, grandfathered, from) IRC '409A?
Joseph Howie
Corporations and law firms who manage large ongoing and mission-critical litigation, such as toxic tort or products liability cases, are supercharging the databases they rely on to track and manage the facts and documents in those cases. They are adding full text and linguistic pattern searching capabilities to enable them to gain better command and mastery of the facts and the documents in the case. It is, after all, difficult to have command and mastery of facts or documents you can't find, or to see relationships or patterns in documents you've never before reviewed as a group. Not only are the new databases more effective, but the costs of supercharging them are often offset by savings from avoiding the ongoing costs of the legacy databases.
Features
Peter C. Sprung
Recent amendments to the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines make several significant changes to the provisions concerning corporate compliance programs, and reinforce broader shifts taking place in the field of corporate governance. Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act imposes additional duties on corporate boards for the integrity of a company's financial controls, the new guidelines seek to make boards responsible for promoting the effectiveness of a corporation's legal and ethical controls. Boards of directors must assume responsibility for the effectiveness of compliance programs, which now encompass not only criminal laws but also ethics and corporate culture.
Features
ALM Staff
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Law Journal Newsletters
<i>A&FP</i> warmly welcomes back PwC Tax Partner and U.S. Law Firm Tax Services Leader Joseph A. Bailey, Jr. for a new tour of duty on our Board of Editors.
Features
ALM Staff
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Law Journal Newsletters
Legal management consultancy Altman Weil, Inc. has named our Board Member William F. Brennan, CPA, CMA, as the firm's newest principal.
Richard H. Stieglitz
The federal government is bending over backwards to simplify, liberalize and encourage the use of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). In a recent announcement, for example, the Treasury Department detailed just how easy it is for banks to offer HSAs to their customers. Recent guidance from the IRS has tried to allow as many taxpayers to qualify as possible.
Joseph A. Bailey
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Amy Choquette Smith
Perhaps inadvertently, Congress gave a double profitability boost to law partners when it recently enacted the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 ' a provision of which slashes the recovery period for leasehold improvements. To take advantage of these benefits, however, firms must invest in qualified leasehold improvements during 2005.
