LJN Newsletters

  • Falling Stock Prices?

    Open any major newspaper over the last few months and you will find a surprising number of articles detailing the significant drop in a public company's stock price in mere hours or days after the disclosure that the company has been civilly sued, be it a class action, securities fraud case, or harassment suit. The decline in a company's stock price following the disclosure of a pending lawsuit is not by any means new. Yet, the speed and extent of the decline in a company's stock appears to have greatly accelerated in recent years. As a result, public companies are now faced with a growing number of lawsuits geared principally at obtaining a speedy settlement by leveraging the lawsuit's potential impact on a company's stock value.

    March 17, 2005Stephen R. Smith and Natalie Cortez

  • Employers Beware

    It is a sad but true fact that employers are accused of discrimination on an almost daily basis. While most of these claims are without merit, it is critical that employers take them seriously and caution managers and supervisors that treating the complainer differently or more harshly because of the complaint is a recipe for disaster.

    March 17, 2005Mark Blondman and Brooke Iley

  • Identity Theft: The Next Corporate Liability Wave?

    The nation's fastest growing crime, identity theft, is combining with greater corporate accumulation of personal data, increasingly vocal consumer anger and new state and federal laws to create significant new legal, financial and reputation risk for many companies.

    March 17, 2005Toby J.F. Bishop and John Warren

  • Mandatory Arbitration for Employee Benefits Disputes

    Thanks to the well-publicized rising cost of litigation and the growing availability of alternative dispute resolution options, mandatory arbitration provisions are more popular than ever among would-be litigants. The employee benefits realm is no exception.
    Indeed, there is a trend toward using arbitration in the benefits context that is fueled by a growing sense among practitioners that a well-crafted policy mandating arbitration of employee benefits disputes can be a useful tool to save an employer time and money.

    March 17, 2005Craig C. Martin, William L. Scogland and Amanda S. Amert

  • Surviving A Malpractice Fiasco: 10 Views

    Recently I asked members of A&FP's Editorial Board and several new contributors for their thoughts on how a law firm might best deal with the financial blow of an unusually large settlement or penalty assessed against the firm. Last month, in Part One, we got our roundtable discussants' views on how to keep a firm from crumbling immediately after a malpractice disaster. Concluding the discussion, here are their views on professional liability insurance.

    March 16, 2005A&FP Board members and new contributors

  • Basics Revisited: Reducing Law Firm Overhead Costs

    A law firm management's primary focus, like most professional service firms, is new business, billing a high percentage of partners' and associates' time and, of course, collecting a high percentage of billings. Under pressure to increase revenues and grow the bottom line, executives often overlook smaller firm overheads such as office supplies and related items, printing, stationery, overnight delivery, telecom and copiers.

    March 16, 2005Rick Stieglitz

  • Taxation Committee Report JCS-02-05: A Closer Look

    The Congressional tax change proposal for owners of LLPs, LLCs and S-corporations would fill only a small part ' about 1.5% ' of the projected Social Security funding gap; but the proposal looms much larger when compared with other elements of the Joint Committee's overall tax-revision package

    March 16, 2005Joe Danowsky

  • Committee Aims To Standardize Pass-Through Taxation

    If an influential congressional committee has its way, some professionals and many small business owners could be forced to dig into their own pockets to help bridge the projected $3.75 trillion funding gap for Social Security.
    At issue is the sticky subject of limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships and so-called "S" corporations, and the manner in which participants in those businesses pay their Social Security and medical insurance employment taxes.

    March 16, 2005T.R. Goldman

  • Defining Political Spam

    The effects of e-mail on American political campaigns are dramatic, as demonstrated last November, when e-communication played a decisive factor in several election victories. The Internet as cyber forum offers candidates the opportunity to contact a million voters for about $100 using unsolicited bulk e-mails, often called spam. Under the First Amendment, political spam is generally lawful, but political spam used for fundraising and other specific types of communication may cause legal difficulties for candidates and their agencies ' from canvassers to other entities sending the spam, however well-intentioned.

    March 15, 2005Jonathan Bick

  • Virtual Cost Cutting

    Predictions were that e-mail would revolutionize business communication ' and slash its cost. In fact, the doyens and novices alike of e-mail promised that this admittedly useful, and now ubiquitous, tool would eliminate postage and paper expenses, as well as the hidden-delay costs of waiting for even an overnight package to arrive.
    But in an era when deals are negotiated and closed entirely online, has e-mail's reality lived up to its promise? While business is certainly being done more quickly than in the dark ages before e-mail ' remember, say, the early 1990s? ' is it being done more efficiently?

    March 15, 2005Stanley P. Jaskiewicz