LJN Newsletters

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

Can hyperlinks on one Web site that link to another site where copyrighted materials are displayed constitute copyright infringement?
Although courts in at least two decisions have declined to recognize the potential of copyright infringement from the mere use of such hyperlinks, the recent Indiana federal district court case, Batesville Services, Inc v. Funeral Depot, Inc., concluded that a defendant's use of hyperlinks on a Web site that link to copyrighted material on another Web site could constitute unlawful copyright infringement.