Enough Is Enough! The Scope of the 'Perpetual' Right to Cure
Is the landlord's right to cure a defect in the premises a perpetual one? The answer depends on where you are, what your lease says, and whether you have documented complaints and repairs adequately.
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Arbitration Clauses In International Contracts
Parties to all international contracts face different issues depending on whether the other contracting party is a privately owned enterprise or a State-owned entity. In both circumstances, the foreign investor may have legitimate concerns about the partiality the local judiciary may have towards parties from its own State if a contractual dispute arises and about the enforceability of any judgment against the local party. When the other contracting party is itself a Sovereign State, the foreign investor confronts the universal perception ' if not actual reality ' that a judiciary as a government entity may be controlled by the State and biased against the investor. <br>For international transactions, arbitration in a neutral forum offers the hope of reducing bias and avoiding parallel lawsuits in different countries.
Survey Says ... In-House Lawyer Salaries Are On The Rise
For the past 30 years, Altman Weil, Inc. has conducted and published its annual Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey (the Survey). The Survey is an important tool that allows corporate human resource departments and CLOs to position lawyer compensation based on relevant benchmarks. Altman Weil's 2004 Edition of the Survey consists of salary, bonus and total compensation data earned by in-house lawyers in 2003. The Survey also reports specific information related to stock options and other incentives. <br>Surveys should never be the sole tool in determining lawyer compensation. They do, however, provide important benchmarking information to be used in conjunction with an individual's performance, professional background and specialty area, as well as other factors. This article focuses on the salaries of in-house lawyer positions.
Eight Ways To Save Money On Legal Fees
Some may wonder why a partner in a major law firm is going to tell you how to save money on litigation legal expenses. The answer is simple. My job, first and foremost, is to obtain the best possible result for my clients. In my view (and the view of my colleagues), achieving the best result includes cost efficiency and cost effectiveness. Over the course of 18 years, I have had a front row seat to a wide range of client approaches to managing ' or not managing ' legal fees.
The Tangled Web
Your marketing specialist approaches you with a great idea for Internet advertising ' purchasing trademarks of your company's competitors and for complimentary products as keywords to match Internet users conducting searches in your product category to an advertisement for your company. Do you advise your company to purchase third-party trademarks as keywords? How have the courts dealt with this scenario? How can you reduce risks associated with purchasing third party trademarks as keywords? What are the international implications? This article addresses these issues.
Everything But the Kitchen Sink
You've just pulled a steaming pepperoni pizza from the oven and open a kitchen drawer to look for the right tool. Will any tool do? They're all kitchen…
Creating An Effective Deal Database
Managing the life cycle of a transaction, whether an offering, a financing or a merger, requires an attorney to seek information from disparate sources within the firm. These searches are often inefficient, time-consuming and may not always yield the required data. The firm can use knowledge management (KM) techniques to build a one-stop repository of transaction data to help attorneys manage a transaction from pitch to press release.
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A Lesson in CRM: What Matters to Lawyers Are Matters
Client relationship management (CRM) applications succeed within the law firm environment when they address both the organization's strategic needs, as well as the user's individual needs. These systems also relieve lawyers from the manual drudgery of managing and calculating their billable hours. Both the organization and individual lawyers obtain obvious value from these systems. Win-win. <br>But with so many CRM products in the marketplace with varying capabilities, there seems to be a growing disconnect between the strategic value that firms enjoy from these solutions, and the benefits derived by individual lawyers. The challenge therefore becomes one of focus.
Business Development Driver: Leverage Knowledge Management
Knowledge management (KM) has about as many definitions as it does implementations, and in law firms it was recognized early on as a tool to help lawyers in supporting their clients. Lots of paper, information, and knowledge to manage ' and robust document management systems emerged as KM solutions. That's fine for the lawyers, but in marketing and business development, it's who you know as much as it is what you know. At Duane Morris, where our Marketing and Business Development Department is only 3 years old, we were able to grow this functional area around the key information and processes needed to be successful.
Design-Around Patent Strategies for Patentees and Competitors
Patentees and competitors must take proactive steps to handle design-around issues related to intellectual property matters. Using a design-around strategy, a competitor can produce an equivalent product that is legally non-infringing on a patentee's issued patent. Successful design-around strategies can present time and cost savings in terms of research and development costs, legal fees and potential litigation costs and also can minimize the delay in commercializing an equivalent product. For example, by designing around, a competitor has the incentive to potentially capture a significant market share by producing an equivalent product while undercutting the patentee's profits.
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