Features

With the instability in the corporate world today, employees ' both managerial and not ' are changing jobs or being laid off routinely. The employee who spends his entire career with one company is clearly now the exception, not the rule. Gone too is the concept of "loyalty up ' loyalty down." Corporations today can no longer afford to show their appreciation to long-term employees, as was the case a generation ago. In return, corporate employees do not reciprocate the same loyalty as they did in years past. This article discusses some strategies for dealing with the possibility of a hostile former employee sabotaging your otherwise valid claim or defense.

Many corporate executives and in-house attorneys have complained about acts done "anonymously" over the Internet and the lack of accountability for Internet users. Each has seemingly been harmed by various online conduct, such as defamation, trade libel, trade secret leakage and other acts that occur because of Internet use and abuse. Many Internet users do not realize that an experienced lawyer can actually find their identity, location, and the situs of the damaging action(s).

Features

What are the biggest litigation concerns right now in corporate America? What industries face the highest incidence of legal action? How do corporate law departments regard their litigation firms? And by what criteria do general counsel select the firms that litigate on their behalf, and what areas of legal service do they feel need the greatest improvement?

When a lawsuit looms, corporate counsel have traditionally known what to do. They issue a litigation hold, telling company employees to maintain all records related to the disputed matter. <br>Unfortunately, that's not good enough any more. Attorneys can no longer simply issue instructions and leave it up to company employees to comply. <br>Two recent federal court rulings hold companies and their counsel to a higher standard, requiring them to act aggressively and proactively in order to preserve company records. Otherwise, a company that destroys discoverable records can face harsh sanctions for spoliation.

Joel Rose authored last month's <i>A&amp;FP</i> article on how to balance compensation for law firm partners whose strengths lay in origination, production and management. So <i>A&amp;FP</i> sought his reaction to the following thought-provoking quote from Peter C. Lando and Matthew B. Lowrie.

Features

Last month's sidebar article on "profitability levers" invited ' well, predicted ' corrections to my hearsay report on the origin of the RULES acronym for profitability factors: realization, utilization, leverage, expense control, and speed of billing and collection. <br>Joseph A. Bailey of PwC, a textbook coauthor cited in that sidebar and also the coauthor of this month's feature article on globalizing law firm operations, concurs with my source's belief that Bob Arndt was one of the RULES originators.

The June edition introduced numerous accounting-related issues that firms confront when they use foreign currencies. This new article raises additional accounting-related challenges of international compensation and taxation, while also highlighting the broader planning issues associated with a law firm's decision to expand its operations globally.

Descriptive terminology is essential to providing effective patent protection for nanotechnology inventions, particularly from the perspective of future licensing and litigation activities. One of the key difficulties in patenting nanotech inventions, however, arises from the absence of established terminology. Failure to clearly define one's invention can lead to a number of unfortunate consequences, ranging from an overly narrow patent covering a limited scope of subject matter to a vague or overly broad patent susceptible to invalidation. This article will discuss: 1) recent decisions from the Federal Circuit that reveal how the use of descriptive terminology is essential to patenting nanotech inventions effectively, 2) how those decisions pose special problems for nanotech inventions, and 3) how those problems can be addressed through nanotech inventors acting as their own lexicographers and defining key terms in their patent specifications.