The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, was designed to balance the demands of the workplace with the personal and economic needs of families and to promote the national interest by preserving the stability of families. <br>However, in the 11 years since the FMLA was enacted, evolving results from U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) regulations, court decisions, fluid medical guidelines and a changing workplace have created impediments to an employer's ability to operate its business reasonably-in ways that Congress did not intend.

A witty, punny tale with a moral ' partners and general counsel are after the same thing: Quality legal work at lower cost, with profitability (and a good meal).

As the economy improves and deals begin to flow into Silicon Valley anew, firms are again relying on mid-level corporate associates to do a lot of the work. Trouble is, 3 years of deal drought have left many of those associates short on the experience necessary to handle the tasks.

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British legal giant Clifford Chance is closing its offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles after the defection of several partners to San Francisco-based Orrick, Herrington &amp; Sutcliffe.

Recent court rulings in e-commerce.

e-Mail has certainly changed the way businesses communicate, and many commentators predict that instant messaging is poised to bring about the next corporate-communications revolution, an event that raises numerous questions for today's corporations.

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Week after week, month after month, warnings flood e-commerce, and brick-and-mortar enterprises, about the technology we all have come to depend on at home and at work. New threats from viruses, hackers or just bug-filled software make the cliche, "Can't live with it, can't live without it" an increasingly accurate descriptor of our high-tech world. <br>But could we really live for long without our computers? Instead, long before anyone worried about the virus of the day, businesses planned against disaster to avoid any type of disruption to the many devices we rely on.

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You think your client's company has a good case. From what you can gather, the allegations that your company, or one you represent, stole trade secrets from a rival are completely unfounded. But then you enter discovery. Your opposition requests a whole host of e-mails ' predictable these days. <br>Outside and in-house counsel quickly realize that with all the storage IT departments have added to accommodate the expanding volume of e-mails a company produces, some firms have no systematic program for eliminating no-longer needed e-mails. As a result, you learn that the amount of e-mails and related electronic documents that must be retrieved under discovery is staggering - hundreds of thousands. It soon becomes clear that, although the case should have been defendable, it's more financially sound for the company to begin negotiating a settlement.