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Interpreting entertainment-industry contract clauses or even whether there is an enforceable agreement often can be tricky. This article summarizes three recent court decisions dealing with these concerns.

Mattress retailer Sleep Number may pay up to $1.825 million in retention awards to 38 employees after a Southern District of New York bankruptcy judge rejected the U.S. trustee’s argument that some participants should be treated as insiders under the Bankruptcy Code. The awards were intended to keep key employees from leaving while Sleep Number completed its bankruptcy sale.

Jackson Walker has agreed to pay $15 million to former bankruptcy clients in a settlement of litigation the U.S Trustee’s Office filed alleging the Texas firm failed to disclose a romantic relationship between a former partner Elizabeth Freeman and former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones of the Southern District of Texas.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Connecticut decision in JNET Commc’ns offers a stark reminder that control of cash collateral is not a mere formality under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code; it is the crucial element of perfection itself.

In a recent decision in the bankruptcy case of Del Monte Foods, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey interpreted a liability management exercise that was challenged through the prepetition term loan agreement’s ratable sharing provision in the context of a debtor-in-possession financing and related roll-up, thereby providing the first actual market guidance on this issue.

The AI hype cycle has a name for lack of ROI — the trough of disillusionment, where inflated expectations meet unrealized results. But the gap between what was spent and what can be shown is not a technology problem. The technology works. The failure is operational.

A business plan nobody reviews after submission was never really a plan; it was a form. Five decisions, revisited on a quarterly rhythm and built on evidence instead of aspiration, is a discipline. Firms that make that shift won’t just get better plans, they’ll get plans attorneys actually use.

The legal industry doesn’t have a shortage of talented women. It has a shortage of rooms built for them to become leaders in. The firms that start filling that gap now, while there are still only a handful of these programs to choose from, will be the ones with the deepest bench when the leadership transition everyone can see coming actually arrives.