Features
Associate Salary Stratification More Likely In 'Buyer's Market'
Since Cravath, Swaine & Moore upped the ante on associate salaries this Spring, others in the big law community have responded gradually, some going all-in and others devising region-specific pay scales. In the current market, industry watchers say, the salary game has changed, and most firms will need to take the more thoughtful approach.
Features
Firms Increasingly Making Partners Pay to Leave
As law firms look to protect themselves from cash walking out the door in a low-demand market, they are increasingly looking at methods to discourage lateral departures and, perhaps more importantly, are enforcing those methods more frequently.
Columns & Departments
In the Courts
Discussion of a case in which the Supreme Court vacated the conviction of ex-Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.
EFF Challenges DMCA's Anti-Circumvention Provision
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati have teamed up to challenge provisions in U.S. copyright law that threaten harsh penalties for breaking "digital locks" guarding content such as music and software code.
Features
Recent Guidance Regarding Deduction of Fines
Internal Revenue Code ' 162 provides: "No deduction shall be allowed under subsection (a) for any fine or similar penalty paid to a government for the violation of any law." The controversies that continue to arise under ' 162(f) are illustrated by two memoranda released within the past few months.
Features
The Adjudication of Affordability
Since the first civil lawsuit for money damages, plaintiffs have sought to maximize recoveries while defendants have sought to minimize them. This creates an obvious tension that is often left to a jury. Now, we have a new wrinkle in the issue, courtesy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). How will it affect the award of money damages in civil lawsuits?
Columns & Departments
<b><i>Legal Tech:</b></i> Modernizing Litigation Practice: What Can the U.S. Learn from Electronic Courtrooms and Paperless Trials Abroad?
Legal professionals interested in the next wave of innovation in litigation technology can look overseas to the developments over the last several years in the UK and Singapore.
Features
Investing in New Technologies
Until recently, corporate legal departments often had more leeway in complying with corporate operational and budgetary expectations than other departments. Now, however, companies are expecting legal departments to more accurately predict the quality, timing and cost for their services.
Companies Slow to Respond to New Accounting Standards
A recent survey by audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP indicates that nearly 80% of public companies have not completed an assessment of the impacts of the new revenue recognition standard issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
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