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As recently as five years ago, law partners charging $1,000 an hour were outliers. Today, four-figure hourly rates for in-demand partners at the most prestigious firms don't raise eyebrows ' and a few top earners are closing in on $2,000 an hour.

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In November, a European court ruling forced an American Internet service provider to remove content from servers located in the U.S. and block the transfer of content to European and Asian users. This ruling resulted from the Internet search results of an Englishman who asserted that his French Internet privacy rights make it illegal to distribute Internet images of an individual in a private space without that person's permission.

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Many battles have been fought in courtrooms across the United States over the unauthorized Internet sharing of copyrighted books, music, movies and television shows. These include disputes over increasingly more sophisticated software products and websites that appear designed to respond to the latest court rulings over the scope of the DMCA "safe harbor" protections and the elements required to establish secondary copyright infringement liability.

Secondary liability can be imposed on an ISP or distributor of a product used to commit infringement based upon claims of contributory infringement, inducement infringement or vicarious infringement. The contributory and inducement claims both focus on a defendant's contribution to the infringement and require that the defendant knows that direct infringement is occurring. These related claims, which provide independent ways to attack secondary infringement, differ in important respects.

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As the ACA continues to be implemented, franchisors and franchisees must be vigilant in understanding whether they are subject to the ACA's mandates, penalties and tax credits. The franchising industry must be sufficiently informed and prepared to manage the uncertainty surrounding both compliance requirements and costs.

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Big data is ubiquitous these days, but still largely untapped in legal circles. Litigators can take a page out of a sports team's playbook and use the patterns and trends found in data to make more informed decisions about case staffing, spend management, case strategy and probable outcomes.

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It's a challenge for many lawyers to find the time to understand the financial side of their practices. At Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, financial education has become a priority. When our lawyers became better equipped to understand the economics of their practices, our firm was able to sustain growth and increase efficiency as well as improve client service across the board.

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Organizations should develop a strategy to determine whether encryption will be an issue as early as possible in a case. It is also important at the outset to develop a process for handling these very complicated document sets when time is of the essence and when local privacy laws must be considered.