Columns & Departments
Sales Speak: How to Close New Business
Attorneys are typically very good at describing their skills and recounting problems they have solved for other clients, but they struggle with asking for the business.
The Voice of the Client: Lateral Hiring and Integration
Some 96% of surveyed law firms have prioritized "acquiring laterals" as part of growth plans in the next two years. But what about integrating the client?
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Asking the Right Questions
Successful business generators tend to ask questions in particular sequence. This sounds fairly simple, but it takes consistent work and strong skills to become effective at using this approach.
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The Fallacy of Merger Math
If we were to analyze law firm mergers by plotting client satisfaction on one axis and partner satisfaction on the other, the resulting scatter diagram would reflect a surprising few combinations that were deemed satisfactory after the fact to all parties.
Financial Impropriety
When dishonest conduct is committed by others in the firm, the lawyers are still themselves ethically responsible
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Underperforming Partners
In the last couple of years, law firms across the country have struggled with the question ' what to do about underperforming partners?
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Intangible Assets
This article is the sixth installment in an ongoing series focusing on accounting and financial matters for corporate counsel.
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What the <i>Noel Canning</i> Decision Means for Employers
When deciding whether to interpret<i> Noel Canning</i> as invalidating all post-January 2012 NLRB decisions and acts, an employer should weigh the potential costs and benefits of its decision.
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Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt: Finding the Win-Win in Your Firm's Technology Leases
Many law firm decision makers in the AmLaw 100/200 and more turn to leasing equipment and technology for their firm as a competitively advantageous way of performing in the new business model landscape. Just make sure when you are reviewing your Master Lease Agreement, that you are, in fact, looking at a "Rembrandt.
VA Recognizes a New Employment-Based Tort
Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court considered the breadth of its public policy exception in light of confused and sometimes controversial history.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›