Features
Profiting from the Learning Curve
A recent study published by Altman Weil listed the ways in which chief legal officers would like to see their outside counsel embrace service improvements and innovation. The top four responses were greater cost reduction, non-hourly pricing, more efficient project management and improved budget forecasting. To anyone paying even cursory attention to the legal marketplace in the last half decade, these should not come as a surprise.
Leave As a Reasonable Accommodation
The time has come for the minority of circuits to join the majority, and explicitly hold that non-indefinite unpaid leave is a reasonable accommodation under the ADAAA. Cases prosecuted by women with difficult pregnancies would be particularly compelling impact cases to push the remaining circuits to explicitly accept non-indefinite leave as a reasonable accommodation.
Features
Why Every Lawyer Needs to Lead
In a law firm environment, great leaders are necessary to provide client service, build client relationships, develop more junior lawyers, and generally ensure the profitable use of firm resources. This requires everyone's best thinking. How does a leader harness the group's best thinking? The most effective leaders use coaching skills. In other words, all they do is ask the right questions.
Features
Protect Your Firm!
Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) programs, which allow employees to use their personally owned smartphones, tablets and laptops in and out of the work environment, are significantly changing information technology (IT). Law firms around the country are embracing BYOD as it lets executives and employees use the mobile devices, service providers and operating platforms of their choice.
Bit Parts
Reality TV Shows May be Substantially Similar<br>Suit Can Proceed Against Sponsor of Planned Awards Show<br>Translation of Russian Agreement Allows Copyright Claim to Be Reinstated
Counsel Concerns
Damages Assessed Against Lawyer with Share of Royalty Company for Fraudulent Transfer of Assets<br>No Judicial Estoppel against Law Firm in Malpractice Suit over Multimedia Patents
Decisions of Note
Suit over Santa Song Filed in Wrong Court<br>$320M Affirmance in Millionaire Case
Features
Analysis of Appeals Courts' Views on File Sharer Damages
In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued what was only the second federal appellate ruling on statutory damages against an infringing file sharer. The Eighth Circuit reinstated statutory damages of more than $220,000 against a woman who illegally file-shared two dozen songs, finding the damages to be constitutional.
Video Privacy Law and Online Services
The Video Privacy Protection Act has reemerged as consumer video rentals have migrated from brick-and-mortar video stores to online subscription services, or sites that allow digital streaming of TV shows and movies over the Internet. The VPPA, which generally prohibits video service providers from releasing personally identifiable information without written consent, has become a relevant concern for modern media providers because such services are now typically linked to social media sites that allow users to share viewing habits, something that was not possible 20 years ago.
Features
Factors in Assessing Statutory Damages for Digital Copyright Infringement
A recent federal district court award of $6.6 million in statutory damages to music publishers for the unlicensed use of song lyrics by the website LiveUniverse and its operator was hailed as the first of its type for owners of song lyrics, and thus a significant milestone for content owners in the digital era.
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