Columns & Departments
Movers & Shakers
Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP recently welcomed John Salza as a principal in charge of tax accounting methods. In this role, Salza lends his expertise to tax engagements across Baker Tilly's industry practices.
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.
Pension Funding: A Program to Maximize Pension Growth and Limit Volatility
With proper planning, a pension can meet regulations, be funded to the acceptable green zone levels (80%) and reduce the annual net periodic pension funding requirement.
Pricing Legal Services
Beyond the "value-added" components of their efforts, expectations have risen in law firms for the marketing team to contribute directly to top-line growth. While their roles typically fall short of direct selling to new clients, in recent years marketing executives have been integrally involved in ongoing account management, prospecting, and expansion. They are juxtaposed with the rainmakers — practically joined at the hip in supporting partners as they embark into the legal market battlefield.
Features
Preparing for Reverse Auctions
Rather than companies sending out RFPs to a number of law firms, they are now using a "reverse auction" to request quotes from law firms they trust. Here's how it works.
Complications Can Consume the Credit for Taxes Paid to Other States
While an available tax credit might seem like a great savings opportunity, as many often are, caution should be your watchword before chasing that credit.
Features
The Accounting Dimensions of Law Firm Financial Impropriety
Law firms are at great risk for financial impropriety. Funds can come up missing in any law firm, and the cause can be intentional theft that qualifies as fraud or embezzlement, or an unintentional mistake that shows poor judgment.
IP News
Highlights of the latest intellectual property cases from around the country.
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.
Features
FTC Closes Google Inquiry
The FTC closed its inquiry, requiring Google to license patents that are essential to the interoperability of electronic devices but securing minimal agreements on what many viewed as the heart of the case: Google's dominance in the search market.
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- Disconnect Between In-House and Outside Counsel'Disconnect Between In-House and Outside Counsel is a continuation of the discussion of client expectations and the disconnect that often occurs. And although the outside attorneys should be pursuing how inside-counsel actually think, inside counsel should make an effort to impart this information without waiting to be asked.Read More ›
- The DOJ's Corporate Enforcement Policy: One Year LaterThe DOJ's Criminal Division issued three declinations since the issuance of the revised CEP a year ago. Review of these cases gives insight into DOJ's implementation of the new policy in practice.Read More ›
- Lack of Logo Placement At Center of Ruling Over Meat Loaf Album PackagingTo build visibility for its brand, a record label or production company will want its logo included on products containing its master recordings manufactured and distributed by third parties. This will be addressed in the agreement between the label or production company and manufacturer/distributor. The failure to include the logo may raise a host of issues, from the breadth of the logo-placement obligation ' such as whether it includes Internet downloads ' to the proper theory on which to base any damages and just which album-sales figures are subject to evidentiary discovery. A recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ' in a long-running dispute between Cleveland International Records and Sony Music Entertainment ' illustrated how these issues may be argued and decided.Read More ›