Regulation

Although attorneys are rapidly becoming familiar with structuring digital data requests and responding to those requests in a way that is thorough, but reasonable, most attorneys feel at sea in the e-discovery ethics arena.

When it comes to initiating employment legislation, we're living in a time when state and city lawmakers are the change agents. From adopting equal pay legislation to raising the minimum wage or instituting paid parental leave, inaction by the United States Congress has resulted in many states and cities taking matters into their own hands.

States are scrambling to shore up sales tax revenues that are eroding because of e-commerce sales. A new approach to sales tax collections involves information reports on customers' online purchases. This approach may create potential legal claims against many online companies for giving too much information about customers to state tax agencies or even to the customers themselves.

On April 5, 2016, the DOJ issued an Enforcement and Guidance Plan concerning the FCPA. While the new Plan could be interpreted as a novel departure from past precedent, careful analysis reveals that it does little to alter or clarify how the DOJ will review cases or reward companies for significant cooperation in addressing anti-corruption global issues.

Especially in a time where cybersecurity remains in the headlines on a regular basis, it's crucial to understand what data exists in order to protect it. Where's your data? What if you lost track of some of it? What if attackers copied it?

The European Commission concluded more than six months of negotiations both within the EU institutions and with the U.S. on July 12 with the announcement that an agreement had been reached on the Privacy Shield scheme to transfer data from the EU to the U.S.

Over the past two years I have been involved in three merger situations and I am currently working on two more. I have come away with six factors that, I believe, determine the success or failure of law firm merger discussions.

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.