Offshore Outsourcing: Protecting Privacy A World Away
Business Process Outsourcing ('BPO') to offshore service pro-viders has become an integral part of the global economy, finding particular success in the financial services, health care, and IT industries. To cite just a few examples, an estimated 400,000 American IRS tax returns were prepared in India last year, while as much as 30% of all medical transcription is now done overseas. Studies confirm that offshore BPO will not only continue to grow, but accelerate in the years to come. One study projects that by 2010, the world's 100 largest financial institutions will move $400 billion of their cost base offshore, saving an average of just under $1.5 billion annually each. The same survey also forecasts that by 2010 more than 20% of the financial industry's global cost base will have gone offshore.
The Government: Both a Problem and a Solution on Security Breaches
As private entities in virtually all industries have faced private data security breach challenges, we also are seeing the parallel rise of security breaches involving government entities. These recent breaches — led by the enormous publicity surrounding the Veterans' Administration loss/theft of a laptop containing the personal information of more than 26 million veterans — have focused attention on the government as both the collector of enormous amounts of personal information and the source of many security problems. With this new attention, the government needs to redouble its efforts to improve overall security and focus leadership attention on developing best practices that can both protect against government breaches and provide useful information to private sector entities facing the same challenges.
China's World Trade Compliance
Board of Editors member, Prof. Usha Haley, spoke at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on China's World Trade Compliance. In Part One, she addresses subsidies, their forms and complications. In Part Two, she covers how profitable and available those subsidies are and how profitable companies are that serve the China market.
At the Tipping Point
The debate over the issue of whether or not a law firm can have a mandatory retirement age has focused on the threshold question of whether the 'partner' is an 'employer' or an 'employee' under the ADEA. If the partner is a 'bona fide' partner then he or she is an 'employer' and not protected by the ADEA. However, if the partner is not a 'bona fide' partner under the relevant legal principles (which will be discussed later in this article), he or she may be protected by the ADEA and, therefore, able to challenge the mandatory retirement age policy.
The USA PATRIOT Act Renewed: Reassessing Money Laundering Risk in Finance Transactions
The federal government is stepping up its aggressive enforcement of anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism ('AML/CFT'). Enforcement actions have already spread beyond 'traditional' financial institutions, such as banks. Regulations that are expected to be promulgated soon will likely embolden these enforcement actions against leasing companies, equipment vendors, finance companies, and other 'financial institutions.' These parties should reassess their compliance risk under the AML/CFT rules. The consequences of these risks are important. For example, the loss of reputation from being brushed with the taint of money laundering can sink a business.
Betting on Litigation
For all the publicity that our litigious society generates, the decision to sue or not, or even to send a so-called lawyer letter, is often agonizing for any business owners or principals.<br>This dilemma is particularly strong for the smaller firms that compose so much of the e-commerce sector. While the media often perceives lawyers as nothing more than 'ambulance chasers' constantly looking for personal injury lawsuits to stock their personal treasuries, most businesses should prefer to resolve disputes outside the courtroom.
Competitive Intelligence: A Tool for In-house Counsel
Competitive Intelligence has long been used by corporate America to analyze trends, client feedback, and marketing strategies to get an edge. It's the newest buzzword among law firms to win more market share and retain clients. But it's barely a whisper in law departments, at least when it comes to selecting outside counsel.
<i>Trenwick America</i>
The issue of directors' and officers' liability for deepening insolvency has been the source of a significant number of judicial opinions over the past few years with little consensus being reached on the viability of these claims. This may have changed however. Despite the Delaware Bankruptcy Court's recent decision, <i>In re: Scott Acquisition Corp.</i>, 2006 WL 1732277 (Bankr. D. Del. 2006), which ruled that directors and officers of insolvent subsidiary companies owe fiduciary duties to both its creditors and the subsidiary itself. The Delaware Chancery Court, Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine presiding, subsequently and resoundingly waded into the breach of fiduciary duty and zone of insolvency arena with its decision in ,<i>Trenwick America Litigation Trust v. Ernst &Young, L.L.P., et al.</i>
Rehiring Attorneys After a Break: Doing the Numbers
Both the American Bar Association and the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco are launching initiatives aimed at helping attorneys who have stopped practicing maintain their connections and ease their transition back into the profession.
<i>Book Review</i>: Understanding Standards of Value In Depth
Standards of Value: Theory and Applications, written by Jay E. Fishman, Dr. Shannon P. Pratt, and William J. Morrison, addresses the standard of value as applied in four distinct contexts: estate and gift taxation, shareholder dissent and oppression, divorce and financial reporting. The book is written in a fashion that will prove useful for judges, lawyers and practitioners to better understand the theory and conceptual underpinnings related to the various standards of value in both judicial and regulatory applications. The depth of the book in several areas reaches well beyond anything published to date with respect to how the recognized standards of value relate to these four very different purposes in application.
