Prime Brokers, Take Note
June 27, 2007
A recent decision issued by the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (the 'Bankruptcy Court') in <i>Gredd v. Bear, Stearns Securities Corp. (In re Manhattan Inv. Fund Ltd.)</i>, 2007 WL 60843 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jan. 9, 2007) represents a significant event for securities firms, with potentially far-reaching implications for prime brokers.
On the Move
June 27, 2007
Who's doing what; who's going where.
The Iterative e-Discovery Searching Method
June 26, 2007
From a veritable river of digital information ' including e-mails, documents, voice mails, video files, databases and other more obscure data sources ' lawyers need to extract only those specific pieces of data that will be relevant to their case. Litigators seek the e-mails, documents or other digital objects that will help exonerate their client. Knowledge of the data that a client has, good or bad, helps counsel properly build a case.
Get Back to the Real World of Security
June 26, 2007
Properly securing physical data before, during and after litigation often can be eclipsed by concerns about online 'virtual' security issues. Agreed ' firewalls, data encryption and password protection are vital safeguards. But another part of the story is how to properly secure and dispose of your hard drives, CDs, backup tapes, and obsolete hardware such as laptops, PCs, PDAs and thumb drives. Ignoring physical data-security considerations is not only careless and irresponsible ' it is just plain dangerous.
When the CEO Wants His Hotmail
June 26, 2007
Not only do most of us not have a secretary tidying up our e-mail inbox each evening, but we also have many alternative inboxes for our business correspondence. For work, a busy executive may have an office e-mail account, a Blackberry for around-the-clock access and an online mail account (such as through Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo!) for convenience when traveling. He or she probably also has a personal account for non-business e-mail, like jokes, that must be kept out of the firm's accounts. Going through 'the file' has become an exercise not only in finding the appropriate messages and attachments, but in simply identifying all places and accounts where 'the file' might exist. Indeed, multiple accounts often are created by employees to bypass the hassles of security measures and record-retention policies diligently created by IT departments who often diligently enforce these polices and whose employees read and apply the information in publications like this one.
e-Commerce for Credit Managers
June 26, 2007
Collecting bills from firms that exist only on a computer server and monitors is becoming as much a part of Main Street in the 21st century as selling to the corner store was in the19th, and as selling to the mall store was in the 20th century. Suppliers to e-commerce firms, whether of inventory for resale online, or of servers or other equipment used in operations, must be paid, or they will cut off credit or sell only C.O.D.
Finding the Right CRM
June 26, 2007
One of my most daunting tasks as the firm's first marketing director was how to tap into the attorneys' 'knowledge base' of clients and contacts. To put it simply ' nobody could decipher who knew whom. E-mails would fly around asking if anyone knew an attorney in California, or an employee at ABC Corporation. The e-mails were cumbersome and often sent at the last minute. Each attorney's contacts were essentially islands for which we needed a way to bridge. The conclusion we arrived at was that we needed a CRM system for the firm.
Sourcing Strategies
June 26, 2007
Last month, we identified select law firm issues that can significantly impact the cost and speed of the entire case lifecycle. In addition, we offered some viable solutions to these problems. In Part Two, we cover some of the concerns related to outsourcing versus in-house handling of certain litigation goods and services and how firms are operating.
Another Choice of PDF Converter
June 26, 2007
Effectively managing, sharing and securing information can help corporate legal departments and individual law firms reduce administrative costs, protect case records and improve levels of customer service. Improperly managed, case information creates unnecessary risks, and is a huge drain on productivity as employees are forced to sift through an ever-increasing number of documents to (hopefully) locate the critical information they need to do their jobs.
