Avoiding Boilerplate Traps in Commercial Leases
Last month, Part One of this article provided tips by Christopher A. Jones and Scott A. Weinberg. This part discusses other possibly problematic lease provisions regarding the name/address of the building, rules and regulations, legal fees and expenses, and the sale/exchange and assignment of the lease by the landlord.
Dashboarding for Performance Management
Law firm managers seeking graphic insights for business monitoring and quantitative decision support have much to gain from Wayne W. Eckerson's new book Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business (2006: John Wiley & Sons). In this article, I'll review some of Eckerson's ideas that seem highly applicable to large law firms, and add a few thoughts of my own.
Risk Management: What Your Firm May be Missing
In today's increasingly complex and regulated business environment, hundreds of different risks threaten law firms. While some of them can lead to malpractice claims that could destroy a firm's reputation and finances, others can be physically or operationally devastating.<br>Before a firm can begin to manage risk, it is important to define risk. In my many conversations with managing partners, executive directors or law firm CFOs, they all generally seem to think of risk in terms of insurance (malpractice, workers comp, business interruption, etc). While I agree this is one area of risk, the overall definition of risk is much broader. Risk is the potential for any issue to negatively affect an entity's ability to meet its objectives.
Compliance Tips from Deferred Prosecution Agreements
In recent years, increasing numbers of large corporations have, in the hope of avoiding a conviction and all the ramifications a conviction entails, entered into Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) with the Department of Justice (DOJ). Much has been written about the lack of bargaining power companies have in negotiating these deals, and about the onerous nature of some of their terms. In this article, we suggest that companies can use the DPAs entered into by others to their advantage by treating them as guides to assist them in formulating their own compliance programs. Not only should this result in strengthened programs, but should a compliance problem nevertheless arise, having a 'government-issued' program in place could provide a company with a strong argument that it has done the most it can in formulating an effective program and hence should not be subject to prosecution.
'Improper Benefit' Key To SEC Policy
On January 4, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox announced the SEC's unanimously adopted policy on the use of the its enforcement powers to impose monetary penalties on public companies for securities law violations. According to the policy, when deciding whether to impose fines, the SEC will focus on whether a corporation's violation provided an improper benefit to the company and its shareholders. If so, the SEC will be inclined to seek fines to deter future conduct. Conversely, the SEC will be less likely to pursue fines in cases where they would result in further harm to shareholders already injured by a corporation's actions. This article examines the new SEC policy regarding fines and its implications for corporations and shareholders.
Integrating Software Escrows into Intellectual Property Strategy
Software developers invest a great deal of time and effort developing complex code that performs unique functionality for which there is a viable market. These software developers typically offer software licenses that only license object code, <i>ie</i>, the code that can be read by a machine, rather than the source code, <i>ie</i>, code that can be deciphered and read by a person.
Involuntary Bankruptcy: A Useful Tool for Lessors and Creditors
Bankruptcy." To many creditors this term is understood to mean a lost cause, a write-off and the end of the collection process. To other creditors, including those that appropriately use the filing of an involuntary bankruptcy petition, bankruptcy can mean the beginning of a successful strategy. Many of the benefits leasing creditors and others derived from the filing of an involuntary bankruptcy petition against a delinquent customer under the former Bankruptcy Code are preserved in the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 ("BAPCPA"), with some favorable additions. Used intelligently, and in the right situation, the filing of an involuntary bankruptcy petition can still be a useful tool.
Oh, Canada!
In some quarters, there is the misperception that Canadian law firms lag behind their American counterparts when it comes to marketing practices, but in fact Canadian firms are no less sophisticated at marketing. They simply operate in an environment that is vastly different. Based on conversations with various Managing Partners, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Marketing Officers and other legal industry insiders it is clear that the marketing of Canadian law firms suffers more from the structure of the Canadian sector than from any specific approach to marketing.
Increasing Equipment Reliability
While we used to copy millions of pages a month and send out hundreds of overnight mail packages a day, current copying rates have dropped to a few hundred thousand pages, replaced by thousands of e-mails per day and "scan to PDF and print" jobs totaling millions of pages. With these advances in technology have come heightened client expectations to complete work in minutes or hours, rather than days. This means our equipment has to be very reliable and easy to use, allowing the attorneys to spend their available time focused on legal work, not on mechanical problems with scanners, copiers and printers.
