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Good business practice requires that companies take steps to ensure that their employees comply with company policies as well as with the laws, rules, and regulations that apply to them and their industry. An increasingly important part of that practice involves monitoring and storing electronic documents, including e-mails and their attachments and managing these documents throughout the information lifecycle. While an electronic document may have a direct business use of only a few minutes ' perhaps to signal agreement to a contract term ' this same document may have an afterlife of many years, during which it needs to be retained and managed.

As firms across the country lift associate salaries, some are opting to pay the same in all U.S. offices outside New York, while others still pay less in secondary markets like Philadelphia, Atlanta or Miami.

When I began consulting 18 years ago, compensation advisory services focused primarily on benchmarking. We would look at market data, find comparables, refine study data to adjust for timing differences, and determine appropriate compensation ranges. This latter focus was partly due to the nationwide run-up in associate starting salaries and law firms' attempts to deal with those market forces and the system-wide compression they created.

In a perfect world, firms could employ private investigators who are as skilled as pseudo-bumbling television police detective Columbo, Dallas lawyer William Brewer III says. <br>That's rarely the case when Brewer contracts with private investigation companies to help with litigation at 35-lawyer Bickel &amp; Brewer, so the firm launched its own investigative unit in January. It's staffed by three former agents and a former training instructor with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Boilerplate in a commercial lease ' notably in the Miscellaneous section ' is not nearly as uniform and standard as one might think. Boilerplate provisions therefore merit careful review by each party to the lease, and sometimes vigorous negotiation. Law firms are often tenants but sometimes also landlords; the authors provide advice for protecting both interests.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in <i>Hefta v. Official Comm. of Unsecured Creditors</i> (<i>In re Am. Classic Voyages Co.</i>), 405 F.3d 127 (3d Cir. 2005), recently addressed the issue of whether informal proofs of claim may satisfy a creditor's obligation to file a proof of claim under Rules 3001 and 5005 of the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. The court held that a letter sent by the creditor's attorney to the debtor's claims agent stating that the creditor had sustained a workplace injury and had a claim against the debtor did not qualify as a proof of claim to satisfy Bankruptcy Rules 3001 and 5005. The court held that the bankruptcy court properly denied the employee's motion for relief from the automatic stay to prosecute his claim and the motion to file a late claim.

Consider the following scenario. A manufacturing company is experiencing significant financial and operational difficulties. A lender provides it with $20 million secured by a second priority lien and, in connection with this financing, is given two seats on the manufacturer's board of directors. For the next 3 years, the manufacturer continues to suffer losses and the lender continues to extend additional financing. By the third year, the lender has selected three of the company's four board members. At this point, the manufacturer is insolvent, undercapitalized and no disinterested third party will lend it additional money. Nevertheless, the lender extends new financing. No notes are issued for portions of this financing, and the lender does not obtain a valuation to determine whether the manufacturer has collateral to support the new financing. Then the lender, not management, negotiates a sale of the company to occur in the context of a pre-negotiated bankruptcy, with the lender to acquire more than 30% of the stock in the newly formed buyer. The manufacturer files a bankruptcy petition and immediately moves for approval of the sale. The buyer credit bids the lender's claim at the section 363(b) sale, and acquires the company's assets over the objection of the creditors' committee. Should the lender's third-year advances -- made while the company was insolvent and undercapitalized and at a time when no disinterested third party would lend money -- be recharacterized as equity? After examining all of the facts and circumstances, the Third Circuit answered no.

According to the newly enacted Bankruptcy Abuse Pre-vention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), attorneys practicing bankruptcy law may in fact be required to identify themselves as debt relief agencies. One of the new and significant aspects of the BAPCPA are the provisions designed to restrict and monitor the activities of so-called "debt relief agencies." Among other requirements, Section 528(a)(4) mandates that a "debt relief agency shall ... clearly and conspicuously use the following statement in such advertisement: 'We are a debt relief agency. We help people file for bankruptcy relief under the Bankruptcy Code.' or a substantially similar statement." See generally Sections 526, 527 and 528 for the restrictions on and requirements for debt relief agencies. However, who and what a debt relief agency is, and more specifically, whether attorneys are debt relief agencies, remains a matter of great debate, dispute and confusion.

Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.