Around the Firms
London firm DLA and the partners of Piper Rudnick started off December with a vote to merge the two firms, and thus the New Year brings about the world's third-largest law firm measured by lawyers ' and fifth-largest measured by revenues.
Making Merged Firms Work As One
Finding a merger candidate can be a daunting process. However, integrating a merged group of attorneys into a "new" firm's culture, practice environment and organizational structure so that attorneys from both firms work as one may be a greater challenge.
Codifying Competencies
When law firms recruit, train, evaluate and promote lawyers, what ideal do they have in mind? What model of lawyer performance are they pursuing: what balance of knowledge, skills and capabilities, work management, ethics, character and commitment, client service and business development? Attempting to put into words our notion of successful performance is a prerequisite to consistency in how we recruit, train, evaluate and promote. It would also appear to be a pre-requisite to fairness and effectiveness in setting expectations among new lawyers and helping them achieve those expectations.
Net News
Recent developments of note in the Internet industry.This month:<p>FTC Spotlights Proposals on Peer-to-Peer Risks <br>Record Industry Sues 754 For Internet Song Swaps<br>Google Wins Trademark Suit Over Advertising Policy
Commentary: Copyright Bandits At Large
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to hear one of the most important commercial cases to reach the Court in decades. <i>MGM v. Grokster</i> raises a copyright challenge to the Internet-based services that enable millions of users around the world to swap digital copies of sound recordings and movies with a few clicks of a mouse. At stake is the legitimacy of our copyright system in the digital age.
AOL Online Safety Study Shows Major Threats, Perception Gap
The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a not-for-profit, public-private partnership focused on driving awareness and promoting education of cyber security, and NCSA member America Online, Inc., the world's leading interactive services company, recently released the results of one of the largest and most comprehensive in-home studies ever conducted on the security of computer users.
Trademark Enforcement Goes Cyber: Internet Options For IP Attorneys
The growing importance of the Internet as an advertising and distribution medium has dramatically increased the globalization of trademark problems. That fine cafe you enjoyed in Portofino last summer can now post a Web site to promote its specialty products to customers in Pasadena virtually overnight. <br>Our legal system, built on precedent, understandably lags behind these economic and technological forces. Nevertheless, the legal response to globalization in recent years has been quietly dramatic. Two recent cases suggest new options for business and intellectual property counsel seeking to enforce and protect their clients' rights.
NLRB Overrules M.B. Sturgis
An important representation issue under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) involves scenarios where the scope of a bargaining unit is proposed to include both an employer's regular workers and employees supplied by a separate employer, such as a staffing agency. Just over 4 years ago in <i>M. B. Sturgis</i>, 331 NLRB 1298 (2000), the Board stated that "a growing number of employees who are part of what is commonly described as the 'contingent work force' are being effectively denied representational rights guaranteed them under the National Labor Relations Act." Therefore, the Board majority in <i>Sturgis</i> -- consisting of Chairman Truesdale and Members Fox and Liebman -- overruled prior precedent in <i>Lee Hospital</i>, 300 NLRB 947 (1990) and <i>Greenhoot, Inc.</i>, 205 NLRB 250 (1973), and held that a bargaining unit could include both regular and supplied employees without the consent of both the regular employer and the supplier employer.
