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Ask the Coach
This month's questions:<p>What do you do when, despite having a good relationship with a client, you struggle to reach agreement on such things as rate increases, staffing, etc. <p>In the interest of cross-selling, I often have a colleague or two accompany me on initial sales calls. How do you manage or choreograph interaction among three to four people? <p>At some point in any sale, buyers usually request references. What's the best way to handle this?
A View from the 'Upper Deck': Top-Down Marketing
Lawyers are in the business of providing information to their clients. The issue, which perplexes most lawyers, is how to effectively and efficiently convey the right information to the right people at the right time so that they will hire the firm to answer their questions and solve their problems.
<b><i>Product Review</b></i> Corprasoft Legal Desktop
For a busy corporate law department, any matter management system that helps to monitor various activities and streamline the management of legal affairs is a valuable tool indeed. But what happens if you have to start from scratch in the deployment of that system? What if you have to leave the familiarity of your existing management system and convert to an entirely new platform?
IT Security: It's Now or Never
Information technology security is a critical issue for all law firms. Yet, security initiatives are often dismissed as high cost/low return and put on the back burner. This low priority status persists despite the significant operational and financial impact a security breach would have on a firm. It is only when a major event such as the recent confluence of the Northeast blackout and the Blaster and SoBig worm attacks, or the nefarious actions of a disgruntled employee hit the public consciousness that attention rapidly re-focuses on security matters.
Sorry Airlines! Let's Take Legal Meetings Online
I can see it now: U.S. airlines continue to struggle because some of their most frequent fliers - attorneys - are turning in their wings. No longer do we need to fly nearly as often to client meetings or to interview key witnesses on our most pressing cases. Why? We now have e-meetings, specifically e-meetings from Tempe, AZ-based VIACK Corporation. Sad for the airlines; good for us!
<b><i>Practice Tip</b></i>Smart Tags Elevate Word Docs IQ and Integration
One of Microsoft's key design goals when developing Office XP was to give users more control over their day-to-day work flow and to make the ever expanding feature sets of the Office applications more readily accessible to the average user. The impetus behind technologies such as Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and the more recent COM and ActiveX technologies were to allow for individual Office applications such as Word and Excel to share data and to work together more seamlessly. Smart Tags, a new feature introduced with Office XP, takes this technology to the next level.
Web Watch: A Supreme Collection of High Court Resources
One controversy not on the Supreme Court's agenda when it begins its new term the first Monday in October is the legality of downloading MP3s. Too bad. Had it been, you could have downloaded the oral arguments in this popular audio file-sharing format
First Charges Filed under New Internet Porn Law
The first prosecution under a new law designed to prevent the use of misleading Internet addresses to lure children to pornographic sites was announced this month by U.S. Attorney James B. Comey.
Q&A with the RIAA
Despite all the publicity and numerous articles on the subject of the RIAA's lawsuits against music downloaders, some questions we thought important to Internet Law &amp; Strategy users were left unanswered. So Managing Editor Steven Salkin, Esq. placed a call to the RIAA and spoke with Mitch Glaser, Senior Vice President, Government Relations to get the answers.
Net News
The latest news in Internet law.

MOST POPULAR STORIES

  • The 'Sophisticated Insured' Defense
    A majority of courts consider the <i>contra proferentem</i> doctrine to be a pillar of insurance law. The doctrine requires ambiguous terms in an insurance policy to be construed against the insurer and in favor of coverage for the insured. A prominent rationale behind the doctrine is that insurance policies are usually standard-form contracts drafted entirely by insurers.
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  • Abandoned and Unused Cables: A Hidden Liability Under the 2002 National Electric Code
    In an effort to minimize the release of toxic gasses from cables in the event of fire, the 2002 version of the National Electric Code ("NEC"), promulgated by the National Fire Protection Association, sets forth new guidelines requiring that abandoned cables must be removed from buildings unless they are located in metal raceways or tagged "For Future Use." While the NEC is not, in itself, binding law, most jurisdictions in the United States adopt the NEC by reference in their state or local building and fire codes. Thus, noncompliance with the recent NEC guidelines will likely mean that a building is in violation of a building or fire code. If so, the building owner may also be in breach of agreements with tenants and lenders and may be jeopardizing its fire insurance coverage. Even in jurisdictions where the 2002 NEC has not been adopted, it may be argued that the guidelines represent the standard of reasonable care and could result in tort liability for the landlord if toxic gasses from abandoned cables are emitted in a fire. With these potential liabilities in mind, this article discusses: 1) how to address the abandoned wires and cables currently located within the risers, ceilings and other areas of properties, and 2) additional considerations in the placement and removal of telecommunications cables going forward.
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