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Amid a cacophony of wailing and gnashing of teeth decrying the Food and Drug Administration's ("FDA's") failure to protect the public from unsafe drugs, the FDA held an emergency advisory committee meeting, which included consultants, to address the safety issues associated with the use of COX-2 selective and non-selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs ("NAIDs"). The meeting was scheduled and held at warp speed. It provided a transparent dispassionate opportunity to address the safety issues for scientists, affected parties and the public. The decisions of the advisory committee were to some extent, unexpected. This accelerated review process differs from the current advisory committee process of reviewing limited data in a product pre-approval setting. However, this use is a natural extension of the FDA's historic use of advisory committees, <i>ie</i>, analysis of voluminous data on any active ingredient over a period of years and application of the analysis to specific drug products containing the active ingredient.

The message from our plaintiffs' lawyer colleagues has been steady and direct: "Don't bother defending these cases &mdash; you're going to lose and you're going to lose big. Just pay us all lots of money now and save yourself a lot of pain and agony." And what other message would they send? Their goal is to reap the highest reward from the least amount of effort. Litigating every case on every level; financing and staffing hundreds of complex trials, and waiting for final appellate review of every verdict is no way to run a mass tort practice &mdash; at least not from the plaintiffs' perspective. Given this author's perspective, it makes sense to examine the options more carefully before deciding that the only way to avoid ruin is to wire massive sums into the trial bar's trust accounts.

It seems that the same question is asked every time two pharmaceutical plaintiffs' lawyers get together these days: "Don't you think Merck can just pull a Baycol?" Referring to Bayer's strategy for resolving the recent litigation over Bayer's dangerous &mdash; and withdrawn &mdash; statin drug, these lawyers are concerned that Merck, like Bayer, can somehow escape compensating thousands of victims. No doubt due to the widely read article in The Wall Street Journal (May 3, 2004) that essentially gave Bayer an "academy award" for its handling of Baycol, reporters across the country, trying to analyze the emerging Merck debacle last fall, were asking the same question of their trial lawyer interviewees. What these inquiring minds are inquiring about is whether Merck, clearly faced with thousands of actions, can "lump and split" them. On the one side, Merck would place a very large pile of cases it deems non-compensable, and on the other, a much smaller pile comprised of those cases that Merck will agree to discuss and value. The answer to this question seems to be, at this relatively early date, that even if Merck wishes it could approach the problem this way, it cannot. Moreover, it cannot use the strategy it used in the phenylpropanolamine ("PPA"), Propulsid, or Rezulin litigation, either. In fact, any attempt to apply the strategies employed in those litigations may end in sheer disaster.

Statistical analysis of federal litigation provides a unique insight into particular judges involved in a case, including information on the probable timing/outcomes of cases, and what significant motions are generally granted or denied before a federal judge. Answers are based on verifiable facts, rather than anecdotal assumptions, and provide interested parties with more accurate data.

On April 20, 2005, President Bush signed The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 into law (the "Act"). Although the Act has received much media attention in recent months for its potential impact upon consumers seeking protection under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code (the "Code"), it does contain a number of amendments to the Code that will affect, either directly or indirectly, the ways in which equipment lessors will relate to their liquidating or reorganizing lessees. This article provides a brief overview of some of the new amendments to the Code and explains how they will change the dynamics between lessors and lessees.

Forget what you know about the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act (HSR) and partnerships. Forget what you know about HSR and LLCs. The rules have changed ' again. The good news is that the rules make more sense, and certain exemptions to the filing requirements have been codified or expanded. The bad news is that a small number of deals that used to slide under the HSR radar may now be caught. More strategically speaking, the rules now provide more opportunities to "choose" whether your next joint venture will be subjected to substantive agency review under the HSR scheme, heightening the value of HSR counselors' advice on structure issues at early planning stages.

A covenant not to compete is an increasingly popular device employers use to bind employees not to work for, or as, a direct competitor. Such covenants are most often found in employment contracts, but they can also be a separate document, signed by the employee at hiring, during employment, or upon leaving. However, in many states, a covenant not to compete cannot stand alone as a binding agreement, but must be ancillary to an employment or other type of contract that provides some benefit to the employee. <br>While covenants not to compete may be used by employers in certain court-delineated circumstances, ethical rules specifically bar the application of such restrictive covenants to attorneys.

Bryan Cave LLP is an 800-lawyer firm with litigators in eight U.S. cities and London. In 2002, the firm asked me to evaluate our litigation technology and litigation support services. For better or worse, we had neither budget nor staff during the first 9 months. While we could not affect any immediate change, this was the ideal opportunity to do a needs assessment, survey the available technology, evaluate the trends in the market, and ultimately plan and budget for implementation.

So much has been written about knowledge management in the past 10 years and so many products purporting to enable knowledge management have been pushed on the legal community, that I am not sure that the term is relevant anymore. However, I have always thought some of the main tenets of KM make a lot of sense.<br>An exciting project that we are rolling out at Baker Donelson starting this month conforms to those main tenets of KM.

Getting lawyers and law firms do things differently is not an easy task and instilling a marketing mindset among lawyers is a major effort for most firms, resembling the proverbial challenge of "herding cats." <br>However, the most profitable firms are moving closer to a corporate model of governance, with institutional goals, strong leadership and streamlined governance. They are also starting to embrace marketing, recognizing the need to get closer to existing clients and invest time and resources on focused, proactive strategies to go after new ones.