New Practice Information
 Does Your Client Have a Business Plan?
Every business should have a “plan” and committing the plan to writing
forces business owners to establish goals and confront weaknesses. A complete
business plan will address eight major areas depending on how the plan will be
used. Read on to learn which eight areas should be addressed.
Excerpted from Advising
the Small Business: Forms and Advice for the Small
Business Adviser
Preserving E-Records
The question of which E-records must be preserved arises in both litigation and
non-litigation settings. In a non-litigation setting, public records statutes
typically define what a public record is in general terms, but they often do
not specifically define what an electronic public record is or to what extent
electronic data and information can be considered to be a public record. Read
on to see which
E-records must be preserved.
Excerpted from Access
to Government in the Computer Age: An Examination of State Public
Records Law
 The Challenge When Parties Communicate Indirectly
Why do parties communicate indirectly about their best numbers and their bottom
and top numbers? They do so for the simple reason that each wants to maximize
his or her monetary outcome in the negotiation. The plaintiff wants as much
money as he or she can get, and the defendant wants to pay as little as possible.
Read
on to find
out how negotiators communicate indirectly—and why.
Excerpted from Making
Money Talk
How Much Is That Company Really Worth?
You can’t know the true value of a company’s assets and the extent
of its liabilities based on what is disclosed in a press release by either the
buyer or seller as they negotiate a transaction. Understanding what the seller
is giving up and what the buyer is receiving in a transaction, in terms of the
related assets and liabilities, translates into the value of a company. Read
on to find out what the Business Enterprise Value of a
company really represents.
Excerpted from Business
Valuation: A Primer for the Legal Professional
 Keep It Informal!
Information about your client, a securities company, has reached the Securities
and Exchange Commission. A former customer feels her broker violated ethics
regulations and has complained to the SEC. The SEC now wants to look into your
client’s business practices. Read
on to learn why keeping the investigation
informal, rather than formal, is the best way to protect your client.
Excerpted from The
Securities Enforcement Manual, 2nd edition
Legal Technology Survey Report
The American Bar
Association’s Legal Technology Resource
Center annually surveys lawyers in private practice to measure
their use of technology. This year, more than 1,800 ABA members
in private practice in the U.S. returned questionnaires relating
to law office computing, litigation and courtroom technology, Web-based
communications, online research, and mobile technology. Read
on to see some of this year’s highlights.
Excerpted from 2007
Legal Technology Survey Report
 Overlooked
Networking Opportunities—Inside
and Outside the Firm
The single most overlooked opportunity for associates is right in their own firms.
You must be proactive in seeking out partners for many reasons: mentoring, getting
the kind of work they want to do, and getting known throughout the firm for what
you bring to the table. Read
on.
Excerpted from The
Law Firm Associate’s Guide to Personal Marketing and Selling
Skills
Records Management Keys to Maintaining Client Confidentiality
One of the core ethical duties of a lawyer is to preserve the confidences and
secrets of her client. Regardless of the applicability of records retention,
client file ownership, and other more complex matters, every lawyer’s
records management must extend at least as far is as necessary to accomplish
this. Read
on to learn more about client confidentiality.
Excerpted from The Lawyer's Guide to Records Management and Retention
 Preparing for Witness Interviews in a Corporate Investigation
Witness interviews can be the most significant part of an internal investigation.
The key to good witness interviews is preparation. The circumstances giving
rise to an investigation will affect how the witness interviews should be conducted,
in what order, how broadly they need to reach, and how quickly they should
be done. By the time an investigation has moved into the witness interview
phases, the lawyers conducting the investigation should have a firm sense of
the answers to specific questions. Read
on.
Excerpted from Internal
Corporate Investigations, Third Edition
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