New Practice Information
 Effective Risk Management Can Increase Your Firm's Profitability
The self-audit is a powerful diagnostic tool designed to assess a law firm's
readiness to deal with the types of risk likely to be encountered in the day-to-day
practice of its individual lawyers. Like a CAT scan, the self-audit creates a
picture at a specific moment in time; but the picture should be clear enough
to enable management to make rational determinations about the current strength
of the firm and take appropriate courses of action. Read on.
Excerpted from Risk
Management: Survival Tools for Law Firms, Second Edition
Not So Fearless Predictions for 2007
For the most part, 2006 was a very quiet and uneventful year from a bankruptcy
law perspective. Was this surprising? Not really. The Bankruptcy Abuse and
Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) took effect on October
17, 2005, and bankruptcy filings ahead of that deadline were massive. Read
on.
Excerpted from Annual Review of Developments in Business and
Corporate Litigation 2007 Edition
 Succeeding as a Federal Court Clerk
You have just started your new job as a district court clerk, and, as a new employee,
you are reluctant to ask questions for fear of appearing unprepared or unknowledgeable. Read
on.
Excerpted from Federal District Court Law Clerk Handbook
Property
Insurance 101—Claim Analysis
Property insurance is a broad term that encompasses a number of
specific types of policies. However, all have certain common characteristics:
They contain a promise to pay a policyholder a sum of money in
the event of damage to insured property by a covered peril; the
amount paid is based on the extent of loss or damage to the insured
property, not the policyholder's liability to a third party;
and there is no duty to defend the policyholder against claims
by a third party. There also seven basic analytical elements for
a property insurance claim. Read
on.
Excerpted from Property Insurance Litigator's Handbook
 Protecting
IP in an Outsourcing Deal
Your client, a software company, has decided to outsource its manufacturing
to India. As more and more of its operations now will be conducted
offshore, how can you help your client protect its intellectual
property? Are there traps to be aware of? Read
on.
Excerpted from Intellectual Property Deskbook for the Business
Lawyer
Communicating
with clients / Trust me, I'm listening/How to gain your
client's trust/
Gaining the client's complete trust during the initial interview
is often impossible. She does not know how seriously you take your
ethical responsibility. She does not know whether to trust you
with some of her deepest, darkest secrets. Usually, trust is a
bond that grows during the process of litigation. But there are
a few ways to nurture that growth from the beginning. Read
on.
Excerpted from The Litigation Manual: First Supplement
 Understanding the Reach of SDOs
A standards development organization (SDO) ratifies or approves technical
interoperability specifications. SDOs are very diverse in structure,
membership, policies, and objectives, and the lawyer needs to understand
the range of options SDOs use when developing a patent policy or
intellectual property rights (IPR) policy. Read on.
Excerpted from Standards Development Patent Policy Manual
Is the
Legal Profession Walking the Talk on Sexual
Harassment?
Sex-based harassment need not be sexual in nature to constitute illegal discrimination;
conduct that reflects adverse gender-based stereotypes or animosity may also
constitute illegal discrimination. Sexual harassment thus encompasses a range
of behaviors on the part of supervisors, co-workers, peers, clients, judges,
professors, students, and vendors.Read on.
Excerpted from Sex-Based Harassment: Workplace Policies
for the Legal Profession, Second Edition |
