LEGAL
Power to the people
It's often easy to forget that the most powerful weapon in any legal arsenal is the people who make up the team. If your team is running on all cylinders, there's no stopping you. If it's not, it may not matter how good the tech is or how much money you have to throw at the issue. So I thought I'd offer some thoughts on great "people practices" that should be top of mind for readers concentrating on value.
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3 key steps to navigating legal department politics
Rival cliques, power struggles, and groups that refuse to cooperate. While lawyers often want to believe they are above the fray, internal politics are simply inevitable in any group of people and are a fact of life in any large organization. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an international authority on talent management says, "All organizations are political – and to some degree, they always will be."
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The rise of in-house pro bono
For many years, formal pro bono programs were the bailiwick of attorneys in private practice. In-house counsel volunteered on their own, but not until the 1980s and 1990s did legal departments launch formal pro bono programs. Even then, there were not many. In 2000, Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO) was formed to support and promote pro bono in the in-house community. Since then, interest in in-house pro bono has flourished, and, with CPBO's assistance, legal departments have found solutions to many of the challenges to in-house pro bono.
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Whistleblower claims: A new front in the cybersecurity war
Organizations of all sizes around the globe are struggling to come to grips with the diverse and expansive cyberthreats they now face on a daily basis. Organizations fully recognize that cyberscurity breaches can result in penalties from the government and liability to customers and business partners. It is also becoming apparent that cybersecurity failures by organizations can lead to an additional form of liability on the part of employers – whistleblower claims by their employees.
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Power poses, data security and legal ops: Industry trends and Annual Meeting preview with ACC's CEO, Veta Richardson
The challenges keep mounting for corporate counsel – dealing with new regulations and keeping their companies in compliance, learning how to better manage their legal budgets, establishing data security protocols, and much more. This year's ACC Annual Meeting, to be held in Boston, MA October 18 – 21, will feature industry experts covering these and many other timely topics.
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Planting the seeds of diversity with Eric de los Santos
From a Filipino-American community along the sandy beaches of Hawaii, to the ivy-covered halls of Brown University on the East Coast, to a global rollout of his growing legal department, Eric de los Santos, Assistant General Counsel, Director of Employment Law at TrueBlue Inc., has been planting the seeds of diversity and inclusion all along the way. His tremendous commitment to diversity in the profession will be recognized this October at the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting, where he is set to receive the coveted Matthew J. Whitehead II Diversity Award, an award named after a visionary CLO who made diversity a core value of ACC membership.
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Employee benefits "arms race": What extended parental leave policies mean for your organization
Extended parental leave policies are becoming increasingly popular among many employers, with more companies looking to jump on the bandwagon every day. The recent string of these announcements appears to be due to an employee benefits "arms race" (for lack of a better word), not because of a need to become compliant with any forthcoming federal regulations. Nevertheless, many employers may feel compelled to adopt such policies in the face of an increasing number of their competitors doing so. If your company decides to follow suit, what implications should be considered as general counsel?
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EMV chip technology and the new liability shift rule: Coming to a retailer near you
If you have walked into any retail shop in recent months, you probably have noticed new credit card readers on display. Many of those readers are already operational but some will "go live" on October 1, 2015. The new credit card readers contain the EuroPay, Matercard, and Visa (EMV) chip technology. In an effort to speed up the adoption of the EMV chip technology, credit card companies have changed the liability rules applicable when fraud is perpetrated using a credit card (the liability shift rule). This article summarizes the liability shift rule and raises some questions concerning its implementation.
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The evolving customer due diligence landscape
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed in 1989 as an intergovernmental body designed to prevent, detect, and deter money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. While the threats have evolved, the financial industry has become more sophisticated at recognizing and dealing with them, due in large part to the increased availability and management of key information and data.
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Best practices for merger investigations; Data breach standing; Independent contractor misclassification
View the recent updates from the FTC on its best practices for merger investigations to increase the efficiency of merger reviews. Plus, the recent court cases that should have you reviewing your data breach litigation strategies, and more on independent contractor misclassification.
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Top ten guidelines for your law firms
Putting in place and reviewing law firm guidelines on a yearly basis can seem like a tedious process for in-house counsel. However, having these guidelines in place can clarify the company-law firm relationship and save a great deal of time down the road by eliminating law firm billing and matter management mistakes. While guidelines can vary from industry to industry, the following are some common guidelines used across industries that a legal department can use as the basis of their own law firm guidelines.
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