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Law Firm Managing Partners Expect A Bad Year — For Everyone Else
December 12, 2013
At a roulette wheel in Vegas, you know the odds. The folks with all their money on red have a less than 50 percent chance of winning (47.37 percent, to get technical). There will be highs and there will be lows, but over the long haul, those poor saps swizzling their comped drinks will come out on the losing end. On the other hand, you put all your money on black because the guy on your flight told you to. Intellectually, you recognize you have the same odds of pulling out a victory as the overmatched...
December 12, 2013
At a roulette wheel in Vegas, you know the odds. The folks with all their money on red have a less than 50 percent chance of winning (47.37 percent, to get technical). There will be highs and there will be lows, but over the long haul, those poor saps swizzling their comped drinks will come out on the losing end. On the other hand, you put all your money on black because the guy on your flight told you to. Intellectually, you recognize you have the same odds of pulling out a victory as the overmatched...
You can get Release 4.0 of the GC Metrics Benchmark Survey: More Than 1,100 Participants
December 11, 2013
Release 3.0 of the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey of staffing and spending went out two weeks ago. It covered 1,079 law departments in 28 industries. You can get Release 3.0 if you take part before December 8th. Here is the UR: https://novisurvey.net/n/GCMetrics2013.aspx There is no cost to complete the quick, confidential survey and get the Releases. Aside from some demographic questions like name, email and industry, the survey asks for six 2012 figures: number of lawyers,...
December 11, 2013
Release 3.0 of the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey of staffing and spending went out two weeks ago. It covered 1,079 law departments in 28 industries. You can get Release 3.0 if you take part before December 8th. Here is the UR: https://novisurvey.net/n/GCMetrics2013.aspx There is no cost to complete the quick, confidential survey and get the Releases. Aside from some demographic questions like name, email and industry, the survey asks for six 2012 figures: number of lawyers,...
Pizza & Metadata: Order It The Way You Want It
December 11, 2013
The form of production is a lot like ordering a pizza: say what you want. Thin crust, sauce, topping. All are things you can order. Requesting electronically stored information is exactly the same. You can request native files and types of metadata just like you are ordering a pizza. You could also request static images with specific fields of metadata. It does take a little longer to process than 30 minutes. RPM Pizza, LLC v. Argonaut Great Cent. Ins. Co., drives home this point literally...
December 11, 2013
The form of production is a lot like ordering a pizza: say what you want. Thin crust, sauce, topping. All are things you can order. Requesting electronically stored information is exactly the same. You can request native files and types of metadata just like you are ordering a pizza. You could also request static images with specific fields of metadata. It does take a little longer to process than 30 minutes. RPM Pizza, LLC v. Argonaut Great Cent. Ins. Co., drives home this point literally...
Improving Arbitration-Award Making and Enforcement by Faithfully Implementing the Purposes and Objectives of the Federal Arbitration Act
December 11, 2013
Part I: An Introduction to the Problem and its Solution Arbitration can be a very effective way of resolving a wide range of disputes arising out of many legal and commercial relationships. It can benefit the parties if they make informed decisions about agreeing to it, and craft their agreement accordingly. It can benefit the courts and the general public by shifting to the private sector dispute-resolution costs that the public-sector would otherwise bear. Arbitration is not a perfect form...
December 11, 2013
Part I: An Introduction to the Problem and its Solution Arbitration can be a very effective way of resolving a wide range of disputes arising out of many legal and commercial relationships. It can benefit the parties if they make informed decisions about agreeing to it, and craft their agreement accordingly. It can benefit the courts and the general public by shifting to the private sector dispute-resolution costs that the public-sector would otherwise bear. Arbitration is not a perfect form...
Bringing Oxytocin into the Room
December 11, 2013
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~ Anais Nin ~ While people in conflict commonly make reference to the facts, behaviors, feelings, personalities, or events surrounding their conflicts, for the most part they ignore the deeper reality that these experiences are all processed and regulated by their nervous systems, and are therefore initiated, resolved, transformed, and transcended by their brains. Yet only recently have mediators begun to consider how our brains...
December 11, 2013
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~ Anais Nin ~ While people in conflict commonly make reference to the facts, behaviors, feelings, personalities, or events surrounding their conflicts, for the most part they ignore the deeper reality that these experiences are all processed and regulated by their nervous systems, and are therefore initiated, resolved, transformed, and transcended by their brains. Yet only recently have mediators begun to consider how our brains...
Updating the Multi-Door Courthouse
December 11, 2013
The classic notion of a “multidoor” courthouse needs in order to be significantly reformed based on experience and current needs in order to develop efficient court screening processes for determining which cases will benefit from mediation and which will not, according to Barry Edwards in “Renovating the Multi-Door Courthouse: Designing Trial Court Dispute Resolution Systems to Improve Results and Control Costs” (Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Spring 2013). The lengthy...
December 11, 2013
The classic notion of a “multidoor” courthouse needs in order to be significantly reformed based on experience and current needs in order to develop efficient court screening processes for determining which cases will benefit from mediation and which will not, according to Barry Edwards in “Renovating the Multi-Door Courthouse: Designing Trial Court Dispute Resolution Systems to Improve Results and Control Costs” (Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Spring 2013). The lengthy...
Lumen Legal’s Trends for 2014
December 10, 2013
Lumen Legal has published a collection of Legal Trend predictions for 2014. There are insights from Lumen Legal founder David Galbenski, and noted enterprise legal industry leaders Edwin Reeser and Jeffrey Carr. And also me. Here’s one of my prognostications for 2014: Wallbillich also suggests that technology could impact continuing legal education, extending its focus beyond “what the law is” to “how lawyers should work. Forward-thinking lawyers who want a competitive edge need to develop...
December 10, 2013
Lumen Legal has published a collection of Legal Trend predictions for 2014. There are insights from Lumen Legal founder David Galbenski, and noted enterprise legal industry leaders Edwin Reeser and Jeffrey Carr. And also me. Here’s one of my prognostications for 2014: Wallbillich also suggests that technology could impact continuing legal education, extending its focus beyond “what the law is” to “how lawyers should work. Forward-thinking lawyers who want a competitive edge need to develop...
NSA Tracking 5 BILLION Cell Records Daily
December 10, 2013
Billions of cellphone locations are apparently collected daily by the NSA of the “whereabouts of cellphones around the world”...
December 10, 2013
Billions of cellphone locations are apparently collected daily by the NSA of the “whereabouts of cellphones around the world”...
Inside the Litigation Settlement Machine
December 10, 2013
We trial lawyers and our clients are trapped in a litigation settlement machine. The machine is made of various parts that are each added one at a time—some of them well-intentioned, others not—but each added without regard to the operation of the whole. What we have ended up with is an overdesigned and unduly expensive system in which settlement is forced upon lawyers and clients who would really prefer to have their dispute decided, not settled. It is beyond dispute that our system of justice...
December 10, 2013
We trial lawyers and our clients are trapped in a litigation settlement machine. The machine is made of various parts that are each added one at a time—some of them well-intentioned, others not—but each added without regard to the operation of the whole. What we have ended up with is an overdesigned and unduly expensive system in which settlement is forced upon lawyers and clients who would really prefer to have their dispute decided, not settled. It is beyond dispute that our system of justice...
D.C. Avoids Arbitration in $117 Million Lawsuit Against Bank of America
December 10, 2013
The District of Columbia can move forward with a $117 million lawsuit against Bank of America N.A. in connection with an embezzlement scheme carried out by a former city employee, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled last week. Harriette Walters, a former manager in the city's tax office, is serving more than 17 years in jail after pleading guilty to issuing $48 million in fraudulent property tax refunds. The District sued Bank of America in 2008, accusing it of failing to take steps to protect the city's...
December 10, 2013
The District of Columbia can move forward with a $117 million lawsuit against Bank of America N.A. in connection with an embezzlement scheme carried out by a former city employee, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled last week. Harriette Walters, a former manager in the city's tax office, is serving more than 17 years in jail after pleading guilty to issuing $48 million in fraudulent property tax refunds. The District sued Bank of America in 2008, accusing it of failing to take steps to protect the city's...
