Commercial Law

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The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) has approved the Child Custody Evaluation Standards to provide the guidance that judges, attorneys and families across the country should embrace.

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Ban the Box" types of legislation, designed to ensure that employers are fair when screening persons who may or may not have criminal records, can unintentionally create impossible hiring decisions and pose huge legal risks for employers.

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As it stands right now, under Delaware law, present creditors of insolvent LLCs have one less avenue to be made whole.

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Keeping track of and complying with copyright laws can be difficult, especially for ISPs and social-media companies that provide services to a global market. Many countries have developed specific legislation to help protect such entities from liability relating to the activities of their users. Unfortunately, the laws are not uniform ' or are not interpreted consistently ' and therefore compliance requires knowledge of the nuances among them.

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While the "bad boy" guaranty has the practical effect of reducing the number of bankruptcy filings, this inability to file troubled companies for bankruptcy may prevent the efficient restructuring of distressed debt. Whether this is a positive development for either lenders or debtors remains to be seen.

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One of the difficult balancing acts encountered by all franchise systems is between the relatively static nature of the franchise agreement and the dynamic, impossible-to-predict changes that occur in the real world. At the 34th Annual ABA Forum on Franchising, two industry veterans with perspective as senior in-house counsel spoke about how in-house counsel can identify potentially "game-changing" developments and lead their organizations' response.

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In the absence of the implementation of the CLASS Act, employers who have not done so already might want to consider offering a private long-term-care insurance plan with an enrollment strategy that touches on paying for and planning for long-term care.

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In the arsenal of weapons available to federal prosecutors, a singularly effective one is immunity for witnesses the government deems important to its case. But perhaps equally as effective is the reverse ' the government can decline to request immunity for witnesses who may be critical to the defendant's case.