Views From the Blawgosphere
May 26, 2005
Web logging is an increasingly popular medium of expression, but many blogs (or "blawgs" as legal blogs are called) offer musings that are not useful or even credible. By contrast, <i>A&FP</i> Board member Ed Poll, long on the forefront of communication technology, provides comments with actual substance at www.lawbizblog.com. Here's a sampler to introduce our readers to Ed's online thinking.
Dominance in the Details
May 26, 2005
Ed Wesemann's book Creating Dominance provides an impressively coherent guide to strategic thinking for law firm planners. The book draws on Wesemann's…
Let's Get Relevant
May 26, 2005
Tremendous volumes and increasing varieties of electronic information create onerous burdens for corporations dealing with discovery requests, internal investigations and response to regulatory agencies. <br>To help combat this technology burden, corporations are employing document-analysis technology to accelerate the identification of relevant information. An emerging best practice, this approach yields considerable cost and time benefits that help law firms reduce discovery risk and expense for their clients.
Electronic Data Discovery: It's All About Access
May 26, 2005
In last month's newsletter, author Trey Wilkins covered the impact of non-native file restoration on the field of e-discovery, how the method works, and how to eliminate data-retrieval barriers. This month, a look at how non-native restoration has been used with great success in a variety of situations by numerous organizations.
Commercial Leases As an Asset of the Landlord and Tenant
May 26, 2005
Tenants and landlords should view the lease as an asset of their business. A lease cannot be entered taking into account only those conditions existing as of the date of execution. The terms of the lease will bind the parties for a considerable period, and it is important to draft the lease carefully up front in order to accommodate current and future circumstances. This article addresses the lease as an asset from the tenant's perspective, then from the landlord's perspective, and finally suggests how to approach negotiating potentially conflicting ideas about how to preserve this "joint" asset.
Tenant's Estoppel Letter Does Not Trump the Lease
May 26, 2005
An "estoppel certificate" is a written statement by a party having an interest in property that defines and describes that interest so that other parties contemplating taking an interest in the same property will be informed about the nature and extent of that interest. Typically, the party signing the certificate is not a party to the transaction by which the third party is acquiring its interest. But the certificate is worded in such a way so that the party signing it is made aware of the reliance of the third party, and thus the signing party would be "estopped" from asserting matters different from those appearing in the certificate as against the third party upon completion of the transaction.
A Roundtable Discussion on Leading Compliance Issues in the U.S. and EU
May 26, 2005
Throughout the world, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation might well have had the biggest impact in corporate governance since the introduction of limited liability. To that end, jurisdictions outside the U.S. have not been idle. A recent Eversheds survey found more than 100 studies on the topic in 29 European countries within and outside the EU. Clearly, proper compliance to corporate governance guidelines is top of the list to in-house counsel across the EU, as well as the U.S. This roundtable sought to road-test some of these issues and look to some of the U.S.'s best governed corporations to see if there is a map for the journey ahead.
Use Escape Clauses For Tech Contracts
May 26, 2005
Lawyers and businesspeople are like most people who read things they must or are interested in: They read the exciting parts first ' and that includes contracts. Everyone is interested in the money, and what they will get from the deal. <br>But what about what might be considered the marginalia, the add-ons ' or what some people might think of as those categories ' the escape clauses of the contract? Well, you can bet that no one reads the term and termination sections first. These "quiet" clauses are usually hidden, well in the back of a contract, with the boilerplate and signatures.
Net News
May 25, 2005
Recent developments of note in the Internet industry. This month:<br>MPAA Targets TV Download Sites <br>Yahoo Sued over Child Porn Site <br>Star Wars' Sith Victim of Internet Sieve<br>Microsoft, Massachusetts Target Spammers in Lawsuit <br>2004 Internet Ad Rev Surpasses Dot-com Boom Levels
