Blogging and the Bottom Line
February 24, 2005
Pick an area of law ' trademark, employment, appellate, whatever ' tack "lawyer" onto it, and search the phrase on Google. Odds are, a legal blog will be among the top-ranking results ' often at the top of the list. <br>At a time when talk of online marketing invariably turns to the pseudo-science of search-engine optimization, many law firms are missing an often more sure-fire route to the top of the search-engine heap ' blogging.
High Court Ethereality
February 24, 2005
I first started covering the U.S. Supreme Court just over 5 years ago. As measured in High Court years, that's barely a nanosecond-everything there moves…
Executive Compensation: Are You In Compliance?
February 24, 2005
What does the in-house lawyer need to be doing today to be prepared for the upcoming Proxy Statement season and to ensure that his client's deferred compensation plans and agreements are in compliance with (or exempt, <i>ie</i>, grandfathered, from) IRC '409A?
Can Your Firm Serve Small Clients Profitably?
January 27, 2005
In one chapter of his 2004 book, <i>The First Myth of Legal Management is that It Exists</i>, Ed Wesemann argues that small clients disproportionately drain the resources of law firms while providing a disproportionately small contribution to firm profits. He proposes ways to help firms focus on serving larger clients, while also improving the profitability of small clients who stay with the firm.
Dealing with the SEC's 'Up-the-Ladder' Reporting Requirements
January 26, 2005
The provision of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) that sets out the gatekeeper role for lawyers, Section 307, requires that lawyers report "up the ladder" (that is, to senior management and, ultimately, to the audit committee or the full board of directors) evidence of certain violations of the securities laws and breaches of fiduciary duties. While the SEC's rules implementing Section 307 became effective in August 2003, there remains much ambiguity in how the SEC plans to enforce them.
Media & Communications Corner: <b>How To Make The Most Of A Stale News Story</b>
December 27, 2004
All marketing directors have experienced it. They receive an e-mail that describes a terrific deal closed or case "just" won by an attorney at the firm. The attorney requests a press release and a full-blown public relations push to all media outlets. But curiously, nowhere in the e-mail does the attorney mention when the big case or deal happened. As it turns out, it is because it happened more than a month ago and, since the client did its own press release immediately after the fact, every media outlet known to man covered it then. So how can a marketing director say no, without actually saying it? The dilemma is that you cannot send the release to the media again, weeks after the fact, but you don't want to tell the attorney that he or she has no options either. So here are some suggestions of how to make the most of old news.
