Information Filled Under 'GTC Law Group' Category
Updated post: “Seeking Ways to Set Limits on E-Discovery” Monday, January 11th, 2010
Last week we posted an article by Robert Owen, a partner with Fulbright & Jaworski. He is head of the New York location’s litigation group, as well as co-head of the firm’s E-Discovery and Information Management practice group. Owen is part of the core team that conceived of and has administered Fulbright’s Annual Litigation Trends Survey since its inception in 2004. The article, titled “Seeking Ways to Set Limits on E-Discovery”, examines the current initiatives underway that re-examine full disclosure and the U.S. procedural rules focusing on the growing costs and complexity of federal civil pretrial discovery procedures. Is there a need for modifications or alternatives to our present system?
See the original post:
Updated post: “Seeking Ways to Set Limits on E-Discovery”
Ralph Losey has produced a six minute video from the last day of his class on e-discovery at the University of Florida. Holland & Knight’s William Hamilton and Ralph serve as adjunct professors at the College of Law to try to pass on what they know about the subject to the next generation. According to Ralph “a basic understand of the subject takes a few hundred hours and, if a student works hard, can be accomplished in one semester.
More:
4 Reasons to Learn e-Discovery and Other Smart Aleck Advice
As we have commented on in numerous posts ( click here ), enforcement activity under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act continues to increase. We have reported on how federal prosecutors are utilizing other statutes to attack corrupt business payments that may not fall under the ambit of the FCPA. Moreover, the number of government entities looking into corrupt business practices abroad has expanded. George J.
Visit link:
Commentary: FCPA Internal Investigations — Are They Worth It?
Student loan debt is up and job expectations are down according to a year-end, informal snapshot of several sources. The online ABA Journal is reporting that almost a third of all law students expect to graduate with more than $120k in loan debt. Over at Above the Law, editor Elie Mystal describes, in a column called “Debt: the Silent Killer,” the effect $150k in law school debt has had on him since he graduated from Harvard Law in 2003. Since he decided he didn’t like the practice of law after all, he calls the experience “a very expensive vacation that debt financed.” The ABA president is urging Congress to offer law students debt relief. For the full post and all links from the Adjunct Law Prof Blog click here .
Read more:
A year end snap-shot of the job market for U.S. law grads
In follow-up to the success of its live certification program in D.C., Catalyst is rolling out its Catalyst CR Certified Reviewers program (CRCR) to NYC next week. CRCR is the certification program for Catalayst CR (for information on the software click here ) which is gaining significant market share and being requested by many corporations and law firms due to its many options and easy programmability, and its multi-language capabilities.
See the original post here:
Catalyst is rolling out its reviewer certification training to NYC next week, Jan 13th and 14th
Paul Easton has been compiling some excellent sites that list project/matter management applications including Mark Kerzner’s “Legal Technology” blog. Last month Kerzner launched “LitSupport Q & A” that provides this information in a question and answer format as a free service to the litigation support community. One of the first answers published is a list of “EDD Project Tracking Dashboard software.” For Paul’s full post click here
View original post here:
E-discovery project management software lists
We made a pledge to ourselves that we would not end the year in a depressed state of mind. But it has been hard. We have ended the year in what seems to us to be a concatenation of events – continued repercussions from the financial melt-down, two seemingly intractable wars, the usual seesaw national debate we always see between “them” and “us” (this time about health care), and the tectonic shift in the legal industry. And contract attorneys and their families dealing directly with the knock-on effects of the financial melt-down and legal workplace meltdown … less work, increased competition from India, and the continuing squeeze by the cost cutting vise of law firms and agencies, etc. But while those of us in the contract attorney brigade like to bitch and moan about our mistreatment as attorneys — poor wages, disrespect, cramped quarters, and cold pizza — those issues pale in comparison with stories about real challenges. This year we were inspired by a post by someone who has faced real challenges, who has real “attitude” and who succeed against real odds. Please read “On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas” ( click here ) written by Jon Morrow, associate editor of Copyblogger, a site to which we subscribe and follow on Twitter
Here is the original post:
A Happy New Year to All
My last post reminded me to come back to a theme that I address from time to time – transaction costs for small transactions. While it is true that smaller deals are not necessarily less complex than larger deals (sometimes it seems like just the opposite), you just can’t paper a $1,000,000 deal (let alone a smaller one) the way you can a $10,000,000. $40,000 is 4% of $1,000,000 – it might be a material item that eats into the money you have to put to work in your business in significant way.
The rest is here:
Transaction Costs
We made a pledge to ourselves that we would not end the year in a depressed state of mind. But it has been hard. We have ended the year in what seems to us to be a concatenation of events – continued repercussions from the financial melt-down, two seemingly intractable wars, the usual seesaw national debate we always see between “them” and “us” (this time about health care), and the tectonic shift in the legal industry. And contract attorneys and their families deal directly with the knock-on effects of the financial melt-down and legal workplace meltdown … less work, increased competition from India, and squeezed by the cost cutting vise of law firms and agencies, etc. But while those of us in the contract attorney brigade like to bitch and moan about our mistreatment as attorneys — poor wages, disrespect, cramped quarters, and cold pizza — those issues pale in comparison with stories about real challenges. This year we were inspired by a post by someone who has faced real challenges, who has real “attitude” and who succeed against real odds. Please read “On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas” ( click here ) written by Jon Morrow, associate editor of Copyblogger, a site to which we subscribe and follow on Twitter. Jon Morrow faced unbelievable odds … and succeeded. Beyond belief. As we have discussed in previous posts, Posse List members with far less challenges than those faced by Jon can reposition themselves and obtain something better than document review (if that is your choice) in the e-discovery market, or reposition themselves to find more creative ways to raise their profiles and make contacts.
See the rest here:
A Happy New Year to all … and Posse List plans for 2010
We have just completed what we call the trifecta — full coverage of the premier electronically stored information (ESI) events for the litigation industry: The Masters Conference , the ACC Annual Meeting and the Georgetown Law Advanced E-Discovery Institute . And if we learned only one thing about the explosion of ESI and corporate data it was this: Craig Ball, Jason R.
Read this article:
A new series: “Data! Data! Data!” — Cures for a General Counsel’s ESI Nightmares
In follow-up to the success of its live certification program in D.C., Catalyst is rolling out nationwide its Catalyst CR Certified Reviewers program (CRCR) . CRCR is the certification program for Catalayst CR (for information on the software click here ) which is gaining significant market share and being requested by many corporations and law firms due to its many options and easy programmability, and its multi-language capabilities. The next live certification program will be in New York City on Jan
Read more:
Catalyst is rolling out its reviewer certification training in 2010
Welcome to SCG Legal PR Network for lawyers, where you as a member can gain exposure to both national and international legal and non-legal media through a variety of opportunities designed to get you and your practice noticed. This network was created to bridge the gap between law firms of all sizes and the media
See the article here:
“Making connections between attorneys as legal experts and journalists”
Seed and angel investments often come in the form of convertible notes – often notes that are convertible into some future round of equity investment at a discount to the valuation at the time of conversion. They have other terms as well such as interest rates, maturity dates, prepayment premiums in the event of an early sale of the business, waiver of certain debtor protections etc. These all may form the focus of future posts
Read the rest here:
Seed and Angel Investor Notes
Imagine your firm has spent thousands of dollars on getting all the communications materials right. Yet your legal practice remains at the same the level: chugging along. At this point, as expected, your feelings of frustration are reaching dangerously high levels. Quite often the missing ingredient from a successful legal marketing plan is commonly referred to as the “expert factor”. This is when your target market gets to know, like and trust you before doing business with you. Essentially, an expert is perceived as someone with authority and credibility.
See the original post:
How to get a reporter’s attention
We start a new series today in which we will profile a number of contract attorney agencies. We have spent the last several months interviewing a wide range of agencies across the country, at e-discovery conferences and in their offices. We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Lori DiCesare, CEO, President and founder of Legal Placements, Inc. (LPI). She is celebrating her 13 th anniversary in the legal staffing industry. The firm offers temporary, permanent and temporary to permanent staffing of law firms and corporations by providing hundreds of contract attorneys, direct hire attorneys, legal assistants, legal secretaries, IT professionals and administrative assistants to nearly 400 clients. LPI’s headquarters is in Washington, D.C. with a second office which figures prominently in Northern Virginia.
Continue reading here:
Staffing agency profile: Legal Placements, Inc
The Dow Jones webinar I did with David Bell (Fenwick & West), Sarah Reed (Charles River Ventures), and Lizette Perez-Deisboeck (Battery Ventures) has provided me with a lot of eye catching numbers. I will comment on the VC fundraising numbers in this post (and maybe some others in the future)
Read the original:
VC Fundraising – 2010 will be a telling year
Reported by: Gregory Bufithis and Alex Hania Weil, Gotshal and Covington & Burling will provide antitrust counsel to Exxon, and handle the second request. Covington has long been Exxon’s go-to antitrust counsel, and the firm guided Exxon through the antitrust process after its acquisition of Mobil. Both firms indicated the deal will likely win antitrust approval even though the industry is relatively concentrated, an opinon repeated by other antitrust lawyers not involved in the deal. Most said that a quick analysis of the marketplace and the competitive impact show a minimal effect. The review will be done in D.C. and by Covington which does direct hire; they have an enormous database of contract attorneys so we assume there will not be the usual staffing agency recruitment involved. With the deal Exxon will become the top U.S.
See the original post here:
Weil, Gotshal and Covington & Burling to handle antitrust side of Exxon/XTO Energy deal
Make no mistake: A Law School Carol is no heartwarming holiday tale of redemption. The computer-animated video, which has been c irculating on YouTube for several weeks, focuses on a law student named Steve who is visited by the ghost of Ralph Marley’s disappointing legal career (Ralph Marley being the law student who used to rent Steve’s apartment and now does document review somewhere in New Jersey)
Read more from the original source:
Going to law school? Proceed with caution
Should you jump on a plane to look for money on the west coast? Last Friday David Bell (from Fenwick & West), Sarah Reed (Charles River Ventures), Lizette Perez-Deisboeck (Battery Ventures) and I were the panel for a Dow Jones sponsored Webinar on the subject of “The Evolving Venture Term Sheet: What VCs & Execs Must Do To Secure the Best Deal.” This Webinar was built around the deal statistics published by Fenwick (a west coast law firm) and Foley (an east coast law firm). As you might expect, the numbers appear to confirm that there are some identifiable differences in practices between the west and the east
Read this article:
East Coast versus West Coast
Wind River has announced the availability of its commercial version of open source Android optimized on the OMAP 3 platform from Texas Instruments (TI). The Wind River Platform for Android is a validated, fully compliant software platform based on the latest versions of the Android software development kit (SDK), available with pre-integrated software from initial partners Adobe, PacketVideo and Red Bend Software, and global support from Wind River. Wind River Platform for Android, the company’s first commercial version of open consortia-based software, is available with the following building blocks: Open source Android code validated and tested by Wind River in a rigorous process combining hundreds of manual test cases and tens of thousands of automated test scenarios including compliance with the latest Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS); Pre-integrated third-party software, including existing Flash® technology from Adobe, OpenCORE™ mobile multimedia software from PacketVideo, firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating and device management software from Red Bend; Enhanced Android user interface and personalization options for such common branding functions as boot-up splash screen, locked idle screen, and termination screens and additional gesture-based choices for core phone functions; Extended framework and applications including master reset function, music player, performance and power management; Dedicated Wind River global customer support and services; and Optimization for leading mobile hardware including Texas Instruments’ OMAP34x and OMAP36x platforms.
See the original post here:
Wind River Makes Android Move
Compuware Corporation has launched an initiative to increase the profitability of mobile data service providers by empowering them to improve and manage the customer data experience. Compuware notes that the exponential increase in data-rich applications on mobile devices makes the optimization of the subscriber experience more difficult to achieve and more important to revenue, customer satisfaction and service provider loyalty. Compuware Vantage for Mobile provides a real-time view of a customer’s mobile data services experience by starting with an individual subscriber’s experience and linking it back to key business functions.
See the original post here:
Compuware Launches Vantage for Mobile
Oracle has announced the launch of Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising, an application that enables network operators to securely execute targeted mobile advertising and marketing campaigns. Historically, says Oracle, the effectiveness of mobile advertising has been hampered by advertisers’ inability to deliver targeted offers. By contrast, it says, Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising changes this direction as “the only application that allows network operators to execute targeted mobile advertising campaigns based on subscribers’ demographic, usage and location information.
Go here to see the original:
Oracle Launches Ad Solution for Mobile Operators
As heavily reported in the media, Comcast reached an agreement on Thursday with General Electric Company to acquire NBC Universal. The deal will under go heavy regulatory scrutiny and there is a lot of analysis already on the various media and legal blogs. If you have a Twitter account and do a simple search you get a boatload of hits. Davis Polk & Wardwell is representing Comcast on the deal, and GE and NBC are using Weil, Gotshal & Manges, according to the firm. Part of this deal involved French media company Vivendi which will sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal to GE. Vivendi was advised on the deal by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. According to our sources, a preliminary 4(c) review has begun and it is being done with a mix of law firm associates and contract attorneys. Item 4(c) of the Hart Scott Rodino form requires that the parties provide to the FTC and the DOJ all documents prepared by or for any officers or directors of the company for the purpose of evaluating or analyzing the competitive aspects of the proposed acquisition or merger.
See the rest here:
In answer to all your emails about the Comcast/NBC Universal merger
Drinkaware, in collaboration with Enable Interactive, Frank PR and mobile marketing firm Velti, have created ‘Party Season Survival Packs’, which include tips for staying safe during the party season, free condoms and, in a first for the charity sector, mobile phone credit. Enable and Frank PR, who started working with Drinkaware in April, came up with the survival pack concept after holding focus groups with 16 and 17 year olds who felt that mobile phone credit, as well as free condoms, were a fair exchange for receiving the campaign’s responsible partying message.
Visit link:
Velti Offers Free Credit in Drinkaware Campaign
O2 has officially unveiled O2 More, which it describes as “a first-of-its-kind scheme in the mobile industry, which will unleash the true potential of mobile advertising for brands”. According to O2, O2 More takes mobile advertising beyond the banner, delivering highly personalized campaigns for advertisers and giving O2 customers access to a wide range of exclusive and relevant offers from over 50 leading brands at launch. O2 More is an opt-in programme for O2 customers which matches preference information they give to O2 with data O2 holds on those customers, such as phone usage, location etc.
Read more:
O2 Launches O2 More
From the December 2009 issue of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel ® Bob Tennant is the Chief Executive Officer at Recommind , a position he has held since late 2001. His thoughts on litigation support and e-discovery trends: As we approach the end of a difficult year in 2009, there is no better time to reflect on the current state of litigation support and eDiscovery and examine the trends emerging for 2010. Emerging Technologies Causing eDiscovery Nightmares The rapid growth of electronically stored information showed no letup in 2009, and it promises to accelerate in 2010, as companies grapple with information risk from new sources, such as Web 2.0 tools, cloud computing, unified communication and virtualization.
Read more:
2010: Litigation Support and eDiscovery Trends
China Mobile Communications Corp’s research and development branch, China Mobile Research Institute, has chosen Red Bend to provide software for firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating and device management (DM) for mobile phones that use the Android-based OPhone OS (Open Mobile Phone Operating System). China Mobile Communications Corp is the world’s largest wireless network operator, with more than 500 million subscribers. Under the agreement, China Mobile has adopted Red Bend’s vRapid Mobile FOTA software and vDirect Mobile DM software for performing remote management and software updates on OPhone Smartphones
See original here:
China Mobile Selects Red Bend for FOTA Task