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This Hands On will offer some tips on how to thread your way through the maze to focus on the most critical areas of risk management.

Between legislation and major court decisions, the patent landscape has changed drastically over the last several years. In light of this, companies should look at their patent strategies holistically, from all angles, including prosecution, licensing, litigation, and post grant procedures and the interplay among them. For instance, patents must have claims with detectable infringement and be capable of withstanding validity challenges in different forums. To obtain patents like these, it is necessary to understand every step of patent prosecution, how patents are enforced in federal court, and how patents are defended at the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Likewise, companies facing litigation or post-grant challenges, such as inter partes reviews, need the technical knowledge of patent prosecution that attorneys who have prosecuted patents possess. This program will provide a view from the trenches with a number of war stories and perspectives from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Silicon Valley office and in-house and outside counsel alike.

Learn steps your organization should take following the Federal Trade Commission's issuance of a final rule banning most noncompete agreements. This article from Cozen O'Connor discusses the FTC rule and how employers should respond if they have employees with noncompetes or are considering whether to implement them.

A review of legal privilege for in-house counsel in various jurisdictions around the world.

The paperless office is a mirage. We’ve had the technology to go mostly paperless since the early ‘90s. But our paper usage has grown right along with our data volumes, consuming 15 percent of our physical office space. For over a decade, the legal framework and our technological infrastructure have made digital signatures a far superior alternative to ink. This article advocates executing documents digitally.

Having practiced in wide-ranging areas of the law, from construction litigation to Medicare compliance, the author decided to move in-house. In addition to the most visible changes — an open office space, a khakis-and-shirt uniform, etc. — the author discusses less salient ones, like navigating a new cultural landscape and managing day-to-day tasks for a singular client.

Process standardization is a strategic initiative aimed at achieving consistency and uniformity across all organizational processes, but more specifically, the legal department being the focus here. By standardizing our internal processes and procedures, we can ensure a high level of service delivery, create efficiencies, optimize costs, and maximize benefits to our internal and external stakeholders. Click here to read more.

With increased immigration law enforcement on corporations, foreign national employees should not be an afterthought in the restructuring process. This article gives in- house counsel the know-how they need to be proactive in dealing with immigration issues during a change.

The Stark Law has promulgated complicated regulations for transactions involving payments to physicians. All facets of the healthcare industry also face on a daily basis the shadow of government prosecutors focused on violations of the federal anti-kickback statute. These laws involve both criminal prosecution and civil liability, and in-house attorneys have at times been prosecuted as individual defendants. Enforcement is expanding to cover individual physicians as prescribers of company products and providers of services to companies, such as consulting and clinical investigator services, and to physician ownership of medical device distributors. Looming over healthcare companies and individuals is the potential to be debarred from participation in Medicare, Medicaid & other federal health care programs. In addition, in-house counsel need to be aware of obscure state laws on the issues of physician self-referral prohibition and anti-kickbacks. This program will discuss the government’s new enforcement trend and mechanisms that in-house counsel can employ to reduce these risks.

"the "Getting the Deal Through" reference guide for M&A professionals"

This template can be used to plan out the onboarding, tracking, and achievement of a new hire over a 30, 60, and 90 day period.

This top ten article contains tips on how to mitigate a crisis as quickly and efficiently as possible with the least amount of exposure to your company as possible.

This multi-jurisdictional guide covers common issues in construction and engineering laws and regulations – including supervising construction contracts and dispute resolution.

ACC homepage poll results for the week of 11/21/2011 - 11/27/2011.

RFP- your first step in moving towards a new project. But is your RFP a toxic tool? Read Ron Pol's column and see if you agree with his tips.

Managing outsourcing relationships and negotiating technology solutions can prove to be difficult for in-house counsel, especially if they are brought into the process too late to be effective. This article discusses the benefits of adding counsel to the acquisition team early on in order to immediately influence the direction of the negotiations and ensure a more effective outcome for the client.

It's not just boiler plate! This program will help you negotiate important clauses even with the 800 pound gorillas that everyone says will not change their "standard" contract language. To do this, you need to get past the gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers are internal and the other side with whom you are negotiating. Build influence by choosing the important issues to negotiate and help your internal constituents understand the importance to gain momentum. The panel will present negotiation and drafting tips designed to complement and refine your approach based upon differing internal and external pressures to "get the deal done."

For US-based companies that hire foreign nationals or send US citizens to work abroad, there are laws, regulating bodies and cultural ideologies to pay attention to in order to avoid costly litigation. Businesses that are new to foreign employment should examine their practices to ensure compliance at home and abroad.

In-house counsel are accustomed to the ritual of negotiating NDAs to prevent unauthorized use and disclosure of their company's confidential and proprietary information, but they often overlook the perils of overnegotiating NDAs. This article highlights these perils and offers practical tips for drafting and negotiating NDAs for U.S. and international companies in order to quickly conclude an NDA that conscientiously protects confidential and proprietary information, without the unnecessary extras.

Companies are investing in renewable energy because it enables them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate leadership on broader corporate sustainability and climate commitments.

Large corporations such as Google, Walmart and Ikea are increasingly turning to renewable energy to power their operations. Companies are investing in renewable energy because it enables them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate leadership on broader corporate sustainability and climate commitments.

The threat of antitrust litigation, both through government action and civil suits, is very real. Can your employees recognize an antitrust red flag when they see one? How do you train an employee about a complex legal topic that has real-world implications to the company as well as him or her personally? This session will review the increasing enforcement trends regarding antitrust compliance both in the United States and abroad, provide real tools for you to incorporate into an antitrust compliance program in your company, and touch on international antitrust developments. This program will emphasize what employees need to know (certainly not statutory code numbers!) and how to communicate antitrust principles to your employees in a meaningful manner. The session will include an abbreviated real employee training: Can you answer the antitrust scenarios put to your employees?

We have all heard about big data breaches: millions of customer records at risk, credit monitoring for an extended period of time, etc. What about the smaller run-of-the-mill security or privacy breaches? Can we prevent them? Do we have to report them? How do you set up incident response reporting? How do you do a security risk assessment to mitigate your risks?

At the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Advanced Compliance Education Summit (ACES) in New Orleans, in-house attorneys participated in a dynamic and interactive tabletop exercise designed to foster collaboration and innovative problem solving.

Discusses how a CCO's task of implementing a new compliance and ethics program is like a cabinetmaker in that the program must fit seamlessly into the constantly shifting gaps in the corporate framework that they are supposed to fill.