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No matter how severe the injury, willful misconduct is a designation used to encompass behaviors that, if engaged by an employee, can bar a workers’ compensation claim — leading to missed benefits and/or medical treatment. As a result, much of the onus falls on the employer to draft clear policies that establish discerning hiring practices and include regular training. Here’s how to protect your employee, and your company in the process.

While many companies have had established diversity programs for some time, in-house legal departments have a long way to go to match the populations they serve. Over the past decade or so, in-house law departments have sought to change this. This article is meant to provide some context to these issues and to provide guidance on some best practices for creating and continuing an in-house legal diversity program. The BASF Corp. in-house legal program will serve as a case study for this initiative.

Patent litigation is often a high-stakes, zero-sum game. Either the patent is valid or not. Either the competitor’s product infringes or it does not. When a company’s current and future value depends on the strength of a patent, intellectual property disputes are often some of the most substantive and complex cases an in-house attorney may encounter.

It’s no secret that corporate crises are fast becoming “the new normal” for companies around the globe. With a seat at the executive table, in-house counsel can capitalize on this platform to become ethical gatekeepers for the company and minimize the liability of an unexpected crisis.

The German Institute for Compliance (DICO) and the German Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement, and Logistics (BME) have recently published an English version of the DICO Guideline “Antitrust Compliance – Cornerstones for Effective Compliance Programs”. This article provides a brief overview of the background and the contents of the guideline.

This article examines the risks and costs associated with the duty of disclosure for in-house counsel. Using big data methods and internal data from the USPTO, we summarize recent academic research on this question. We also describe how new technologies can help you standardize your workflow and lower the cost of your company’s prior art search, so you can plan for how courts may view your effort to comply with the duty of disclosure.

For any company, its employees are one of its most valuable assets. But ensuring that you are hiring the right people — people who share your company culture and values — is not straightforward. This article examines both the legal and practical perspectives that can help you, and your company, make the best decision to protect your business and workforce.

Today’s legal department must perform at a much higher level than before — and at a lower cost. What was once considered world-class is now the baseline. Anyone working in-house knows what I mean.

Law department leaders at large data holding organizations might lack awareness of the real cost and expense incurred when responding to third party discovery requests.

There has never been a better time to capitalize on the talents of female in-house counsel, yet women continue to face real barriers to advancement. High-performing female lawyers exiting the legal profession leave a “leaky pipeline” to senior legal positions. It is in these senior positions that women have the greatest effect on the bottom line; hence, efforts to repair this pipeline may be necessary sooner rather than later.

The one area of communication that is most often overlooked is communication with ourselves. How often do we take the time to perform an internal, periodic review?

Our job in advocating ethical business practices may not be as difficult as we might fear.

SP2.0 is all about your credibility: education, certification, networking, expansion, and connections, tailored to your personal needs. The goal of SP2.0 is not to make ACC great, but to make you great and to help you build credibility as a professional.

It is important for all in-house counsel to familiarize themselves with the unique opportunities and challenges of doing business and complying with legal requirements in Latin America.

The prudent employer should ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity are added as protected classes to their Equal Opportunity and harassment policies and that managers and employees are trained on such just like with any other type of harassment training.

It’s no secret — businesses with highly engaged employees generally have elevated productivity and better financial results. But employee needs and expectations change with the times, and that has never been more apparent than in today’s workplace.

This is the second part of a two-part article on the role of in-house counsel in enterprise risk management (ERM), specifically as to how we function in and around the “three lines of defense” model (3LD) that is providing much of today’s structural ERM framework.

It appears that everyone — law firm leaders and general counsels — view the lack of diversity as a serious problem in the legal field. However, the glacial pace of progress suggests the legal needs to find new and imaginative ways to foster diversity. Enter the Rooney Rule.

Getting a jumpstart on digesting these amendments is important to ensure your company’s litigation management processes, and that cost management procedures match the current state of the FRCP. This article summarizes the key changes from those amendments.

The presidential election campaign in the United States has shone a light on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) entered into by the United States and other countries.

This article explores the enforceability of non-compete covenants and suggests some drafting guidelines to improve the chances of implementing valid and enforceable non-compete covenants.

In-house lawyers are well positioned to advocate for social responsibilities that will benefit their employers. Read about how ACC Australia joined the vanguard of the social justice movement by supporting a call for constitutional (and other) reforms to empower First Nations people.

This article discusses strategic considerations for FCPA compliance from the perspective of a non-controlling JV partner.

As an in-house counsel, one of your key roles is to negotiate agreements that obligate your organization and counterparties for many years. After these agreements are signed, the true value of the agreement begins to accrue and the real work begins. To be a great in-house lawyer, you need to get out of your office and communicate key information about these agreements to your operations team.

In-house counsel are often the primary contact for negotiating certain types of contracts. However, in this role, you are not in charge of executing all the terms and commitments in each agreement. Agreements typically require many teams and departments to engage in or abstain from certain activities.

As an in-house lawyer based in Silicon Valley, one of the most popular agreements is the nondisclosure agreement (NDA) or confidentiality agreement. The latest trend for corporate offices is to mandate that all visitors, including the pizza delivery person, sign an NDA on a tablet computer before taking a step beyond the lobby.

How can professionals break into the blockchain industry? As someone who has made many career changes, here are the five steps that have guided my various career transitions, including my most recent pivot to blockchain.

Both data privacy and data security issues make headlines regularly; this article will focus on how in-house counsel can help educate and engage the board of directors with regard to data security.

Conducting FCPA due diligence on a target before and after signing a final agreement allows the buyer to fully understand the degree that the asset abides by anticorruption laws.

Lawyers do many things, but one of the most common is writing. In this post, I’ll talk about some of the best practices for turning abstract ideas into a concrete and well-organized vision.