Search

The better we take care of ourselves, the more effectively we can serve our clients and stakeholders. While there is no quick fix or miracle cure, mindfulness can help lawyers reduce stress and improve leadership.

Erik Lindberg discusses his current position as assistant general counsel with Infrastructure & Energy Alternatives, Inc. (IEA).

A good manager helps the team understand when “good enough” is just that and when it is time to put “pencils down.” The quest for perfect often thwarts the more important goal of simple completion. I coach colleagues on this all the time.

Liu’s life has taken a few turns — a few lucky turns, according to him — and he intends to pass that luck along. But as he tells his legal department, you can’t get lucky if you’re afraid of risk.

More than a popularity contest, building strong work relationships can also help you do your job more effectively.

With AI already routinely deployed in certain repetitive tasks, it is apt to explore how AI can be harnessed in the area of regulatory compliance.

Employers are continuing to examine how to properly identify, audit, and address equal pay issues within their organizations. To increase pay transparency and expand the limited “equal work” standard under federal law, US states have enacted pay equity laws that, among other things, prohibit salary history inquiries and require equal pay for “substantially similar” work.

The following seven steps are critical when investigating allegations of workplace misconduct.

Not only is using a person’s preferred pronoun a basic courtesy but failing to do so could be in violation of human rights law.

Whether you are at a law firm or legal department, legal tech — and specifically Contract Management Software (CMS) — helps create that alignment. This article outlines five skills that CMS enhances that will help ensure your continued job security and career growth in an ever-changing legal market.

This new manufacturing landscape raises questions regarding civil liability for products meant to prevent or treat the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, the US Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) and the recent public health emergency declaration by the US Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services provide significant immunity from COVID-19 personal injury lawsuits.

That’s a startling number, even in a high stress field such as law. This May, in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to focus on how in-house counsel can seek help for — and prioritize — their mental health.

Mindfulness has a positive impact on all arenas of human functioning. While most of the research has focused on the positive impact of mindfulness on the individual, a growing body of work in the management area also suggests that mindfulness is linked to better workplace functioning.

It is essential that lawyers identify for their clients all of the factors they must take into account when assessing the risk of entering into, or servicing, the cannabis industry. This article explores the factors to consider in navigating this increasingly complex and rapidly changing legal landscape.

One of the most crucial sources for the decisions your business makes is its contracts. But what happens when those contracts are inaccessible or can only be viewed in segments, depending on the department involved? Being disconnected from the office meant processes would become even more fragmented than they already were.

The past few years have brought on a regulatory compliance boom in the corporate world, aimed at greater transparency on tax matters.

This article explores the intersection of preserving privilege during an internal investigation while maintaining compliance with employees’ federally protected rights.

For in-house lawyers, there is no substitute for having a more experienced lawyer as a mentor. But there are other people in your company who can also play an important part in career development.

This article examines current trends with respect to board diversity in the United States (US), as they contrast with developments in Europe. Overall, the movement to meaningfully implement board diversity in the US continues to grow apace.

The ever-growing volume of information (and misinformation) make it challenging for businesses to stay abreast of the state of the law and the current trends. This article provides a crash course in cannabis to arm in-house counsel with basic information about this burgeoning industry.

If you truly aspire to be a leader, you need to make developing a diverse and inclusive culture as important as any other operational and leadership action you take to drive performance.

As a mandatory reporting regime, failure to properly report under the Directive may trigger penalties, the amount of which will be determined by each Member State individually. Because intermediaries and companies will be reporting on arrangements with certain characteristics, they should develop internal systems to identify arrangements that may require reporting. This article includes six highlights to keep in mind regarding the Directive.

This article sets out is an updated version of the introductory chapter of the Manual for Using Private Dispute Resolution Clauses in Business Agreements, which closely follows the text of the original edition.

In this article, we argue that the enforcement environment has changed in some fundamental way and explain why the change requires all companies with potential exposure to global anti-corruption laws to reassess their compliance programs.

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.

Change invariably comes packed with a lot of big emotions, including fear, elation, depression, and exhaustion. It is important to recognize this as a natural part of the process; so you should know that the emotional roller coaster your team is about to get on has its own cycle of stages. Recognizing those stages makes them easier to manage.

Gone are the days when lawyers could argue that legal is not a business, but rather a profession. It is critical for in-house counsel to be part of the push by applying business practices that strive to maximize value by streamlining operations and creating efficiencies. By adapting lean, Six Sigma, and project management tools, your company can uncover countless opportunities to team up with key business partners and make your organization more valuable.

This article will help the reader think about whether a professional rotation program for an in-house legal department makes sense for an employer and its legal team. It will help identify the purpose of such a program and showcase the costs and benefits. It will also address the critical steps to successfully implement such a program.

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.