Competition law is not necessarily seen as falling squarely within the compliance remit, but recent global enforcement actions in China and threatened actions in the European Union demonstrate the importance of having a robust global competition law risk and compliance program. This program will focus on best practices including policies and training, risk assessments and controls, preparing and managing dawn raids and monitoring changes in global antitrust laws.
This session will focus on the legal and ethical aspects of integrating a newly acquired company, with a focus on how to do this within the resources of a small legal department. Many in-house practitioners in smaller departments use outside counsel for an acquisition, but receive little support once the deal is closed. Discover issues that need to be addressed in the first seven, 30, 60 and 180 days, such as developing a playbook for merger integration; human resources issues to address; state regulatory issues and issues involved in acquiring the new business’ contractual obligations. Also included will be a discussion of integrating a newly acquired foreign enterprise, including cultural minefields to consider and avoid.
This interactive session will demonstrate how corporate counsel should react when their organization is hit with major litigation, including a governmental investigation targeting directors and officers. Attendees will participate in a “What should you do next?” discussion using electronic voting and Q&A throughout the session. By walking through the phases of a crisis as it typically unfolds, the panel will cover critical issues such as formation of special board committees, internal investigations, government disclosure, media strategy, hiring outside counsel, directors and officers (D&O) insurance and indemnification rights, attorney–client privilege concerns and must-know areas of D&O liability exposure. Special focus will be given to corporations with a global footprint that face exposure across international lines. The panel will use sample cases pulled from recent headlines, including insider trading investigations; cases involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; whistleblower cases and cases involving faulty accounting and disclosure allegations.
Most companies enter into contracts more frequently than they realize. In fact, any time you agree to take an action or make a payment in exchange for something of value, a legal contract arguably has been created. When these “handshake deals” are made, companies find themselves relying on memories of conversations or cryptic emails to establish that a contract existed. Attend this session to determine when contracts exist, navigate disputes, protect your company, and maintain relationships.
Whether to decide on a potential settlement or evaluate how legal risks may impact the long-term value of corporate strategies, in-house counsel are frequently expected to demonstrate business acumen and sound financial decision-making skills. During this session, experienced faculty from Boston University Questrom School of Business will help you sharpen your ability to make choices that rely on a rational financial-decision making process rather than the proverbial gut feeling. Faculty will discuss how to take into account external and internal factors that affect the longer-term profitability of the organization, in order to identify the decision that offers the best value. Faculty will also explain step-by-step how to understand the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flow, and how to identify red flags that signal financial difficulties or accounting problems.
While appearances may suggest that enterprise risk management (ERM) and governance risk and compliance (GRC) aim to solve for the same problems, they are arguably separate processes with different approaches and objectives. This session will review the differences between ERM and GRC approaches and assessments, and reveal how to identify which may be best suited to align with your company’s compliance program.
In this session, a panel will provide an overview of the major recent cases and trends in patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark law with particular emphasis on how they affect in-house practice.
In-house counsel will optimize their role as leaders in information governance by attending this session as they learn the lifecycle of data (collection, use, storage, archiving and destruction) and acquire tools to educate their companies on the risks and benefits associated with data as it travels through that lifecycle. Learn to resolve your company’s information management and governance issues and to add business value by finding information management systems that lower costs and improve efficiencies. Become “litigation-ready” in the face of complex discovery requests.
Audits by governmental agencies are on the rise, and compliance with the ever-changing and increasing number of regulations is challenging. Employee benefit plans could impose liability for your company’s employees who serve as fiduciaries, your board or your company. In a Jeopardy! format, this session will examine the top six sources of liability and top six best practices to avoid liabilities from employee benefit plans for welfare, retirement and executive compensation plans and specific issues for multinational companies.
For one country’s negotiators, time is money; for another’s, the slower the negotiations, the better. This workshop will focus on giving in-house lawyers the tools to develop cultural awareness in order to negotiate and collaborate effectively with colleagues and business partners, while understanding local markets.