The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is the world's largest organization serving the professional and business interests of attorneys who practice in the legal departments of corporations, associations, nonprofits and other private-sector organizations around the globe.
Companies, including those unrelated to electric industries, are involved in programs that involve the marketing, purchase and sale of renewable energy attributes or credits produced when “green” energy is generated. This program focused on the nature of these attributes, how these attributes intersect with carbon offsets, the legal issues encountered with such programs, and key terms of agreements used in transactions involving renewable energy attributes.
It is impossible to keep up with it all, but this session will help. Our panel of experts provided an update of the year’s most significant litigation and regulatory decisions affecting both private and public companies. What you don’t know CAN hurt you and your organization, so don’t overlook this information-packed session.
This session presented an overview of the tax law and regulations as they relate to the deductibility of fines, penalties, and punitive damages. There was also a discussion of the current trends in settlement language with governmental institutions and strategies to obtain the optimal tax outcome for the company. And what are the economic implications of a settlement being deductible as compared to a settlement that is not deductible? We addressed that, too!
Today’s ethical representation challenges aren’t simple and they hardly ever wear convenient name tags that allow you to easily identify them. Since bar regulations don’t provide much guidance in the corporate context, we offered you a series of professionally-acted hypotheticals that asked the audience to interactively navigate a series of ethical close calls. Help decide how our corporate counsel hero should investigate whistleblower allegations, supervise off-shored representations, advise on executive compensation, conduct employee interviews, and more.
Shareholders are important stakeholders for every company and recent events have shown the risks a company faces in dealing with them. Shareholders are becoming more active and more aggressive, often using their influence to create short-term stock market gains rather than long-term value, or pursuing proxy fights based on their views of good corporate governance and good citizenship.
Is a data theft or breach one of your company’s worst nightmares? Read the daily paper to see the serious ramifications that can occur under such a breach. What can and should you know about this subject matter and implement to help protect your client? This presentation provided a summary of the current state of the law (state and federal), a discussion of to whom the laws apply and the types of data that have to be protected, and a description of the technology that can be used to help compliance.
Lawyers consume vast amounts of energy, paper, water and other natural resources, and we generate a large stream of waste products, all of which have a substantial impact on climate change and environmental quality. The solution to climate change and diminishing environmental quality not only includes global and national action, but also efforts by individuals, businesses and organizations — including the legal profession — to reduce environmental impacts.
What does “litigation management” really mean? How do you do it? Are you supposed to be involved in every detail or merely outsource cases to outside counsel and receive status reports, or something in between? Does it matter what kind of case it is? How do you best advise your boss of the status of these cases? The panel discussed different methods and styles of litigation management, and guided attendees to determine which approach works best for them, their companies, and their cases.
Since the Enron and Arthur Andersen debacles, prosecutors have shifted toward deferring prosecution of companies and enhancing their scrutiny of officers, directors and professionals. Companies have become more willing to lay blame at the feet of in-house counsel and plaintiffs’ counsel are suing in-house counsel to increase the size of settlements and pit corporate insiders against each other. This program explored the personal liability risks that in-house counsel face in every day situations and provided the legal background so that in-house counsel can properly address those risks.
Your company may be or has been sued; now you must take steps to preserve documents. No task is potentially more important in terms of reducing both headline and economic risk. You face critical questions as to if, when, and how you should implement a document preservation notice and this panel of experts tackled them, such as: When and what type of investigation must a company undertake before determining that a threat is not credible and, therefore, that litigation is not “reasonably anticipated?” When is a corporate entity “on notice?” How do the courts view the parties’ efforts?