A recent poll by the Association of Corporate Counsel found that more than half of in-house lawyers said work-life balance was a large factor in their decision to choose an in-house position.

The ACC polled more than 30,000 lawyers to gain insight into how organizations and leaders can benefit from the positive business outcomes of encouraging and fostering a climate of work-life balance for corporate lawyers.

The poll showed:

• Globally, Canada and the United States rate their happiness with work-life balance more positively than those from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific and Latin America.
• One in five in-house lawyers who are caregivers have had to leave a job for one that better supports their caregiving role, and 4 percent quit work entirely. One in five will consider making a change in role or position in the coming year.
• Seventy percent of women caregivers say their caregiving role has had a negative impact on their opportunities for career advancement.

See the report.

Silanis Technologies has posted online a free white paper on the benefits of a fully electronic contracting process, extending beyond a streamlined workflow.

Pressure to transact faster, more efficiently and from the convenience of mobile devices is accelerating the adoption of e-contracting, Silanis says on its website. “If you’ve ever had to sign a contract with an organization that is not using e-signature technology, you are familiar with the additional work that can easily consume 30 minutes per interaction – open an email, print a document, sign it, scan it into digital format, convert it to PDF, email it to the vendor and archive it. Keeping the process digital saves these time-consuming tasks.”

But the benefits of a fully electronic contracting process extend beyond a streamlined workflow, Silanis says.

Download the white paper.

iCONECT Development, LLC, a technology leader that develops intuitive, web-based eDiscovery software and Nuix, a technology company that enables people to make fact-based decisions from unstructured data, announce they have competed delivery of “Direct to Database” (D2D) integration between Nuix eDiscovery and iCONECT-XERA.

From within the Nuix eDiscovery Workbench, Nuix users can now automatically create an iCONECT-XERA database and transfer extracted document data for review.

The near-complete elimination of manual inputs enables a much faster data migration process than was previously possible, iCONNECT says on its website.

“Our testing shows a 60% reduction in the amount of administrator time spent compared to the traditional import-export process,” says Iram Arras, iCONECT’s Vice President, Product Strategy. “The automated database configuration process also reduces errors and time spent correcting mistakes.”

Read more.

Lux Research will present a complimentary webinaron poor recovery factors plague tight oil production.

The webinar will be Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

On its website, Lux Research says the advent of tight oil has rescued North America’s oil industry from a slow, painful decline and has transformed it into one of the world’s premier oil producing regions. However, dismal recovery factors still plague tight oil production, with many producers recovering just 5% of the oil in place. As plays mature, producers’ long-term health depends on its ability to squeeze far more oil from each well.

This webinar will cover:

• How will incremental improvements in recovery effect overall production?
• What are the challenges limiting recovery today?
• Who are the technology developers attempting to meet these challenges?

Register for the webinar.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved the Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act bipartisan bill (H.R. 161), legislation that could speed up the permit process for the construction of natural gas pipelines, reports Pennsylvania Business Daily.

Co-sponsored by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), the bill seeks to eliminate permit regulations that are hindering the extraction, transportation and distribution of shale gas.

The bill now must be voted on by the U.S. the Senate.

Read the story.

Wells Fargo & Co. recently snagged two former Bank of America Corp. high-ranking lawyers to fill openings in its litigation and workout division, the bank confirmed, reports The Wall Street Journal‘s Moneybeat blog.

Craig Baldauf, a former Bank of American interim director of litigation and regulatory investigations, plans to join Wells Fargo on Feb. 23 as a deputy general counsel, the San Francisco-based lender said. He most recently served as head of global litigation for Toronto-based TD Bank Group, after leaving Bank of America in 2011.

Bob McGahan, former associate general counsel of litigation and regulatory inquiries at Bank of America, joined Wells Fargo Jan. 20 as an assistant general counsel.

Moneybeat says both will work on litigation and regulatory matters across the bank.

Read the story.

A free on-demand webinar sponsored by NEC Energy Solutions discusses various applications for energy storage on the grid and how they can be used to help grid operators, generators, or utility companies meet the challenges of ensuring reliability and increasing the efficiency of existing resources or infrastructure.

Actual real world case studies describe how these grid storage solutions were configured from standard modular building blocks and deployed to solve challenges for their owners. The webinar covers the application modelling and configuration process, the installation and commissioning, as well as actual results from select cases.

NEC presenters are Roger Lin, Director, Product Marketing, and Rhys Foster, Senior Sales Engineer.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Jan. 26 to hear an appeal by a former BP Plc executive who contested whether he can be charged with obstruction of Congress for downplaying the severity of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Reuters reports.

Prosecutors say David Rainey, the company’s exploration vice president, misled members of Congress over the amount of oil spilled in the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident.

Reuters says Rainey’s legal argument on appeal was that the government missed the deadline to file an appeal after a district court judge dismissed his obstruction charge.

Read the story.

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer hired Jay Jorgensen in 2013 to help overhaul a company badly shaken by allegations its executives regularly bribed officials in Mexico to speed up store construction. Jorgensen, Global Chief Compliance Officer, says Walmart has spent $100 million over the past two years hiring thousands of employees to work on compliance, reorganizing its corporate structure, training workers and rolling out new technology.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Justice Department continue to investigate Walmart, according to a report in SFGate.

Walmart now trains contractors on the company’s ethics policies and requires them to sign contracts requiring them to follow U.S. law.

Read the story.

National Council on Compensation Insurance offers a free on-demand webinar exploring the workers compensation implications of the fracking industry, as well as federal and state legislative and regulatory issues.

On its website, NCCI says oil and gas issues, especially hydraulic fracturing (fracking), have been receiving increased attention in the legislatures and media. Fracking is the process of enabling the extraction of natural gas from shale deep below ground.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Knovel has posted a free on-demand webinar discussing risk mitigation and new rules, standards and regulations and the consequences of non-compliance regarding corrosion in the oil and gas industry.

The webinar covers the 5M Scorecard Methodology – Modeling, Mitigation, Monitoring, Maintenance and Management; how to implement an integrity management program; and the best practices to communicate to the public.

Featured speakers are Dr. Sankara Papavinasam, President of CorrMagnet Consulting Inc. of Ottawa, Ontario; and Dr. Pavan K. Shukl, Senior Research Engineer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

SilkRoad has posted a free on-demand webinar offering a look into the strategic practices of more than 300 HR professionals as told by their responses to SilkRoad’s recent Strategic HR Survey.

The webinar covers topics such as:

• Do your HR strategies align with company goals?

• How do you measure the effectiveness of human resources on the organization’s bottom-line?

• Are you meeting with top-level executives to establish guidelines for HR planning?

• Have you aligned workforce plans with individual departmental goals?

• How frequently do you measure and benchmark HR initiatives?

• Are you developing a reactive or strategic HR practice?

Watch the on-demand webinar.

A free on-demand webinar presented by Platts looks at some of the reasons for sharp fall in crude oil prices and discusses how markets might evolve in 2015 as key participants react.

Crude oil prices have fallen by 25 percent in months, waking a sleeping giant in OPEC and presenting the first credible existential threat to U.S. tight oil production since the revolutionary technology burst onto the scene in 2010, Platts says on its website.

In the webinar, Platts editors Dave Ernsberger and Beth Evans, discuss:

• Why have prices fallen so steeply in recent months?
• What steps might OPEC take next, and how effective can it be?
• Is US tight oil production under threat?

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Courts weighing whether union retirees have vested lifetime health-care benefits should apply ordinary contract principles, rather than special inferences or presumptions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, Bloomberg BNA reports.

The unanimous Jan. 26 opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas is largely a win for employers, which may now have more freedom to alter, reduce or eliminate the health-care benefits they provide to retired union workers.

Bloomberg BNA says the court invalidated what has become known as the Yard-Man inference, a judicial inference applied by the retiree-friendly U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to find that retiree health-care benefits are vested for life in the absence of specific language to the contrary in a plan document or collective bargaining agreement.

Read the story.

CPEhr presents a complimentary on-demand webinar on human resources outsourcing, one of fastest growing sectors of the outsourcing industry.

From Obamacare and Workers’ Compensation, to harassment, discrimination and fair-pay regulations, the volume of employment-related laws has skyrocketed in the past 20 years, the firm says on its website. Small employers with little or no spare resources to focus on these matters are understandably overwhelmed.

This 60 minute webinar discusses the challenges facing employers in today’s economy, and how outsourcing various human resource functions can significantly help alleviate those challenges.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Exari presents a free on-demand webinar discussing how document automation can alleviate the burden of creating HR documents.

The webinar also includes a demonstration of Exari’s Document Assembly and Contract Management products from an HR perspective.

Topics include how document automation can transform HR, if automation is right for your organization, and the most common types of HR documents to automate.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Corridor Company presents a free on-demand webinar aimed at anyone ready to issue a request for proposal, as well as those just starting the process.

Presenter Russ Edelman discusses RFP readiness (understanding product landscape as well as your own requirements and current practices), outreach strategies, down-select criteria, and the use of evaluation tools such as a functional comparison matrix, use cases, and implementation scenarios.

The webinar also answe4rs questions regarding the proper scope or timeframe for an RFP in the contract management space.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

ReposiTrak has posted a free on-demand webinar on Walmart’s 2014 settlement of 23 cases in the wake of the Jensen Farms class action litigation due to an outbreak of listeriosis linked to cantaloupes.

Walmart’s play that day in court sets precedent that retailers now may be viewed as stepping into the shoes of the manufacturer and are now on the hook when things go wrong in the supply chain, ReposiTrak says on its website.

This webinar discusses this precedent setting settlement and what a retailer or wholesaler can do to protect brand and reduce liability.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Performance-based contracting received a boost this month when the Government Accountability Office found that the U.S. Department of Transportation is making progress in moving toward a national performance-based approach, reports Forbes.

In Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century (MAP-21), the DOT recognized the importance of a more progressive approach in the way federal agencies and states do business with each other, with planning organizations and with private vendors.

Accordinng to the Forbes report, in the fiscal year 2013, DOT provided about $50 billion to states and other “grantees” — such as metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies — to support highway and transit infrastructure and safety.

Read the story.

Ernst & Young has posted a free on-demand webinar on a converged standard for recognizing revenue under U.S. GAAP and IFRS introduced during 2014.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Boardissued the new converged standard.

The new standard replaces existing revenue guidance across industries, impacting most types of transactions.

On its website, Ernst & Young syas understanding the potential consequences of the new standard across your organization — beyond finance — can help you avoid unexpected issues related to your revenue recognition process.

Watch the on-demand webinar.