Sherpa Software is offering a complimentary four-part white paper series on enterprise information governance.

This series, titled Corporate Information Governance Program (CIGP), helps organizations create a trustworthy enterprise-wide program to facilitate effective management of information authority, control, accessibility and visibility throughout the information lifecycle. This methodology is typically referred to as information governance, which is a set of multifaceted policies, procedures and controls that help companies manage legal, regulatory, operational and other risks.

Author Rick Wilson describes a proven process for undertaking an information governance program from understanding and assessment to planning and documenting then implementation and finally the ongoing management. Download the four parts below:

Part 1: “Implementing an Information Governance Program: The Planning Process”
Part 2: “Building Your Roadmap: The Plan & Document Phase
Part 3: “Exploring the Implementation Phase
Part 4: “The Management Stage”

Deutsche Bank AG has named Steven F. Reich, a former official at the U.S. Department of Justice and attorney for former President Bill Clinton, as its general counsel for the Americas.

Reich was a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York. He will join the bank in April, reporting to Deputy General Counsels Simon Dodds in London and Christof von Dryander in Frankfurt, according to Michele Allison, a spokeswoman for the bank.

His move, reported by The New York Times, comes at a critical time as the company faces criminal and civil investigations into interest rate manipulation and currency rigging.

Read the story.

An analysis by June DeHart, published in Environmental Leader, discusses the prospects of Congress lifting the ban on crude oil exports.

The industry itself is divided into two camps and specific regional and environmental interests are fully engaged in the debate, she writes.

“Fracking, horizontal drilling and the shale oil revolution have the U.S. on track to overtake Russia and Saudi Arabia as the leading crude oil producer in the world,” the report says. “The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently reported that it expects US crude production in 2016 to be close to the record level of 9.6 million barrels per day set in 1970. As a result, the policy battles have begun in the Congress and the groundwork is being laid by both proponents and opponents.”

Read the story.

Thompson Coburn LLP has published an analysis of handling a request for disclosure of the identity of members/partners in an LLC or LP during litigations. In “Part I: Motions to Remand,” the firm examines the best approach.

The firm describes the situation counsel may face: “You represent a LLC or LP and file suit in state court to avoid disclosing the identity of your members/partners. But then the identity of those members/partners becomes an issue when the defendant removes your state court case to federal court claiming diversity jurisdiction. The contentions of the removal petition may allege diversity of the parties “upon information and belief” and then you are left to admit or refute the allegations and/or address the issue in the jurisdictional statement of your counterclaim. For privacy reasons though, your LLC or LP may not want to divulge the identity of its members/partners.”

The analysis continues with a description of the best approach.

Read the story.

Copyright has been going through an identity crisis in the digital age, according to a report in Primary Opinion’s Intellectual Property Edition. For some, the free-flow of information online has rendered it an obsolete legal concept, incapable of meaningful enforcement and contrary to the public interest and the freedom of expression. From a more traditional perspective, it is a fundamental right necessary to incentivise and protect copyright authors and owners, which benefits the public through the continuous creation of works while driving the economy. As the policy debate rages, many jurisdictions are seeking to balance these competing interests, with varying success, by gradually reforming their copyright laws.

Earlier this year, the UK Government decided not to take any action following the UKIPO’s consultation on reducing the duration of copyright in certain unpublished, and often very old, works, despite Parliamentary approval to change the law in order to ‘bring it into line with the standard copyright position to achieve fairness and legal clarity, to reduce the administrative burden on businesses and to bring UK law into line with EU law’.

Similarly to the UK, ‘the fact that a work is old does not necessarily mean it is in the public domain’ in the US, where it can be just as ‘complicated to find out whether or not an older work is still in copyright’. New York firm Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, PC notes that ‘even a very old work can still be under copyright if it has never been published or registered in the U.S’. The ‘single most important fact for works created before 1989’ is when the work was ‘first “published” by or with the authorization of the copyright owner’.

Canadian copyright law also ‘continues to grapple with our ongoing technological revolution’. In regard to fair dealing, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP note that the exception ‘has undergone somewhat of a transformation’ since the Supreme Court of Canada ‘described the defence as a “user right”’ that must be balanced against the rights of copyright owners in 2004. ‘Ever since, users have attempted to assert a broader and broader scope of rights’.

Read the story.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. (February 26, 2015) — The national law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP announced that partners Christopher Townsend, Joel Tragesser, and Jeffrey Wolf each have received the 2015 Client Choice award from Lexology and the International Law Office (ILO).

Established in 2005, the Client Choice awards recognize partners around the world that stand apart for their excellent client service. Uniquely, these awards survey in-house senior corporate counsel only, inquiring about quality of legal advice, value delivered, commercial awareness, and effective communication. Following one-on-one interviews with clients, this year’s winners were chosen from a pool of more than 2,500 individual nominations. Only one attorney in each market is recognized for any particular practice area.

Townsend practices out of the firm’s Chicago office and is member of the Energy & Environmental Practice Group. He leads a team of energy lawyers who help clients develop projects, save costs, and manage risks in the ever-changing energy markets, assisting with strategic counseling, regulatory, litigation, transactional, and government relations matters. Townsend received his law degree, with honors, from the University of Iowa College of Law and his bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from Augustana College.

Tragesser practices out of the firm’s Indianapolis office and is a member of the Intellectual Property Practice Group. He focuses his practice on prosecuting trademark applications in the United States and foreign countries; drafting software licenses; and litigating infringement, false advertising, unfair competition, and business disputes. Tragesser received his law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School and his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Wabash College.

Wolf practices out the firm’s Phoenix office and is a member of the Franchise & Distribution Practice Group. He represents franchisors of all sizes in litigation involving breach of contract, fraud, trademark and trade dress infringement, restrictive covenants, and vicarious liability, among other claims. His practice also includes handling general commercial and employment litigation for a variety of clients. Wolf received his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and his bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from the University of Hartford.

About ILO
Launched in 1998, ILO is the nexus where global corporate counsel engage with the world’s pre-eminent law firms, and each other. ILO is a multifaceted online resource for senior international corporate counsel, which provides tailored, quality-assured updates on global legal developments, a database of the world’s major deals and the legal advisers involved, and a comprehensive directory of firms and partners. Recognizing its unique relationship with global corporate counsel, many of the world’s premier associations have chosen to partner with ILO.

About Lexology
Launched in 2007, Lexology is a daily newsfeed of law firm client alerts, articles, and blogs delivered to the desktops of senior business lawyers worldwide on a daily basis. Lexology has built a unique audience of over 228,00 subscribers, over 60 percent of whom are in-house corporate counsel representing the vast majority of Fortune 500, FT Global 500 and FT Euro 500 companies—including all members of the Association of Corporate Counsel.

About Quarles & Brady LLP
Quarles & Brady is a full-service law firm with more than 475 attorneys offering an array of legal services to corporate and individual clients that range from small entrepreneurial businesses to Fortune 100 companies, with practice focuses in health care and life sciences, business law, data privacy and security, and complex litigation. The firm has offices in Chicago; Indianapolis; Madison; Milwaukee; Naples, Florida; Phoenix; Scottsdale; Tampa; Tucson; and Washington, D.C. Additional information can be found online at quarles.com, as well as on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Sherrie L. Farrell of Dykema

Dykema, a leading national law firm, announces that Sherrie Farrell has been recognized by The Michigan Chronicle as a 2015 Woman of Excellence. Farrell was selected from near hundreds of nominees to join this exclusive group of 350 of Southeast Michigan’s most-influential women.

Now in its eighth year, The Michigan Chronicle Women of Excellence Awards celebrate local African-American women who inspire others through their vision, leadership, exceptional achievements and participation in community service, Dykema says in a release. The women who are chosen for this award are champions of economic empowerment, the backbone of religious and educational organizations and the driving forces in politics and community service in southeast Michigan. The Michigan Chronicle is one of the region’s oldest, most respected African-American newspapers.

Farrell is the Office Managing Member of the firm’s Detroit office, Leader of Dykema’s Cybersecurity practice, and Chair of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. A member of the firm’s Litigation Department, she advises clients on all aspects of business disputes, including a broad range of complex litigation matters. She has represented manufacturers, closely-held corporations, auto suppliers and construction companies in both litigated and non-litigated matters. Her practice also includes the defense of consumer financial services matters and she has served as the national discovery counsel for a Fortune 25 corporation.

“It is with great gratitude that I accept this honor as a Michigan Chronicle Woman of Excellence,” Farrell said. “I admire this respected, powerful group of women to the utmost degree and am thrilled to be their peer as we continue our hard work as businesswomen, community activists, philanthropists and entrepreneurs in the southeastern Michigan community.”

A well-known participant in her community, Farrell is a board member of the Gift of Life-Michigan Governing Board and Black Family Development, Inc. She also is an avid contributor to the Advisory Board of Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program, Wayne State University’s Board of Visitors and a Mentor for the Legal Profession Diversity Pipeline Program at Just the Beginning Foundation. Farrell was also a member of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Detroit Class XVIII, a community leadership program for executives in southeast Michigan.

Farrell earned a J.D., cum laude, from the Detroit College of Law and a B.A. from Wayne State University.

About Dykema

Dykema serves business entities worldwide on a wide range of complex legal issues. Dykema lawyers and other professionals in 12 U.S. offices work in close partnership with clients – from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies – to deliver outstanding results, unparalleled service and exceptional value in every engagement. www.dykema.com and  Dykema on Twitter

SeyfarthLean Consulting has published a free white paper saying that design isn’t just about making things look nice, it is about finding ways to more clearly, efficiently, and effectively convey information from one person to another and do so without making the experience dreadful.

“I see several reasons that lawyers should bring designers into the process and change the look and feel of what they produce,” writes Kenneth Grady. “Before I enumerate a few, let’s talk the twenty-first century. We are in a visual age, which actually works well for humans because our brains work well with visual information. Look around and you will see that you are bombarded with information visually, sometimes overtly and sometimes in the form of subtle cues. Visual information can be quite complex or very simple, but we shouldn’t dismiss information just because it is visual.”

Design thinking will teach you how to be a lawyer whose clients come first,” he writes.

Read the white paper.

Apttus has posted a free white paper about the value of a centralized contract template library and automated contract playbook.

On its website, Apttus says that a common response to the need for a contract is to search for the latest contract used with a counterparty similarly aligned to the current situation. Once identified, a quick search and replace process takes place to remove the legacy information and the current deal’s details are added to make it look like new.

“There’s just one problem,” Apttus says. “Using executed contracts as a base template for new agreements can create a variety of compliance risks and impact negotiation leverage. A centralized template library and automated contract playbook can make your company’s contract lifecycle management more effective, more efficient and ultimately more profitable. In this white paper, learn how you can leverage template libraries and playbooks to reduce legal risk and increase efficiency and compliance in just five easy steps.”

Download the white paper.

Merrill Corporation, a leading global provider of technology-enabled services for the financial, legal, health care and other corporate markets, will host a 1-hour CLE (California credit only) webinar “Technology Translation Solutions for Large Volume Non-English eDiscovery Matters.”

Jay Rosen, Merrill Brink International’s vice president of language solutions, will speak about the best practices on how to proactively engage an LSP, and utilize front end translation tools such as Early Language Assessment to save money, increase efficiency that in-house and outside counsels can leverage language solutions and eDiscovery expertise to better manage the end client’s matter.

Rosen leads Merrill Brink International’s FCPA practice on the West Coast. He assists global Fortune 500 corporations and AmLaw 200 law firms in conducting multilingual and foreign language-based due diligence and document review.

The free CLE webinar will take place on Friday, February 27, 2015 at 12:00pm PST. The event is open to the public.

Register for the webinar.

EDRM will present a complimentary webinar discussing the nuts and bolts of cloud E-Discovery with practical examples and demonstrations.

The webinar will be Wednesday, March 4, beginning at 1 p.m. Central time.

Digital data has moved and is continuing to move to the cloud, EDRM says on its website: “Individuals, businesses, and corporations find cloud sourcing to be a compelling value proposition. How can counsel manage not only traditional office documents now created, hosted and shared in the cloud but social media and social communications. Google has not integrated social messaging and video messaging into its basic suite of business productions. How can this digital information be requested, delivered and analyzed? The questions for E-Discovery are how can information be easily harvested from cloud locations and reviewed seamlessly.”

Speakers will be:
* Ian Campbell, President & CEO, iCONECT Development, LLC
* Jason A. Pill, Associate, Phelps Dunbar LLP
* Andrew Wilson, CEO, Logikcull

Moderators will be:
* George Socha, Co-Founder, EDRM
* Tom Gelbmann, Co-Founder, EDRM

The webinar is sponsored by Zapproved.

Register for the webinar.

The Compliancy Group will present a free webinar demonstrating the Guard HIPAA Compliance Tracking Solution, which allows you to self audit your organization, simplifying HIPAA Compliance.

The 90-minute event will be Tuesday, March 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

“You can achieve illustrate and maintain compliance in one cost effective solution,” the Compliancy Group says on its website. “The Guard’s total solution will identify your gaps, provide remediation plans and includes policy, procedures, training, incident and Business Associate management.”

Bob Grant, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of The Compliancy Group, will conduct the demonstration. He will be taking questions from the audience on all aspects of HIPAA Compliance.

Register for the webinar.

A free on-demand webinar posted by Baker Tilly discusses the finer points of dealing with change orders in construction projects.

The webinar helps participants learn how to identify change orders, learn how to decompose a change order, determine the underlying change order driver, understand the risk associated with different types of change orders, and develop strategies for auditing change orders and managing construction professionals.

The presenter is Tony Ollmann, CPA, CCA, Director, Baker Tilly.

Watch the on-demand presentation or download the presentation slides.

The KPMG Global Energy Institute presents an on-demand webcast focusing on utility companies’ approach to establishing a thriving business in a changing and uncertain environment.

The agenda topics include: key forces of change facing utilities, the need for agility, and distributed generation.

Speakers include Todd Durocher, Managing Director, Technology Enablement Solutions, KPMG LLP (U.S.); John Kunasek, Partner, National Sector Leader ENR, KPMG LLP, (U.S.); and Andy Steinhubl, Principal, Strategy Lead ENR, KPMG LLP (U.S.).

Watch the on-demand webinar.

In a 60-minute webinar, Latham & Watkins presents an overview of merger and acquisition transactions in the energy industry during 2014 and emerging themes for 2015.

Latham & Watkins Houston partners Sean Wheeler and Ryan Maierson are the presenters.

The event covers the market overview and energy’s role within the M&A space, energy M&A transaction trends, and case studies of select energy M&A transactions

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Oil & Gas IQ has made available a free white paper on the problem of industrial systems being exposed to risks and dangers that were never considered in their original design: the threat of malware and cyber attack.

Historically, industrial processes and the technology that supports their operation, Operational Technology (OT), have been isolated from connectivity with the outside world. However, in recent years an increasing number of industrial processes, utilities and factories have become interconnected with each other and their Enterprise LANs, the report says.

The white paper covers security considerations in the separate worlds of IT and OT, the inevitability of convergence, the risks of convergence, and security for the converged network.

Download the white paper.

Penn State Extension presents a free on-demand webinar aimed at answering the question: What happens to the water after the fracking process?

Some flows back to the surface and some of this flowback is treated locally and some is transported for injection into deep disposal wells. The program will describe the procedure and explain the physics of the movement of the liquids involved.

Lead presenter is Dr. Terry Engelder, Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

A white paper published by the 2-20 Family of Companies investigates some of the driving factors for implementing information governance (IG) programs around the world.

As laws and cultural attitudes towards recordkeeping vary by global regions, different approaches should be taken to ensure the successful adoption of information practices, but still arrive at the same end-result, the company says on its website.

Written by 2-20`s resident information governance expert Ilona N. Koti, the paper gives her insights on how to take on IG throughout the world.

Download the white paper.

Imperative Information Group offers a complimentary on-demand webinar on issues that employers should also consider when deciding how to manage their official social media presence and respond to employees’ social media activities.

On its website, the company says social media offers useful tools for employers to build communities and attract talent.  It can also help to engage employees if used correctly.  However, there are public relations, equal employment opportunity, and National Labor Relations Act issues that employers should also consider when deciding how to manage their official social media presence and respond to employees’ social media activities.

The webinar covers a number of social media issues that may arise throughout the employee life cycle and discuss ways to plan for them.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Fish & Richardson has been named the number one most active law firm at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for 2014. Fish represented clients in 154 proceedings – more than any other firm – and also ranked as the most active firm representing petitioners at the PTAB.

Inn a release, the firm said the analysis, conducted by Managing Intellectual Property (MIP) magazine, noted that 2014 was “by far” the record year for filings at the PTAB, with 1,677 inter partes review, covered business method review, and post-grant review petitions listed in the Docket Navigator database between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014.

“Fish brings a potent combination of technical know-how, patent prosecution skills, and litigation savvy to the PTAB,” said Karl Renner, co-chair of Fish & Richardson’s Post-Grant Practice Group.

Read the story.