As legal analytics and benchmarking become an increasingly important tool for the office of the general counsel, Mitratech, a provider of Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) solutions, has announced that Huron Legal’s Sky Analytics solution has qualified as a Certified Legal Analytics Partner.

“Leveraging the power of legal analytics drives tremendous value for legal departments seeking to improve their overall performance,” noted Jason Parkman, Mitratech CEO. “Huron Legal’s Sky Analytics solution offers exceptional insight into legal benchmarking data, and our mutual clients are already realizing the benefits of combining their own internal analytics with benchmarked law firm data. As a long-time partner of Huron Legal, we look forward to deepening our relationship through this program.”

Huron Legal’s Sky Analytics solution provides in-house legal departments with a web-based platform to access on-demand legal spend information and analytics. The platform provides a snapshot of legal matters handled by outside counsel and other vendors as well as access to similar information provided by other participating companies for purposes of benchmarking. The dashboard also offers legal departments key performance indicators and trend metrics which can be flexibly analyzed, including by time frame, practice area and business unit. Huron Legal’s Sky Analytics law firm scorecards measure and benchmark specific activities of law firms and lawyers, including rates, billing practices, staffing and matter efficiency.

“The combination of Mitratech’s ELM platforms with the Sky Analytics solution’s real-time legal benchmarking platform creates powerful visibility and transparency for legal departments,” said Doug Ventola, Huron Legal Managing Director. “Many of Mitratech’s clients were some of the earliest adopters of Sky’s solutions, and we are excited to now bring this partnership to their rapidly growing client base at large.”

Mitratech’s Certified Legal Analytics Partner program certifies analytics providers that offer market-leading solutions, deliver a unique value proposition to legal departments, can be integrated with Mitratech’s award-winning ELM platforms, and that are fully trained on Mitratech products.

ABOUT MITRATECH

Mitratech is the most trusted, market-leading provider of fully-integrated enterprise legal management solutions for global legal departments of all sizes, including more than 25% of the Fortune 500 and more than 240 legal departments. Mitratech’s offerings are used by over 65,000 corporate users and 9,000 of their external partners (including 100% of the Am Law 200) in over 140 countries. These solutions include the TeamConnect and Lawtrac product platforms, both of which offer end-to-end matter management, spend management, e-Billing, legal hold, contracts management, reporting, and compliance solutions. Mitratech clients are able to prove demonstrable value creation for their organization by automating legal workflows, improving business outcomes through actionable data and insight, increasing collaboration with external partners, and reducing overall legal spend.

ABOUT HURON LEGAL

Huron Legal is the premier provider of comprehensive solutions for electronic discovery and litigation management, information governance and compliance, law department management, and legal analytics. Our consultants and technology-enabled services assist law departments of major global corporations and their associated law firms to reduce legal spend, minimize risks, and create efficiencies. Huron Legal is not a law firm; it does not offer, and is not authorized to provide, legal advice or counseling in any jurisdiction.

UBIC will present a roundtable discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., covering matters of big data privacy and international litigation.

The complimentary event will be Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, at the National Press Club at 529 14th Street NW. Registration/breakfast will be 8:30-9 a.m., and the discussion will last from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

Some of the topics will include:

• Market confusion in handling these matters
– What are the boundaries and best practices?
– Thoughts stemming from Sedona Conference
• Local considerations in assessing international projects
– Data management/geographic storage restrictions
– Privacy regulations
– Managing EU-base data
• Use of Technology Assisted Review (TAR)
– Data management protocols
– Collaboration
– Foreign Language/Translation
– Analytics
• Managed Review
– Defensible workflow
– Human element in technology use
• Impending FRCP rules

Discussion leaders will be Robert G. Kidwell, Esq., Member, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.; and Wendy Butler Curtis, Esq., eDiscovery of Counsel, General Litigation, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. The moderator will be Jeff Guttman, Esq., Vice President, Managed Review Operations, UBIC North America, Inc.

Register for the seminar.

A complimentary webinar presented by Onit, ADM and Forrester Research will discuss market trends and the new e-billing and legal spend management landscape.

The webinar will be Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 1 p.m. CDT.

This webinar will highlight:
– Why systems of record are not enough to drive operational improvements
– Why traditional Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) systems fall short
– Why e-billing and matter management technology only represent a fraction of a legal department’s needs
– Why process, workflow and collaboration are critical for a legal department to succeed

Speakers:
– David Cambria, Global Director of Operations, Law, Compliance and Government Relations, Archer Daniels Midland Company
– Cheryl McKinnon, Principal Analyst serving Enterprise Architecture, Forrester Research
– Paul Zengilowski, Customer Development Executive, Onit

Register for the webinar.

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center at the University of Texas School of Law will present a free webinar explaining the laws, both new and old, that govern land use for energy development in Mexico and other important considerations for working with land owners.

The webinar will be Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 1 p.m. Central time.

“Mexico has passed legislation to encourage international investment in the country’s energy sector with great opportunities for economic development in oil, gas, electricity infrastructure and power generation,” the Center says on its website. “However, land use controversies could impede progress. Energy-reform legislation passed last summer gives energy development priority in land-use disputes which has provoked resistance from land owners and political opponents to the reform. The law also establishes obligations for energy developers related to matters such as notice and payment.”

Topics will include:

• Energy Reform Legislation: Land Use and Land Owners
• Land Use Negotiation Process
• Landowner Compensation

Register for the webinar.

Charles Sartain, writing in Gray Reed & McGraw’s Energy and the Law blog, uses a football metaphor to describe how a negotiating party could fail to score an enforceable contract while near the end of the negotiation process.

He describes a case involving the sale of a 2,232-acre Texas ranch and the sale of an oil and gas lease on the property. A broker agreed to sell the tract even though he didn’t have a brokerage agreement, and time was of the essence. During the process, the broker and the seller made offers and counteroffers about the commission and other benefits to the broker.

The appellate court found that a counteroffer operates as a rejection of the original offer, thus no agreement was reached.

Read the article.

In a case involving “clickwrap” and “signwrap” agreements, the Eastern District of New York denied a motion to dismiss and compel arbitration filed by an in-flight wifi provider, according to Buckley Sandler LLP in its InfoBytes blog and posted on JDSupra.

“At issue in the motion to dismiss was the enforceability of two separate agreements used to enroll customers, and in particular terms in those agreements related to mandatory arbitration and exclusive venue, which the defendant sought to invoke,” the firm wrote.

Plaintiffs argued that the agreements should not be enforced because the website design was intended deliberately to hide terms and were never seen or agreed to by them. The court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss and compel arbitration, concluding that the agreement was unenforceable.

Read the article.

Most contracts prose is dysfunctional, but training is available to help contracts professionals draft clearly and concisely, write Chris Lemens and Kenneth A. Adams on ACC Docket. It helps to supplement training with centralized initiatives, they contend.

“Any given contract will likely be riddled with deficient usages that collectively turn contract prose into ‘legalese’ — flagrant archaisms, botched verbs, redundancy, endless sentences, meaningless boilerplate, and so on.”

They write that it’s possible to train contracts personnel in how to draft and review contracts consistent with a set of guidelines.

Among those guidelines: lose the archaisms, gain control of verbs, stop using the phrase “best efforts,” and don’t rely on mystery usages.

Read the article.

An article on Holland & Hart’s Health Law Blog provides a 40-point checklist that can be used when preparing or reviewing contracts involving the work of physicians.

Kim Stanger, Pia Dean and Bill Mercer wrote the article.

Topics covered include regulatory compliance, written agreement, nature of relationship, services, schedule, location, independence, intellectual property, use of information, outside services, qualifications, representations and warranties, performance standards, medical records, employer obligations, compensation, benefits, exempt status, referrals, assignment of fees, liability insurance, workers compensation insurance, indemnification, terms, termination, post-termination obligations, confidentiality, noncompetition, nonsolicitation, penalties for violation, notice, assignment, governing law and venue, alternative dispute resolution, entire agreement, meaningful use assignment, construction, no third-party beneficiaries, and survival of terms.

Read the article.

Keyword searching is one of the workhorses of eDiscovery. The first part of this series from QDiscovery covered responsiveness review, privilege review, targeted issue searches and more. The article picks up with the second part of keyword searches, starting with grammar.

2) Grammar – The second part of a good keyword search is constructing the search string by making the most effective use of operators, wildcards, and search parameters.

QD EDD Basics Keyword Searches Part 2

– Boolean operators – AND, OR, and AND NOT;
– Wildcards – * (multi-character expander) and ! (single character expander) at the beginning or end of a term;
– Nested searches – parentheses to “nest” or connect search terms, i.e., “(this OR this) AND that”;
– Fuzziness – an instruction to the search engine that some of the characters can differ from the term as written, which is useful in finding proper names with variant spellings as well as technical terms and other hard to spell words;
– Proximity parameters – within sentence, within paragraph, or within a certain number of words.

Search strings run the gamut from simple “this term or that term” searches to complex searches that draw on the full battery of technical options. While the basic “grammar” of a keyword search will be familiar to lawyers from searching in case law databases, it’s sound practice to work with an experienced project manager or eDiscovery consultant to build a complex search. An eDiscovery support professional can:

– Suggest keyword variants;
– Give advice on when and how to use operators, etc.;
– Collate multiple keyword lists to eliminate duplicates (overlap isn’t always obvious with complicated terms);
– Reconcile inconsistencies within the search string.

3) Validation – Just as no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, no keyword search (should) survive first contact with the ESI. It’s important to review, analyze, and refine the keyword search in light of the results. Even more than in the second stage of building the search, a good project manager or consultant can provide invaluable assistance at the final validation stage.

a) Review a “hit count” report – The hit count report will provide the total number of documents that have hits on the search terms and also break out the number of hits per term. The total volume must be considered in light of whether it’s feasible to review the search results given discovery deadlines, staffing availability, and the budget for the review. If the data volume is still inordinately high after the keyword search is run, search terms with high hit counts should be evaluated to see if it’s possible to narrow them, such as by removing wildcards or adding a proximity search term.

In addition, search terms with unexpectedly low hit counts should also be scrutinized. Particular terms may need to be broadened by removing search limitations or reducing the fuzziness percentage. Overall low hit counts may indicate that the keyword list needs to be augmented.

b) Sample the search results – Analyzing the hit count report is most effective in conjunction with sampling the search results. For the terms with high hit counts, review a small sample of the results to determine if there are significant false positives. Draw the sample from a range of data sources (e.g., custodians, network folders) for a more accurate picture of the search results. Assigning unique color-coding to terms or concept groups of terms when the search is initially run will expedite this review.

c) Refine the terms – The final step is to refine the keyword search by adding, removing, narrowing, or broadening terms based on the review and analysis of the hit count report and sampling. It may be necessary to repeat the cycle several times before finalizing the search string. Any keyword search agreement made with opposing counsel should to take this validation process into account by including discretion to modify the search string or providing for a mechanism to revisit the agreed terms.

The national law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP has announced that Robert Stracks has joined the firm’s Chicago office in its Business Law Practice Group.

Stracks assists broker-dealers in the municipal securities industry with respect to regulatory matters and municipal securities offerings. Prior to joining Quarles & Brady LLP, he spent more than 40 years as inside and outside counsel to several municipal securities dealers with full responsibility for legal and compliance matters, including general supervisory and operating procedures, primarily disclosure and due diligence matters with respect to new offerings, continuing disclosure matters, municipal advisor regulation, supervisory controls, annual compliance reviews and continuing education programs.

He received his law degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and his bachelor’s degree, with distinction, from the University of Michigan.

About Quarles & Brady LLP
Quarles & Brady is a full-service AmLaw 200 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, labor and employment, real estate, 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.

Software publishers regularly audit their customers to help ensure that the customers are properly licensing their software. Some software publishers conduct audits directly, but many choose to audit through companies such as the BSA | The Software Alliance (“BSA”), or the Software & Information Industry Association (“SIIA”), writes Keli Johnson Swan in Scott & Scott‘s Software Audit Blog.

Her article continues:

The first step in addressing the software audit is to understand the scope of the audit. The following are some key points to identify the scope of the audit.

1. Review the date of the initial audit letter. In a traditional audit with no look-back period, an auditing entity is only interested in the software installed as of the date of the audit. This is particularly important in environments that change frequently because a company that is undergoing an audit should preserve all information on its network as of the initial audit date (the “effective date”) in order to accurately capture its installation information and avoid potential spoliation of evidence allegations. It is important to make no changes to the network until the audit is completed to avoid prejudicing the outcome of the matter.

2. Include only software published by the auditing entity’s members or the publisher conducting the audit. The auditing process can be overwhelming and sometimes a company may simply forward the raw data from a network scan. This is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is protecting against disclosing unnecessary information and privacy and security issues. It is important to include only the software within the scope of the audit. Additionally, it is important to conduct a secondary review of the audit data in order to avoid accidentally include false positives or free trial versions of software, since the auditing entity will penalize the audit target for every software installation for which it is unable to locate a license.

Software audits can be a convoluted process, so it is important for a company to seek advice from a legal expert with experience in software licensing in order understand all of the risks involved with various strategies when faced with a software audit.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will hold a complimentary webinar, “Updates on Design Patent Law: The Hague Agreement and U.S. Design Patent Enforcement,” presented by Jon A. Birmingham and Conor S. Hunt. The webinar will be Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015, at 9 am PDT / 10 am MDT / 11 am CDT / 12 noon EDT.

In May 2015, U.S. patent laws were amended to implement provisions of the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs. U.S.-based applicants can now seek design protection in over 60 countries by filing a single international design application.

The first half of the webinar will cover the following:
• An overview of the system under the Hague Agreement
• Filing requirements under this system
• Cost comparison with traditional foreign filing processes

The webinar will continue with a discussion of enforcement of design patents in the U.S., including these topics:
• Recent court decisions involving design patents
• The impact of recent design patent cases on patent prosecution

Speakers will be Fitch Even attorneys Jon A. Birmingham and Conor S. Hunt. For 15 years, Birmingham has represented a wide range of clients in intellectual property litigation, opinion matters, and complex patent prosecution matters, including the protection of design patents. Hunt focuses his practice on domestic and international patent prosecution involving mechanical and e-commerce technologies, as well as on patent evaluation, portfolio management, product clearance, and legal opinions.

CLE credit has been approved for California, Illinois, and Nebraska. Other states may also award CLE credit upon attendee request. There is no fee to attend, but registration is required

Register for the webinar.

The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF), a national non-profit organization dedicated to ending discrimination against transgender people, has brought its “Name Change Project” to Michigan. The “Name Change Project” provides legal assistance for transgender people who are seeking to legally change their names to reflect their true identities as men and women.

“It is often intimidating and difficult for transgender people to navigate the legal system for a name change,” said TLDEF Executive Director Michael Silverman. “With pro bono support from attorneys at Dykema Gossett PLLC and other potential Michigan law firms who wish to participate, TLDEF will help transgender Michigan residents through the name change process.”

“We’re excited to be expanding our ‘Name Change Project’ into Michigan,” Silverman added. “It is vital for transgender people to match their legal names with who they are. Doing so makes it far easier for them to live their lives free from discrimination in employment, housing, health care, and public accommodations. We’re tremendously grateful to Dykema for helping us to get the project up and running in metro Detroit, and look forward to further partnerships with attorneys in the state to help us expand to additional areas.”

On Thursday, Sept. 24, TLDEF and Dykema will host a training for other Michigan attorneys who would like to volunteer on the on the project.

Dykema has earned a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) for the past two-years. The CEI is nation’s benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees. The firm is joining TLDEF’s “Name Change Project” to demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusion, while bringing a vital resource to underserved transgender community members who are trying to bring their legal documents in line with their true selves.

“We are thrilled to help improve the lives of transgender people in Michigan through this ‘Name Change Project’ collaboration with TLDEF,” said Heidi A. Naasko, Dykema’s Pro Bono and Diversity Counsel. “This firm is dedicated to serving communities in need. Assisting transgender people through the legal process of a name change to become their authentic selves illustrates that commitment.”

“Without the correct legal name I feared for my safety. As a transgender woman, being called by the wrong name in public made me a target for transphobic violence,” said 28-year-old TLDEF Name Change Project Client Racquelle Trammell. “The project helped me with something I couldn’t do alone. Trust me I tried. When I attempted to do this by myself I walked away disheartened, having been talked down to by officials and misunderstood. With this program I had someone who knew the ins and outs of the courtroom and legal system and how to file the paperwork precisely. I truly recommend this program to anyone who has had a hard time going through the name change process. I was able to walk across the stage with associate of arts in June as my authentic self and that was the most affirming thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Exploring a legal name change felt very daunting. For one thing, I certainly knew I couldn’t afford the out-of-pocket expenses that were required,” said 52-year-old TLDEF Name Change Client Kara Marie Ramsey. “TLDEF along with Dykema compassionately and respectfully eased that burden, walking beside me every step of the way and navigating the legal logistics for which I had no comprehension. Prior to completing my legal name change I had to present a driver’s license with my birth name. It was quite humiliating and embarrassing having to explain to various officials why both the picture and name weren’t reflective of the woman standing before them. Now, with my legal name change, I have peace of mind, having updated my birth certificate, driver’s license, credit cards, voter registration, health insurance cards and many more vital documents. The “Name Change Project” truly saved my life.”

“Not having a legal name that reflects who I am as a transgender man has created major challenges including lost job opportunities and being outed and shamed in public places. It’s taken an emotional toll and made me feel incomplete,” said 25-year-old Jay Eric Theden, who is in the process of changing his name through the “Name Change Project”. “I believe that my life will be a lot easier once my name is officially changed. I will finally be able to begin a new chapter as my true self.”

Since the program began as a pilot project in 2007, TLDEF’s “Name Change Project” has helped more than 2,000 people in nearly a dozen cities including Albany, Atlanta, Buffalo, Chicago, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Rochester.

eTERA Consulting will present a one-hour complimentary webinar that will provide in-house attorneys, litigation support professionals, paralegals and IT staff with information about the globalization of eDiscovery.

The webinar will be Thursday, Oct. 1, beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

For today’s corporate legal counsel and their lawyers, one of the most vexing problems faced is how to discover electronically-stored information (ESI) effectively, efficiently, and legally across international borders, eTERA says in a release. Because the stakes of international discovery are extremely high, it is important to understand eDiscovery on a global level in terms of the challenges currently related to eDiscovery in the U.S. and in Europe, the differences in current international legislation, and the best practices for managing global eDiscovery.

eTERA’s Greg Bufithis, Esq., Managing Director of eTERA Europe; Todd Haley, Vice President of Business Intelligence; and Ashish Prasad, Esq., Vice President and General Counsel, will discuss the following key topics:

• The Growth and Complexity of Electronically Stored Information
• The Challenges of eDiscovery in a Global Economy
• eDiscovery Issues in the U.S. and in Europe
• Best Practices for Managing Global eDiscovery
• Practical Tips for Law Firms and Corporations

Speakers:

Greg Bufithis, Esq.
Managing Director, eTERA Europe
eTERA Consulting

Bufithis assists law firms and corporate legal departments with the legal, administrative and related aspects of document review, legal staffing, eDiscovery, and litigation support from the eTERA Consulting Europe offices in Brussels, London and Paris. Greg has lived and worked for the last 10 years in Brussels and Paris and has managed multiple eDiscovery projects across Europe.

Todd Haley
Vice President of Business Intelligence
eTERA Consulting

Haley is an expert on the technology of eDiscovery. He is the former Chief Technology Officer of a major law firm, and has over two decades of experience managing the technology, business process and other aspects of eDiscovery and data management engagements.

Ashish Prasad, Esq.
Vice President and General Counsel
eTERA Consulting

Ashish is a leading expert on the law and practice of eDiscovery. He is a former Litigation Partner and Chair of the Electronic Discovery and Records Management Practice at Mayer Brown LLP, the author of several treatises and dozens of articles on discovery topics, and the teacher of hundreds of legal education seminars over the past decade on topics of eDiscovery.

Register for the webinar.

MIAMI – The general counsel of Stiles, a developer in South Florida and elsewhere, will return to the private practice of law by joining Greenberg Traurig’s Fort Lauderdale office. Denny O’Shea, the incoming Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority Chairman, will serve as chair of the firm’s Real Estate Development & Land Use Practice in Broward and Palm Beach counties. He is set to start in early October.

“When I wanted to get into the real estate development business in this region, I chose the best, with a great team culture and extraordinary leader in Terry Stiles. I of course know many law firms in the region from decades of working here and when I decided to now spend the rest of my career practicing law, I only turned to one firm, the best, Greenberg Traurig,” said O’Shea in a release.

“We recently decided to expand our leadership structure and I will become Executive Chair of the firm. While that job will involve overall strategy, international matters and shareholder compensation, among other things, I also intend to use this unique time in the Broward and Palm Beach markets to get back to my roots in local real estate development. When Denny called, it took me about 5 minutes to get incredibly excited about what we and the balance of our great team can now do together as we grow and area development heads north from Miami: his combination of real world experience, leadership talent and legal and business acumen is unmatched in this market, and the trust and friendship he engenders in literally everyone who knows him, are what make Denny a special guy I have long called my friend and now will be proud to call my partner,” said Richard A. Rosenbaum, Greenberg Traurig Chief Executive Officer. Rosenbaum has worked closely with O’Shea for over 25 years and spoke to his remarkable professionalism, integrity and character.

The release continues:

“Greenberg Traurig is a place I know well, and there is no one I trust more as a leader and friend than Richard Rosenbaum, who also understands the unique value we can deliver together in today’s market. We bring deep local knowledge and relationships built over many years as well as a collaborative firm’s network and experience in all the key US and global markets so important to this region: there is no other firm that offers this combination in Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach. And at this stage of my life, I frankly find Richard and Greenberg Traurig refreshingly ‘old school’: when he shakes your hand, you can bank it, the bureaucracy is virtually nonexistent, the focus is on the client, and the two of us have understood this real estate market for the last three decades,” said O’Shea.

O’Shea has been active in South Florida’s development community for 37 years, beginning his career in construction and developmental law. O’Shea has also served as Chair of the Economic Development Council of Broward County; the City of Ft. Lauderdale Unsafe Structures Board; and the Downtown Council of the Chamber of Commerce. As General Counsel for Stiles, O’Shea oversaw a staff of project managers and support personnel for the development of office, industrial and retail projects. He was responsible for project conceptualization, financial analysis, governmental approvals, architectural and construction coordination, and tenant lease up.

During his tenure at Stiles, O’Shea also previously served as the head of development. Before joining Stiles, a longtime firm client, in 1996, O’Shea was vice president of development for Broward County’s proposed Blockbuster Park development, working first for Wayne Huizinga, and then for Viacom, where he was responsible for selling the properties. Previously, he had been a partner in a well-respected Broward County real estate and land use law firm, and then became the head of development of the Florida division of what was then the largest homebuilder in the United States.

Terry Stiles, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Stiles, said, “When it comes to judgment, integrity, and trust, there is no one better than Denny O’Shea, with whom I have worked for a long time. I am in full agreement with his choice of firm for this next phase of his career and look forward to continuing to work with him.”

A Fort Lauderdale native, O’Shea studied economics at Harvard and also is a graduate of the University of Florida School of Law.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 1800 attorneys serving clients from 37 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite and among the most “Tech Savvy.” It was on the 2013-2015 BTI Client Service 30 listings of firms “most recognized by clients for providing excellent client service,” and one of the 2014 BTI Client Relationship Scorecard “Power Elite,” based on the nature and strength of its client relationships.

In the post-Enron and post-financial crisis era, anti-corruption compliance programs have been a key focus for boards of directors, audit committees and senior management of many multi-national companies, writes Arkady Bukh of New York’s Bukh Law Firm. This trend of increased enforcement of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that began five years ago has continued in the United States.

His white paper provides a brief overview of the FCPA, explaining that the act is a federal criminal statute that applies to businesses whose principal offices are in the United States; it is an anti-bribery and anti-corruption statute covering these companies’ international operations. The act features two principal parts: the anti-bribery provisions and the accounting provisions.

One section is titled “Issuers, Materiality and Extraterritorial Application of the FCPA.”

The final section explains why FCPA compliance is crucial.

“The stakes in today’s business environment are particularly high and a bad choice about operational risk could be fatal. A robust compliance program and fully integrated ethics program can limit the damage should a violation occur. There are two critical measures that allow any company to protect and enhance its reputation in the face of a corruption incident: a demonstrable commitment from management to doing ethical business and the use of effective internal programs to detect and prevent corruption,” Bukh writes.

(Article researched and written by Arkady Bukh and Nick Wooldridge of LV Criminal Defense, 520 S 4th Street, Las Vegas, NV 89101, 702-623-6362. Read more about FCPA – http://www.lvcriminaldefense.com/federal-crimes/fcpa/)

Read the white paper.

Morae Legal President and Chief Executive Officer Shahzad Bashir recently sat down for a conversation with Ballard Spahr partner and former DuPont General Counsel Tom Sager. A transcript of their conversation is available for download.

Their far-reaching conversation covered a variety of topics related to the evolution of the law department and how they can better perform to the expectations of today’s corporations. They discuss such issues as the pressure to perform under the scrutiny of measurable quality and efficiency, how to ignite a law department’s business performance, and looking ahead at the future.

The two covered topics including:

• The three reasons general counsel are reluctant to change
• The new pressures law departments face from the c-suite
• Why cost remains the most important metric
• How to collaborate for optimum performance

Read the transcript of the conversation.

Keyword searching is one of the workhorses of eDiscovery, reports QDiscovery in an article on its website. The article continues:

Keyword searching sees heavy use in the areas of:

Responsiveness review – Substantive keywords are used to identify likely responsive documents in the collection dataset before the documents are given to the legal team for review or produced to the other side. Alternatively, keywords may be used in conjunction with Technology Assisted Review (“TAR”) to test the accuracy of responsiveness predictions or to flag key documents for manual review.

Privilege review – Although keyword searching has been losing ground to TAR as the go-to solution for responsiveness review, it remains the primary means for identifying privileged communications and work product. Privilege searches primarily target names (i.e., law firms, lawyers, paralegals, legal support staff, consultants, associated email domains). The secondary focus is on legal terms like plaintiff and defendant; click here to download a starter list of non-name privilege keywords.

Targeted issue searches – Keyword searching is useful throughout the life of the case for finding documents that relate to particular people and issues. For example, keyword searching is helpful in preparing for depositions by focusing on a deponent’s documents and communications about key topics.

Use of keyword searching in general is driven by two interlocking goals. The first is to improve review efficiency by narrowing the scope of review to documents most likely to be relevant. The second goal is to improve feasibility and cost-effectiveness of reviewing large volumes of ESI by culling non-relevant documents prior to the costly attorney review stage. While the first point applies equally to each of the three review areas, the second is most important for responsiveness review. The average volume of ESI has increased to the point that it is now impractical to make a linear (document-by-document) review of the full collection dataset even in smaller eDiscovery cases.

The three parts of a good keyword search are the keywords themselves, the “grammar” or construction of the search string, and validating the results.

1) Keywords – The three main sources for substantive keyword terms and phrases are the pleadings, the client, and opposing counsel. For illustration I’ll draw on my prior litigation experience in patent infringement defense work.

a) Complaint and Answer – A starter list of keywords is found in the pleadings. Between the allegations on their face and the lawyer’s experience with the legal subject matter, a list can be compiled of relevant names, fact allegations, and typical key terms. In a patent infringement case, obvious keywords are the:

Names of the parties;
Inventors’ names;
Other names listed in the patent, such as assignees and patent lawyers;
Patent number and last three digits of the patent number (e.g., “the ‘574 patent”), the common shorthand in the field;
Distinctive words and phrases used in the patent to describe the invention;
Product names of the alleged infringing products.
b) Client – In most cases it is the client that is most knowledgeable about the subject matter of the case. As such, the client is an invaluable resource for keywords like:

Product names of competitors’ products;
Project and product names used internally at the company during R&D and pre-launch marketing planning;
Industry acronyms and shorthand;
Product code numbers.
In many cases, the client will already have identified a small number of critical documents based on the allegations in the pleadings. Like the pleadings, these documents can be mined for additional keywords.

c) Opposing counsel – Whether to include opposing counsel in developing the keyword list is a strategic decision. The potential benefit is that an agreed list heads off later disputes over the search terms, as discovery fights tend to be both costly and a time-consuming distraction from the substantive issues. However, keyword negotiations may be fruitless or even create unnecessary work if opposing counsel is either unreasonable or unsophisticated about search methodologies or eDiscovery processes in general.

Assuming the proposed list compiled from the first two categories is already reasonably comprehensive, opposing counsel is most likely to add terms going to legal issues; for example, knowledge and state of mind.

Read Part 2.

Agiloft, Inc., a provider of agile business process software, announced that its Contract Lifecycle Management solution has won PCMag’s highly coveted Editors’ Choice Award, the publication’s highest rating.

Analyst Ken Contrata declares that Agiloft’s solution “might be the most customizable contract management system we tested. Deployable on-premises or as a cloud service, it’s fast, full-featured, and can scale to any workload.”

“We are honored to receive the Editors’ Choice award from PC Magazine for our Contract Management solution,” said Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft. “Our solution consistently receives top ratings from business users on Capterra and G2 Crowd, and it’s great to be recognized as the best solution in the market by PC Magazine’s analysts as well.”

In PCMag’s review, in which Agiloft earns an “Excellent” rating, Contrata notes that Agiloft “steps out from among its countless peers not only due to its customizability, but also its ease of use.” Indeed, Agiloft’s Contract Management solution can be configured to meet the exact needs of any organization, no matter how sophisticated, thanks to its adaptive platform that enables deep and rapid customization without the need for custom code. Every aspect of Agiloft’s system can be customized, from look and feel to complex approval workflows, using just a browser.

Contrata also praises Agiloft’s scalability, stating that the solution “can adeptly take care of contract management from a single user to many users within huge, multinational corporations.” Agiloft’s contract management system is currently in use at organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies, including a global Top 3 pharmaceutical company.

In a release, the company said that Agiloft Contract Management comes with all the functionality needed to manage the complete contract lifecycle:
• One-click contract creation: Dates, fields, and formulas are automatically inserted into familiar MS Word or PDF templates for rapid contract assembly
• Flexible approval workflows: Automate even the most complex approval routing processes, whether sequential, parallel, conditional, or a combination
• Automatic redlining: Capture all changes to your contracts and view redlined comparisons to streamline contract review
• DocuSign integration for secure, legally enforceable digital signature capability
• Centralized contract repository with full text search of contracts and attached files
• Built-in OCR: Automatically convert image files such as JPG, PNG, or PDF into fully searchable text documents
• Automatic notifications of contract and approval requests and upcoming renewal opportunities
• Precise permission settings, down to the field level, to ensure compliance with the most stringent privacy standards
• Complete audit trail, automatically created for every contract, to mitigate risk and meet Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements

Contrata notes that “Agiloft has a bevy of useful features that go beyond the basics. First and foremost, Agiloft comes with a 90-day, unconditional, money-back guarantee. While not exactly a feature, it is nice to see a company that puts profits on the line for customer satisfaction.”

Read the complete review here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2488136,00.asp

Reprinted from http://www.pcmag.com with permission. © 2015 Ziff Davis, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

About Agiloft
Over 2.5 million users at organizations ranging from small enterprises to U.S. government agencies and Fortune 100 companies depend on Agiloft’s innovative applications for Help Desk, Contract Management, Custom Workflow, and more. Agiloft specializes in automating processes that are too complex for competing vendors. Our best practice templates and agile technology ensure rapid deployment and a fully extensible system. For more information, visit http://www.agiloft.com.

A panel of industry experts will discuss key tools to expand your portfolio to include ‘Compliance as a Service’ for your healthcare clients in a webinar aimed at MSP or business associates working with healthcare providers.

The panel will discuss key tools to use in expanding portfolio of offerings to clients. Participants will find out how to differentiate your company, increase revenue and client loyalty.

The webinar will be Thursday, September 24 at 2PM EST.

Speakers include Andy Nieto, (Health IT Strategist at DataMotion), Marc Haskelson (President & CEO of Compliancy Group), Stuart Crawford (Founder & CEO, Ulistic Inc.) and Jon Matero (President/CEO, Network Heroes).

Participants will gain:
Ideas for providing added value to your clients
Ways to simplify compliance
How to help clients protect data at rest, in motion and in use
How to make your Managed Service Provider STRATOSPHERICALLY SUCCESSFUL
Solutions for encryption as a service
Solutions for compliance as a service
The importance of a Culture of Compliance
Best practices to accelerate your business- tried and tested stories from the “trenches”

Register for the webinar.