The Network for Public Health Law presents a free on-demand webinar discussing the international public health community’s response to the Ebola crisis.

Global health law leader Lawrence O. Gostin also will discuss vulnerabilities in the United States and examine the gaps and challenges currently existing in global preparedness and response systems.

This webinar is a part of the Public Health Law Webinar Series, focused on providing the public health community with practical knowledge on emerging topics. The series is sponsored by American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics; Network for Public Health Law; and Public Health Law Research Program.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Avvo has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar discussing ways to help lawyers and law firms get comfortable with the rapid proliferation of online feedback and the most effective – and ethical – ways to respond.

Josh King, Avvo’s General Counsel and VP of Business Development, is the presenter.

Avvo says participants will learn about:

• The spread of online feedback via social media and review sites, and the importance of this trend to professional services and reputation
• Why suing for defamation is the technique of last resort
• Avoid violating the ethics rules around misleading advertising and attorney-client confidences when responding to online feedback

Watch the on-demand webinar.

PetSmart agreed on Sunday to sell itself to a group led by the investment firm BC Partners for about $8.7 billion, months after the retailer came under pressure from two hedge funds, reports The New York Times.

The agreement represents the biggest leveraged buyout of an American company of 2014.

JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised PetSmart. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Ernst & Young provided advice, while Citigroup, Nomura, Jefferies, Barclays and Deutsche Bank provided debt financing.

Read the story.

AMB Group LLC,  parent company of the Atlanta Falcons, has appointed Mike Egan as general counsel, effective Jan. 5, 2015.

Egan is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group of King & Spalding LLP and is co-head of the firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Practice.

Egan will serve as operational executive of the new Atlanta stadium construction project, representing the interests of Atlanta Falcons Stadium Company, reports The Atlanta Business Journal. His legal responsibilities will span all of the AMB Group companies.

Read the story.

Billions of tax dollars are squandered in the United States every year because of a decades-old loophole in federal law that allows tens of thousands of businesses to do the wrong thing – simply because they’ve been doing it all along, reports the News  Observer.

The safe harbor rule, officially known as Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978, allows many companies can identify their workers as independent contractors for tax purposes even though the workers are, in fact, employees.

“Under the safe harbor rule, the company just has to have a “reasonable basis” for doing so,” the News & Observer reports. “Generally, companies must just show they’ve been doing it this way all along and that others in their industry do it the same way.”

Read the story.

The National Labor Relations Board is getting ready to issue an onslaught of law-changing decisions as we head into the holiday season, predicts The National Law Review.

This onslaught of change likely will be hastened by the departure of Board Member Nancy Schiffer, whose term is set to expire Dec. 16.  So, keep an eye out as of December 18 when the decisions are likely to be posted on the NLRB’s website, The Review suggests.

In the article, the Review says:

The NLRB Division of Advice has answered a question that has been the subject of many charges since the Board’s decision in Alan Ritchey, Inc., 359 NLRB No. 40 (December 14, 2012), where it held that in cases where a union has recently secured representational rights, the employer has a duty to bargain over discretionary aspects of discipline before imposition until an initial contract is reached. The Board’s decision in Alan Ritchey was invalidated by the Supreme Court earlier this year, yet the agency still applies its rationale as if nothing happened to the underlying case.

Read the story.

The federal government doesn’t have a system that can help pair small business subcontractors with prime contracts, and existing contract-tracking systems aren’t up to the job either, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

FCW reports that connecting small business to prime contracts matters because federal law requires prime contractors to make good-faith efforts to award a portion of their subcontracts to small businesses, and in some cases to have small business subcontracting plans.

In a report released Dec. 11, GAO said it assessed the feasibility of using existing federal contract-reporting systems to connect small business subcontractors with prime contracts, and identified actions federal agencies are taking to help in the effort, FCW reports.

Read the story.

Navigant Research presents a free on-demand webinar on the development and deployment of nanogrids on the nation’s electrical system.

While microgrids are multiplying rapidly, substantial deployments of nanogrids – defined as systems of 100 kilowatts (kW) for grid-tied systems and 5 kW for remote systems not interconnected with a utility grid – already exist, Navigant says on its website.

Nanogrids offer flexible, modular building blocks for energy services that support applications ranging from emergency power for commercial buildings to the provision of basic electricity services for people living in extreme poverty.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The Washington Legal Foundation presents a complimentary webinar on the clash between statutes and the Constitution in non-injury class actions.

The event also discusses a pending petition for certiorari that urges Supreme Court intervention in such a case.

Business enterprises increasingly face lawsuits in which plaintiffs have suffered no actual “injury-in-fact,” but are able to seek damages under federal and state laws that create private rights of action, the WLF says on its website. Though such statutorily-created harm clashes with Article III’s constitutional requirement of standing to sue, federal courts of appeals are split on whether this lawyer-driven litigation is permissible.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that asks whether a company discriminates by refusing to provide a simple accommodation to an expectant mother.

The ABA Journal reports on the case of Peggy Young, who was a part-time delivery driver for United Parcel Service when she became pregnant in 2006. She sought an accommodation from her employer based on a fairly standard restriction imposed by her doctor: no lifting of anything greater than 20 pounds in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and nothing more than 10 pounds thereafter.

But UPS told Young that company policy did not permit light duty for pregnant drivers because an essential function of the job was to be able to lift up to 70 pounds, the Journal reports.

Read the story.

When patent attorney Michael Sander and his colleagues started noticing that some judges on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) were rejecting more patents than others, Sander built a predictive tool that tells an attorney with a new PTAB case his chances of success, based on an instant, computer analysis of every similar case handled by the same judge, Wired reports.

Interest in the PTAB analytical tool has grown quickly, especially because there’s no competition.

Another example of using technology for trial strategy cited by Wired is the case of three law professors who are developing a tool that’s predicting Supreme Court decisions with about 70 percent accuracy. The professors assume the tool will eventually be put to use for the lower courts, since there’s such a strong need for it.

Read the story.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Thursday that employers could not prohibit employees from using their company’s email to communicate and engage in union organizing on their own time, The New York Times reports.

The 3-to-2 ruling overturned a decision made in 2007, when Republicans held a majority on the board, that had forbidden such use of email.

The current majority, noting how technology has transformed daily habits, called that ruling “clearly incorrect,” according to The Times report. “The workplace is ‘uniquely appropriate’ and ‘the natural gathering place’ for such communications,” the board wrote, “and the use of email as a common form of workplace communication has expanded dramatically in recent years.”

Read the story.

PennEnergy has posted a complimentary white paper describing the emerging generation of more capable, cloud-based contract lifecycle management solutions.

The paper, sponsored by SciQuest, examines powerful trends driving oil and gas firms towards greater supply chain efficiencies, the elements in a modern contract management environment, and how best to implement such a solution.

On its website, PennEnergy says oil and gas firms often struggle with manual and obsolete contract management systems.  The costs of those outdated methods are high: wasted administrative time and money, lost operating efficiencies, missed opportunities including loss of potential revenue, and greater risk to the organization and to executives.

Download the white paper.

International Business Machines Corp. has named Michelle Browdy as new general counsel, succeeding Bob Weber, who is retiring after nine years.

Browdy currently is assistant general counsel as well as secretary to the IBM board. Her title will become senior vice president, legal and regulatory affairs and general counsel as of Jan. 1, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

Browdy, 50, holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Princeton and was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before joining IBM in 2006 as the head of litigation, reports.

Read the story.

Guardians of Peace, the hacking group responsible for obtaining and then leaking thousands of pieces of confidential Sony information, has released the email of Sony Pictures General Counsel Leah Weil.

The nature of the majority of the documents is highly sensitive, according to a report on Gizmodo.com.

An email exchange between Weil and the president of Columbia Pictures’ business affairs carried the subject line “email purge.” The executives discussed the need for Sony to take a more cautious approach to email retention policies and whether they should move to a more secure system.

The emails also disclosed squabbles with writer-producer Aaron Sorkin, net neutrality confusion, and a host of conflicts within the company itself.

Read the story.

EDRM, the leading standards organization for the e-discovery market, has released an updated Statistical Sampling Applied to Electronic Discovery. The release, published on the EDRM website, is open for public comment. At the conclusion of the public comment period on January 9, 2015, input will be reviewed and considered for incorporation before the updated materials are finalized.

Inn a release, EDRM says the updated materials provide guidance regarding the use of statistical sampling in e-discovery. Much of the information is definitional and conceptual and intended for a broad audience. Other materials (including an accompanying spreadsheet) provide additional information, particularly technical information, for e-discovery practitioners who are responsible for developing further expertise in this area.

Read the updated document.

Advanced Software Concepts offers a complimentary white paper discussing some of the contract lifecycle management (CLM) problems that enterprises encounter and the ways businesses can deal with them effectively.

Managing contracts and agreements manually is inefficient and cumbersome, ASC says on its website. “Contracts get lost, incorrect contract terms are used, and contract renewals do not happen when they should, resulting in wasted organizational time, lost revenue and increased costs. Compounding this situation is the potential compliance risk and liability that organizations face when not using approved terms and conditions or not following proper business rules and approval workflows. Control over contractual agreements is essential to survive the scrutiny of a financial audit or to support litigation.”

Download the white paper.

Market Connections has posted a free white paper online titled “Contract Evaluation Research: A Competitive Advantage for Winning More Government Contracts.”

The white paper covers:

• Inside higher win rates: How to effectively use contract evaluations and customer satisfaction research
• The independent third party advantage: A path to relevant, actionable intelligence, and how to benchmark your results vs. peers
• Insider tips: How to use customer feedback in strategic decision-making, and executing more effective operational improvements

Download the white paper.

KPMG has made available a free on-demand webinar on the latest tax developments affecting companies in the oil and gas industry including legislative update, transfer pricing – state considerations, oil and gas current developments and year-end planning issues.

Speakers for the Webcast include:

John Gimigliano, Principal in Charge, Federal Legislative and Regulatory Services practice, KPMG LLP (U.S.)

Doug Maziur, Principal, SALT Income Franchise, KPMG LLP (U.S.)

Bob Swiech, Director, Washington National Tax, KPMG LLP (U.S.)

Mike Terracina, National Tax Leader, Oil and Gas practice, KPMG LLP (U.S.)

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Oil & Gas Journal presents a complimentary on-demand webinar on using predictive analytics to help an oil and gas organization maximize productivity, operational performance and associated processes to drive enterprise wide productivity and profitability.

On its website, the Journal says that in today’s asset-intensive marketplace, operating, maintaining and managing  oil and gas operations’ assets throughout their lifecycle can be costly on many fronts.  The benefits associated with preventing asset down time can be huge.

“Even small delays in detecting an issue can result in large costs from process & quality deviation, spare part costs, process down time, product quality issues and much more,” the Journal says.

Watch the webinar.