“Sovos Brands announced that Isobel Jones has joined the company as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. Ms. Jones brings extensive experience advising public and private companies and boards across a range of industries, most recently as the first in-house General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Sun Basket, an e-commerce startup.” was announced on Cision PR Newswire.

“Prior to Sun Basket, Ms. Jones was General Counsel at a number of food and beverage companies including Diamond Foods, Annie’s Homegrown, and Peet’s Coffee and Tea. She also served as Associate General Counsel of Del Monte Foods Company, where she specialized in securities compliance, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and debt offerings.”

Read the article.

Read the article.

Chad Mizelle J.D.’13 has been appointed to serve as acting General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, just seven years after graduating from Cornell Law School, reports Meghana Srivastava in The Cornell Daily Sun.

“Mizelle graduated magna cum laude from Cornell Law School in 2013, where he was active in the Cornell Law Review, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also served as the Mock Trial team’s head coach during the 2012-13 season.”

“Within the past year, Mizelle has worn many legal hats within homeland security, serving as Deputy General Counsel, Chief of Staff and now acting General Counsel.”

Read the article.

“Carrols Restaurant Group, Inc. (“Carrols” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: TAST) announced that it has appointed Markus Hartmann as the Company’s Vice President and General Counsel effective February 18, 2020.” reports BusinessWire.

“Mr. Hartmann is a business-oriented legal leader with experience in both public and private companies. He has practiced law in both domestic and international settings. Markus is a driven executive with experience as both a commercial and legal leader, with a distinguished career spanning more than three decades.”

“Mr. Hartmann most recently was the Vice President for Technical Compliance at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc. (a Daimler Company) (XETR: DDAIF). During his tenure, he was responsible for establishing the technical compliance function in North America for Daimler’s passenger car and vans division. Mr. Hartmann previously served as the North American General Counsel for Sandoz, Inc. (a division of Novartis) (NYSE: NVS), as well as the European and North American General Counsel for Reckitt Benckiser (LSE:RB) while living and working as an expatriate in the Netherlands.”

Read the press release.

“Most lawyers have a general understanding of the “no-contact rule”  — with a few exceptions, you can’t communicate directly on the subject of the representation with someone you know is represented by counsel.  But where does in-house counsel fit in?  Is in-house counsel “fair game” for ex parte contact by opposing counsel?” asks Karen Rubin in Thompson Hine’s Communication.

“Last month, the Virginia Supreme Court approved Legal Ethics Opinion 1890, and answered “Yes,” in an opinion that also covered some other issues of concern to in-house counsel.”

Read the article.

“A Houston-area attorney was arrested Tuesday after deputies accused him of bringing a loaded handgun into the Travis County Courthouse, court documents say.” reports Heather Osbourne of the Statesman.

“Lee Parker McMillian, 67, entered the courthouse at around 3 p.m. Tuesday and placed his bag on the conveyor belt to be screened by the X-ray scanner, according to an arrest affidavit filed by Travis County sheriff’s deputies.”

“A deputy operating the scanner said he saw the loaded handgun in the bag as it passed through the machine, the affidavit said. McMillian confirmed the bag belonged to him, deputies said.”

Read the Statesman’s article.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that an African American man serving a life term for a 1989 murder is entitle to a new trial says a federal appeals court. Ezzard Charles Ellis learned, “after his lawyer’s death, that the attorney was a racist who regularly expressed contempt for minority clients.”

“After San Bernardino attorney S. Donald Ames died in 1999, his daughter and others described incidents in which he used racial slurs to refer to nonwhites, particularly African Americans. ”

The “state attorney general’s office, which represented the prosecution in Ellis’ appeal, had agreed that the conviction should be reversed.”

Read the San Francisco Chronicle’s article.

“The opening debate of the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday afternoon was supposed to be merely about the trial rules. But members of President Donald Trump’s legal team wasted no time telling a number of lies before things really got going.” reports Vox.

“Though getting facts wrong might be somewhat understandable in the context of extemporaneous statements, these falsehoods came in the context of prepared remarks read by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow.”

Read Vox‘s article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors has published “2020 Governance Outlook: Projections on Emerging Board Matters.”

A complimentary copy of the report can be downloaded from the NACD website.

“This governance outlook provides insights and information from a roundup of leading experts,” NACD says. “It’s a curated compilation of the most significant issues expected to affect boards and companies in the year ahead, including issues such as the next recession, regulatory changes, strategic business risks, legal risks, board composition, the digital frontier, ESG and shareholder engagement, and water scarcity risk.”

Download a copy of the report.

David Drummond, the chief legal officer of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and one of its most senior executives, is leaving the internet giant amid an investigation into his relationships with women who worked at the company, reports The New York Times.

His resignation comes more than a year after 20,000 Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace relationships, writes the Times‘ Daisuke Wakabayashi.

“Some employees inside Google were dismayed that Mr. Drummond was not forced to leave after the details of an extramarital relationship he had with a woman who worked for him became public,” Wakabayashi continues. “The concerns about Mr. Drummond’s workplace romances took on new life when he recently married another woman from Google’s legal department.”

Read the  NY Times article.

Exterro has published a comprehensive guide to the California Consumer Privacy Act and made it available for downloading from the company’s website.

“Recent reports suggest that somewhere between 45% and 86% of companies will are not ready for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA),” the company says. “Organizations preparing for the CCPA must ready themselves for Data Subject Access Requests from consumers, have an organized data management system that allows them to find and remediate that data within 45 days.”

The Exterro guide covers:

• Why the changing regulatory landscape means that getting your data house in order is of the utmost importance
• Tips from subject matter experts for complying with the law based on the regulations that were published
• Answers to major questions that GCs and corporate legal departments that could mean the difference between confident compliance and fines

Download the free guide.

The Black General Counsel 2025 Initiative has launched a new online portal designed to help get 100 African American lawyers in chief legal officer or general counsel positions at top companies within the next five years, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

“April Miller Boise, a former managing partner of Thompson Hine’s Cleveland office, co-founded the Black GC Initiative in 2017 with Ernest Tuckett III, a former general counsel of Dutch chemical giant Akzo Nobel NV’s Americas arm. Tuckett joined Thompson Hine’s Chicago office as senior counsel late last year,” writes Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter.

Now Boise has taken a new job as executive vice president and general counsel at Eaton Corp. plc, a global power management conglomerate and Thompson Hine client.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

ACC-Northeast and RFP Advisory Group will present a webinar designed to teach how to use a request for proposal (RFP) as a tool to better manage outside counsel.

Using the RFP process effectively can help a legal department pick the law firms that are the best fit for a company and its existing needs/budget, ACC says.

The event will be Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, at 1 p.m. EST.

The webinar will cover how to use an RFP to:

* create a preferred provider panel

* identify the best firm for a specific matter or project

* convert your pricing structure from the billable hour to an alternative fee arrangement (AFA)

* incorporate the latest technology and innovations into your legal strategy

* increase the diversity of the lawyers working on your matters

* create a set of outside counsel guidelines for your law firms to abide by

Attendees will learn the latest trends in how RFPs are being used, and best practices in how to structure and execute a successful RFP, the sponsors said.

Register for the webinar.

Bloomberg Law reports that Apple Inc. general counsel Katherine Adams earned more than $25.2 million in total compensation during 2019, down slightly from a year earlier, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed Jan. 3.

Adams receives $1 million in annual cash compensation, with the balance coming in the form of restricted stock awards in the company.

“Adams replaced the retiring Bruce Sewell as the company’s general counsel, having previously spent 14 years in-house at Honeywell International Inc., the last eight of which she served as its in-house legal chief,” writes Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter. “Before that Adams spent a decade at Sidley Austin, where she was an associate and partner.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics will present its Internal Investigations Workshop, January 22-24, 2020, in San Francisco.

The workshop provides two days of focused training on conducting compliance-related internal investigations. The domestic workshops also offer an optional third day post conference. Experienced compliance professionals who have in-depth experience in the challenges and opportunities in conducting internal investigations will lead the training.

Topics include:

• Understanding and assessing the initial allegation of wrongdoing
• Creating an investigation plan
• Gathering evidence
• Conducting interviews, including the subject of the investigation
• Conclusions and root-cause analysis
• Writing your report
• Avoiding pitfalls and legal risks

Register for the event or get details.

BitPay, the largest global blockchain payments provider, announced Eden D. Doniger has joined the company as general counsel and chief compliance officer.

A BitPay release said that she is responsible for building and innovating the company’s legal, compliance and government affairs programs, as the company and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole continue to expand.

Donigerjoined BitPay after more than eight years as assistant general counsel at Cox Enterprises, a Fortune 100 global company.

Prior to Cox, Doniger practiced law at top tier law firms in Atlanta and New York and was an adjunct professor at Georgia State University. She began her legal career as a clerk for a federal district court judge in New Orleans.

Doniger received her Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal. She is a J. William Fulbright Scholar and received her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, where she studied Slavic Literature and Languages and competed as an NCAA Division I Scholar-Athlete on the women’s squash team. She serves on the board of Hands On Atlanta, the largest non-profit organization in Atlanta serving the community’s civic needs.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s longtime general counsel Allan Rauch is among six senior executives departing the company as part of a corporate restructuring announced Dec. 17, reports Bloomberg Law.

The home goods retailer named a former subordinate of Rauch’s to succeed him as general counsel on an interim basis.

Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter writes that the new interim GC, Michael Callahan, is a former vice president and corporate counsel with more than 25 years of experience in the company’s law department.

Rauch joined the company in 1994 and became general counsel in 1996.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

A NAVEX Global webinar will address the top 10 risk and compliance trends for 2020.

The complimentary event will be Wednesday, Jan. 15. 2020, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET.

In 2020, several critical issues are sure to impact the business landscape, including: election year turmoil, updates to regulatory requirements, digital environment impact, new agency guidance, data privacy, workplace behavioral shifts, and more, NAVEX says in its invitation.

Participants in the webinar will hear how experts are predicting these upcoming trends will provoke, shape and inspire organizational shifts and program improvements.

Register for the webinar.

Tesla’s general counsel is leaving the company, meaning the company has now lost three general counsels in the past year.

CNBC reports that Jonathan Chang, who was GC at Tesla since February, has taken a position as general counsel at SambaNova.

Chang’s predecessor, Dane Butswinkas, left the company in February 2019 after just two months on the job because he was not a good cultural fit, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC at the time.

Read the CNBC article.

As the launch date approaches for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on Jan. 1, 2020, Exterro has published a white paper designed to help legal departments keep their organizations’ privacy processes defensible, and minimize the risk of violating new privacy laws.

The white paper can be downloaded from Exterro’s website at no charge.

The launch of the CCPA means that consumers have more information and control over a business’s data practices, which creates challenges for businesses, mostly: Do they have their arms around their data? Do they understand where it lives within in their organization, and where it’s shared?

The paper breaks down the key questions that arise in keeping an organization’s privacy processes defensible, such as:

• The final “checklist” questions that you should be asking about your organization’s data preparedness
• Tips for breaking down the elements of the CCPA into actionable processes
• Tips for maintaining a trim data inventory

Download the white paper.