The Innoxcell Annual Symposium 2017 USA Series (IAS) scheduled for Oct. 12 in San Francisco focuses on USA – Asia Cross Border Litigation and Investigation matters.

The event will be at Park Central – 50 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94103 (Financial District).

This conference is for U.S. companies operating in Asia. C-level, In-house counsel, compliance, audit and risk professionals should attend to gain insight knowledge on cross border litigation, investigation, data privacy, mitigation risks and antitrust matters.

‘Complimentary tickets are available  for corporate counsel, compliance, investigation and risk professionals.

Topics 

• Crossing Border: Dispute Resolution, Corporate Compliance and Investigations
• Fighting Fraud, Bribery and Corruption
• Carried Out Antitrust Investigation in Asia
• Procurement Fraud – Prevent – Detect and Investigate
• Criminal Defense and Dealing with the Investigating Authorities
• Economic Uncertainty, Unethical Conduct: How Should Over-Burdened Compliance Functions Respond?
• Legal Risk Control of Investment & International Joint Venture – Due Diligence, Core Terms, Negotiation and Execution
• Fraud, Bribery & Corruption Impact on International Arbitration
• The Bedtime Story – A Journey to the Dark Side of International Business and Steps to Protect Your Organization
• Mastering Internal Investigations in Japan and Asia Pacific
• Using AI and Visual Analytics for Investigations

Register for the symposium.

The Association of Corporate Counsel has published the ACC Chief Legal Officers 2017 Survey, a vital tool providing legal departments with proprietary benchmarks to help them prepare for resourcing, staffing, and budgeting in the coming year.

Based on responses from nearly 1,100 in-house counsel in 42 countries, the survey offers an opportunity for CLOs to compare their practices to CLOs around the globe.

The 2017 report includes an executive summary, key findings, benchmarking, and a question-by-question analysis of key metrics such as:

• Key issues CLOs face
• Staffing by annual revenue and industry
• Budget changes and plans for 2018
• Resourcing
• Internal and external spend

Readers of General Counsel News may receive a 10 percent discount on the survey report by using the code CLOSAVE10.

Download the survey report.

Volkswagen AG’s top U.S. lawyer and the leader of its emissions-testing lab in California are among the employees whose mobile devices were either lost or erased as the company’s diesel cheating scandal emerged, according to court records made public on Thursday, reports Bloomberg.

David Geanacopoulos, VW Group of America’s senior vice president for public affairs and public policy, was general counsel when, he reported, he lost his phone while en route to Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 1, 2015, according to the records.

And the company cell phones of Anna Schneider, VW’s senior vice president of industry and government relations, and Matthias Barke, senior director of VW’s emissions test center in Oxnard, California, were “wiped” or erased of data in the months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced VW had rigged its vehicles to pass pollution tests, according to the report by Ryan Beene and Margaret Cronin Fisk.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that UC Berkeley’s chief counsel was killed Sunday in a hit-and-run crash while bicycling in Sonoma County, authorities said.

The California Highway Patrol reported that the driver of a BMW apparently lost control as he entered a curve on California 116, striking and killing Christopher Patti.

“Witnesses told officers that Patti was stopped on the shoulder. The 59-year-old Berkeley resident was sitting on his bicycle and looking at his phone, according to the CHP in Santa Rosa,” according to reporter Veronica Rocha.

Patti had represented the campus in legal matters since 2010 and worked with community organizations as well as federal, state and local government agencies, Rocha writes.

Read the LA Times article.

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Forbes contributor Mark A. Cohen writes about his recent ABA address to a group of general counsel on the spate of high-profile scandals and regulatory imbroglios that resulted in no small part from the failure of GC’s to discharge the guardian/conscience role.

In the article, Cohen writes that “general counsel — and large corporate departments — are law’s petri dish. They are reconfiguring the boundaries and expanding the expectations of what it means to be an effective corporate lawyer.”

Cohen cites what he calls of trinity of powerful macroeconomic forces — “globalization, technology, and the global financial crisis changed the way corporations conduct business and accelerated the metamorphosis of the GC role into what it is today.”

Read the Forbes article.

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The 10th Annual Blickstein Group Law Department Operations Survey, in cooperation with Consilio, is the oldest research specifically covering law department operations. It is designed solely for the professionals who manage complex legal department operations for their companies.

The LDO survey was first created in 2008 to give law departments a consistent platform to benchmark themselves and shed light on the then-emerging profession of law department operations. In addition to being the original of its kind, as the industry has grown exponentially the LDO survey remains the most respected benchmarking tool in the space.

Participants are being sought for the survey. Only survey participants will receive a copy of the proprietary results.

The report will co ver such topics as:

• Compensation
• Legal Service Delivery Models
• Artificial Intelligence
• Technology and Cybersecurity
• Change Management

Participate in the survey.

The Association of Corporate Counsel will hold its next annual meeting Oct. 15-18 in Washington D.C.

The organization is offering an exclusive $125 discount on the registration fee for readers of General Counsel News who register by August 31. Readers may use the code GCNEWS to receive the discount.

The ACC bills the event, which draws thousands of in-house counsel from around the world, as the world’s largest gathering of in-house counsel.

Organizers have recently added a law department operations boot camp, titled “How to Gain Traction: A Boot Camp for Leaders of Early-Stage Legal Operations Functions.” The bootcamp is designed for corporate legal department leaders only.

The featured speaker will be Don Tapscott, CEO of the Tapscott Group. He is a best-selling author and the world’s leading authority on blockchain and other disruptive technologies.

Here is a schedule of activities.

Register or get more information.

Independent marketing research firm Phase5 is conducting a comprehensive study on the current state of third-party risk management and is seeking input.

Confidential responses will be aggregated with other responses, summarized, and published in a comprehensive report.

A spokesman said anyone participating will receive a copy of the final report. That report will show how others manage their third-party risk and due diligence processes and discover techniques for effectively reducing legal risk.

Take the survey.

The National Association of Corporate Directors has published a guide to leading practices for key committee succession planning and new-director onboarding.

The guide is available from the NACD’s website at no charge.

Download the resource.

Clutch Group has published a new book, Guide to Conducting Internal Investigations, providing best practices and guidance for those conducting or overseeing investigations, including boards of directors, general counsel and corporate executives in both the U.K. and the U.S.

Totaling 45 pages, parts 1 and 2 are available now for complimentary download.

As more regimes increase their regulatory enforcement efforts around the globe, internal investigations have become “business as usual” for many companies, especially those in highly regulated industries. But there is no regulatory blueprint for what are accepted standards and practices, and this puts companies at a disadvantage with regulators.

Co-authored with Jake McQuitty of TLT Solicitors, it is not a legal text book but a practical guide; shedding light on what a good investigation looks like whilst guiding investigators though the myriad issues that can arise.

Download the guide.

Bloomberg Law reports that Microsoft hopes to shift 90 percent of its legal work into alternative fee arrangements within two years — in an effort to move away from the billable hour.

Microsoft has been re-evaluating how it works with law firms, according to David Howard, a corporate vice president and deputy general counsel at the company.

“It made several key decisions in the process, including to hire more law firms on a retainer basis and to work more closely with them on their diversity,” reporter Gabe Friedman writes. “[Howard] also said the company is rapidly moving away from the billable hour, and named a dozen law firms that have embraced alternative fee arrangements, such as fixed fees, that Microsoft views as its strategic partners.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

Bloomberg Law reports that GE Healthcare is finding automation to be one of the biggest challenges as it builds its legal operations function, Vice President and General Counsel Laura O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell told Bloomberg BNA’s Yin Wilczek that the company’s in-house lawyers have been wrestling with how legal processes that are tailored for specific needs can be made “repeatable and automated without losing the good analysis that we are known for as a profession.”

Bloomberg includes a video of O’Donnell discussing GE Healthcare’s automation efforts.

Read the Bloomberg article.

OpenText Discovery (formerly Recommind) has published a report titled “Corporate Legal Ops Service Results 2017,” which is available for complimentary downloading.

Starting in 2015, OpenText Discovery has commissioned Ari Kaplan Advisors to interview premier corporate legal ops professionals to identify new trends and eDiscovery issues. This report details the latest 2017 findings, such as:

• AI and Analytics: Is cost still an issue to adopting discovery analytics?
• ECM & Discovery processes: Are legal ops professionals consolidating their approach?
• Cloud readiness: Has the cloud reached a tipping point?
• InfoSec: Have data security concerns increased?

Download the report.

Corporate legal departments can and do pay top-dollar figures to lure lawyers away from partnerships that pay millions of dollars, reports Bloomberg Law.

Apple Inc.’s general counsel/senior vice president Bruce Sewell leads the list of top-paid corporate legal officers with total compensation of $22.8 million, according to Bloomberg’s research on the 500 largest U.S. companies, ranked by revenue.

“Often enough, the lawyers who choose to accept top positions in-house must forgo high salaries and take other forms of compensation — onetime bonuses, rich stock or option grants, generous pension plans, and other perks such as access to a company car or money for expensive real estate, according to a Big Law Business review of proxy statements,” writes Gabe Friedman.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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An Above the Law review of a BTI Power Rankings report reports that only 33 percent of general counsel find themselves in a state of “clientopia” with their go-to law firms.

Thr BTI Power Rankings report was based on 960 in-depth telephone interviews that took place between March 2015 and February 2017. Jones Day topped the list.

Law360also reviewed the report: “The biggest area in which law firms are falling short from achieving client service bliss, according to BTI President Michael Rynowecer, is that many have a lack of understanding of their clients’ businesses, something he says is becoming ‘a bigger and bigger problem.’”

Read the Above the Law article.

During the 2017 CLOC Annual Legal Operations Institute in Las Vegas, Onit and PayPal presented a session titled, “Next Generation Enterprise Legal Management (ELM): People. Process. Automation.” The speakers were Lauren Giammona, Director of Operations, Business Affairs & Legal at PayPal, and Eric M. Elfman, founder and CEO of Onit.

Lauren outlined her implementation experience and shared her 7 key tips for selecting an enterprise legal management (ELM) vendor. Legaltech News wrote a detailed article summarizing the CLOC session. PayPal and Onit discussed how legal departments can provide “continuous” value to the company, drive operational improvements and allow employees to work in the systems they prefer. The session highlighted:

• The importance of process, workflow and collaboration
• How a business automation tool solves needs beyond e-billing and matter management
• Key benchmarks and metrics that drive innovation and transformation in legal operations

Download the case study.

AltaClaro will present a complimentary webinar focusing on managing legal and cultural risks in cross-border investigations. The event will be Wednesday, July 26, 2017, beginning at noon Eastern time.

Expert panelists Jon Abernethy (Partner, Cohen & Gresser LLP) and Andrew Curtin (Global Head of Investigations, AIG) will join AltaClaro Founder & CEO and former Deputy General Counsel of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Abdi Shayesteh, will be presenters.

In this interactive, live webcast, Abdi will moderate Abernethy’s and Curtin’s discussion of the following topics:

(1) Handling multi-jurisdictional approaches to privileged communications in the aftermath of the recent U.K. decisions in Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation Ltd. and The RBS Rights Issue Litigation

(2) Identifying potential cultural challenges and local laws that may impede an effective investigation and prevent a one-size-fits-all approach to designing internal processes and procedures within multinational organizations

(3) Implementing best practices when preparing for and coordinating effective internal investigations across international lines

Register for the webinar.

Consilio is conducting an online survey is designed to provide law department leaders insight into comprehensive benchmarking data, legal operations and discovery best practices, and trend reporting.

Survey results provide a foundational resource for assessing law department performance, and justifying spend and staffing levels or initiative investments through peer comparison.

“Corporate law department performance is widely discussed yet infrequently measured with accuracy across industries. Legal spending, department organization, staff workload, outside counsel and vendor management, leadership priorities, client service delivery and technology are several of the areas of performance that we aim to measure, benchmark and use to identify best practices in our 2017 Law Department Benchmarking Survey,” Consilio says on its website.

Participants who complete the survey by July 15, 2017, will receive a $25 coffee gift card.

Participants will receive the survey results report including benchmarking data at the industry and revenue segment level, Consilio reports.

Complete the survey.

Zapproved has published a guide that discusses five ways to save costs and build efficiencies by bringing e-discovery processing and review in-house. The guide can be downloaded at no charge.

On its website, the company says keeping in-house e-discovery costs in check is a constant balancing act. Complex litigation and regulatory matters — along with pressure to streamline operational spending — create an often expensive e-discovery reality.

According to a study from FTI Consulting, the majority of Fortune 1000 corporations now spend $5-10 million annually on e-discovery with 70% of the costs tied directly to document review.

The guide shows how to take charge of e-discovery by leveraging easy-to-use and secure in-house tools that minimize business risk — and maximize budgets.

• Unlock detailed tips in this guide from Zapproved to get started. It outlines six ways to slash spending and boost efficiencies. Find out how to:
• Use modern, cloud-based e-discovery software tools to bring routine e-discovery processes in-house.
• Modernize legacy systems to limit dependence on IT.
• Empower legal teams to slash expenses, improve data security and speed time to resolution.

The guide also offers step-by-step recommendations and best practices to help:

• Get insights faster by plugging in data processing tools
• Save money by reviewing routine, high-velocity matters in-house
• Improve response to internal investigations and FOIA information requests

Download the guide.

General counsel support is crucial for corporate legal departments that are trying to decrease the number of law firms they work with, 3M Co.’s managing counsel said, writes Yin Wilczek for Bloomberg BNA.

Joseph Otterstetter, who leads his company’s ongoing convergence efforts, told Wilczek that the most important step is making sure the in-house team is “aligned, starting with the general counsel. There will be resistance, I promise, and so if the general counsel isn’t supportive, it’s best not to even start, frankly.”

3M launched its effort convergence in 2013, when it cut the about 300 of its U.S. outside firms to about 35 to 36 firms, said Otterstetter, who also is associate general counsel of 3M. And more recently the company re-assessed the major portfolios into which it divides its legal work, he said.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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