Bloomberg Big Law Business, in partnership with Catalyst, will convene corporate counsel to discuss the need to control rising legal costs particularly related to litigation at the complimentary event, Controlling Litigation Costs – Managing Your Legal Department for Success.

The event will be Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 3-5:30 p.m. Central time, at University Club of Chicago, Northwestern Room, 76 E Monroe St., Chicago, IL 60603.

Technology provides important solutions, but only if implemented effectively and as part of an overall strategy to manage litigation, Bloomberg says on its website. Top general counsel will talk about the ways they are managing litigation and the expectations they set with law firms and technology vendors.

Corporate counsel speakers include:

• Susan Lees, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Allstate Insurance
• Leslie McKnew, VP, Litigation, CISCO
• Matt Miller, VP, Deputy General Counsel – EMEA, APAC and Global Litigation, Groupon
• Sharyn Procaccio, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Hunt Companies

Register for the event.

 

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By Patty P. Tehrani
Lawyer and Founder of Policy Patty Toolkit

So much focus right now on the new administration in place. Not to mention the rampant speculation about what they will do about various financial regulations and how dramatically this landscape is expected to change. As if this were not enough, your company has a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). She has requested a meeting with you, the General Counsel, to meet to discuss your ethics, risk and compliance programs to learn more about them. She also wants to get your insights on what she and management should do to avoid the common pitfalls highlighted in recent corporate scandals.

As an experienced lawyer, this is welcome news. You know that a company’s governance, risk and compliance programs (“core programs”) should be promoted by management to truly be effective. You are all too familiar with recent headlines regarding the lack of management focus on a company’s core programs resulting in poor company culture and irreparable systemic failures. Often these scandals involve management that has delegated ownership for their company programs and most definitely ignorant to the risks and issues involving them. Most end up with dire consequences – share price plummets, employees lose morale and leave, customers leave, and overall the brand and reputation diminish. And while your company’s prior management did a good job to promote your core programs more can still be done.

This article provides key considerations to help you prepare for your meeting with your CEO.

Note: You can define management however you deem fit for your company. This can include boards of directors where appropriate and your business leaders such as the chief executive officer, president, chief financial officer, the heads of product/business lines as well regional divisions for global companies.

Preparing for Your Meeting

You decide that the focus of your meeting will be on management ownership of your core programs. To prepare for your meeting, you want to make an outline of discussion points. As a starting point, you want to note what ownership does not mean, which can be delegated to the subject matter experts. That is – the development, implementation, and maintenance of a core program which can be delegated to the subject matter experts – Legal, Risk or Compliance departments (as well as others). Next and most importantly, you list how management can own these programs. In doing so, you want to make sure that you underscore the benefits. To help your discussion consider the following points:

• Tone at the Top – Management should set an effective “Tone-at-the-top” to communicate their commitment to core programs and to promote the need for them.

• Formal and documented adoption of a program (e.g., notice from management to all employees that they have approved a core program).
• Regular communication from management on a program (e.g., management messages on your programs via training, company websites, inclusion in town halls, or periodic reminders on program requirements to name a few).

• Embed in the Business and Culture – Management should lead efforts to incorporate program requirements and risks into the company’s overall business strategy, processes, and operations. Taking an integrated approach will lead to better overall performance and ultimately your bottom line by avoiding different and possibly conflicting business and control requirements.

• Unintegrated program risks and vulnerabilities may affect the ability of a company to fulfill its business strategies and objectives.
• Failed or deficient programs may result in costly disruptions to core business activities leading to harmful breakdowns in business operations and ultimately the company’s viability.
• Jeopardizing the company’s continuity and integrity increases the potential for reputational damage — in the market, among shareholders, and with business partners.

In addition, a core program should not be viewed in isolation of a company’s core values, mission, and culture. Management should align a core program with a company’s core values, mission, and culture to reap tangible benefits.

• A strong program provides important benefits including safeguards for weak or absent controls, and integral to an open environment of trust, accountability, and integrity – all ingredients that benefit productivity and the bottom line.
• While every company is unique, there are a few universal program outcomes/objectives that it every company would benefit from:
  • an enhanced culture of trust, accountability, and integrity;
  • process for prevention, detection, and management of issues;
  • protection (to the extent possible) from negative consequences, and detection of non-compliance;
  • defined escalation measures for non-compliance and material issues; and

• Accountability – Management should foster a culture of accountability to help the success of a core program. Accountability requires management to know what the material issues are with a core program and how to act on them promptly.

• Escalation – A defined escalation process to alert management is critical to management accountability. This is particularly important when the company is getting close to (or crossing) a risk or challenge that prevents the achievement of a material program objective or deliverable or runs afoul of a legal, regulatory or business requirement.
• Monitoring – Program processes and results should be monitored and measured on a regular basis. If done properly, monitoring measures keep regulators happy during reviews, but more importantly keep management informed and accountable.

Robust monitoring and reporting results can be used to:

• facilitate management response to program issues and challenges;
• help company’s gauge progress of objectives and how they are contributing to the success of the company’s strategy;
• improve program components from time-to-time; and
• prevent, detect, and respond to identified malfeasance in the future.

Note: Be mindful of matters that may warrant referral or reporting to the relevant governmental agency or regulator following presentation to management.

o Access – Management should ensure key areas have access to them to ensure timely, proper and informed responses to program issues.

• Key program administrators and messengers – Legal, Compliance, Risk Management, Operations, Human Resources, Audit, Information Technology – need unrestricted access to management to help them respond to the issue/challenge.
• Responsibility – Management should also be prepared to go so far as to take the blame for a material failure involving a core program. Consider when a company CEO publicly acknowledges responsibility for a company failure, everyone takes notice – employees, investors, business partners and industry regulators.
• Support – Management should support program leaders and administrators so that they have the authority and sufficient resources to: 1) manage a program on a day-to-day basis; and 2) maintain them in the event of regulatory and operational changes, varying and possibly increasing risks.

You’ve drawn your outline together and ready to discuss with your CEO. You know that by working together, management and program administrators can help ensure a core program not only contributes to the improvement of the company’s governance practices but the success of its company’s strategy as well.

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The National Association of Corporate Directors will present a complimentary webinar discussing how progressive general counsel use the board evaluation process as a tool to effect positive change in the boardroom.

The webinar is part of NACD’s Strategic-Asset General Counsel Webinar Series.

The event will be March 23, 2017, 2-3 p.m. Eastern time.

Board evaluation will be the main topic for the NACD webinar.

Speakers will be announced closer to the event date.

Register for the webinar.

 

The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the advocate for the profession of directorship, announced the formation of its first-ever General Counsel Steering Committee. As part of NACD’s goal to equip boards with the information they need to create long-term value for businesses, this invitation-only committee brings together more than 60 progressive general counsel — all nominated by Fortune 500 board committee chairs.

The members of the steering committee will directly shape and inform NACD’s brand-new initiative, The Strategic-Asset GC, which includes resources, a webinar series, and a live meeting on June 1, 2017, in New York City. This initiative is designed to explore the continuing evolution of the role of the general counsel and its impact on boardroom issues, and will help to form leading governance practices as well as NACD resources and additional educational programming.

“The formation of this initiative and committee couldn’t be more timely,” said Peter Gleason, the recently appointed CEO of NACD. “Our members turn to general counsel now more than ever before for their unique legal and strategic perspective. In fact, almost two-thirds of our full board members have their general counsel on their membership roster.”

NACD’s General Counsel Steering Committee members come from a diverse range of Fortune 500, nonprofit, and private companies. GC are from such companies as Foot Locker, Campbell Soup, Hanesbrands, General Motors, and Lockheed Martin.

See a list of the committee members.

 

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The Association of Corporate Counsel, the world’s largest community of in-house counsel, will stage the ACC Mid-Year Meeting in New York on April 2-4, 2017.

The event will be at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel. General Counsel News readers may receive a $200 discount on the registration fee if they register by Feb. 20.

An ACC release says the meeting will help participants prepare for changes in the regulatory landscape with sessions on:

• The impact of evolving regulations and enforcement trends on contracts
• Current and most controversial changes in employment law
• Reducing financial sector regulatory risk

Other activities will include:

• Engage directly with expert faculty
• Connect with your peers through multiple networking opportunities
• Have the opportunity to earn 12-14 CLE/CPD (1 credit Ethics eligible), 14 CCB CEU credits, and 3-4 CPE credits

Register for the meeting.

 

 

Among the many subjects to receive President-elect Trump’s attention in coming days are venerable defense contractors and their performance of major systems contracts, points out an article published in Covington & Burling LLP’s Inside Government Contracts.

Sandy Hoe and John Sorrenti write that a president always can pressure high-profile government contractors to “voluntarily” take actions to their detriment and in favor of the government, but what legal tools or contractual remedies are available if a president forces a particular outcome?

“From a purely legal standpoint, however, the Administration’s powers are circumscribed by the remedies available to contractors and challenges that prospective offerors can bring through the bid protest process.” the authors content.

Read the article.

 

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The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) has published a complimentary executive summary of “Eight Key Practices for Overseeing Risk Management.”

“As the number and magnitude of business risks increase, so do the expectations for stronger risk oversight — through both greater board awareness of risk and more disciplined board review of enterprise-risk management,” the NACD says on its website.

The reports offers key practices that all directors can use to oversee risk more effectively, such as:

• Clarify the roles of the board, committees, and management.
• Understand the company’s risk profile.
• Define the company’s risk appetite.

Download the executive summary.

 

 

Catalyst, a developer of e-discovery solutions, has introduced Insight Enterprise, a platform the company says is specifically designed for corporate general counsel to centralize, simplify and reduce the cost of e-discovery across all their litigation, investigation and compliance matters and teams.

The company’s news release contiues:

Insight Enterprise enables corporate legal departments to centralize e-discovery management and data, simplify management through streamlined business processes, and reduce the total cost of discovery through efficiencies far greater than just the cost per gigabyte.

“Cost concerns are driving legal departments to shift more work in-house, exercise tighter management over outside legal matters, and expect more precise reporting and accountability from their legal teams,” said John Tredennick, Catalyst’s founder and CEO. “Until now, however, general counsel have not had a platform specifically designed for corporate e-discovery. Insight Enterprise gives them the centralization, automation and reporting they need to most effectively manage their legal matters.”

According to a recent Gartner report, in addition to cost pressures, rapid data growth is also forcing GCs to grapple with greater security challenges and compliance risks. These concerns are causing many organizations to carefully re-examine their e-discovery practices and technology.

Insight Enterprise: A Better Way to Reduce Litigation Cost
Designed specifically for corporate legal departments, Insight Enterprise reduces corporate legal costs through:
• Automation from processing through production.
• Centrally managed data hubs capable of handling millions of documents across multiple matters.
• Coding consistency across cases and counsel.
• Customized tracking and financial reporting within and across matters.
• Airtight security with multi-level access controls.

Insight Enterprise allows documents to be loaded and processed once in a central repository. They can then be assigned to multiple matters with synchronized review tags to reduce review costs and the risk of inconsistent coding. Additionally, consistent workflows and best practices minimize cost and mistakes by making the process more efficient and predictable.

“Corporate legal professionals are under increasing pressure to stay on top of their cases and ensure matters are progressing as efficiently as possible,” said Tredennick. “Our goal in all of this is really very simple – enable our clients to reduce discovery costs and provide predictability through a central, secure e-discovery platform that they can control from beginning to end.”

 

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Hotel brand and management company Dream Hotel Group announces the appointment of Laura Mutterperl as Executive Vice President and General Counsel.

Mutterperl, with nearly a decade of experience in driving hotel strategy from a business and legal standpoint, will play a key role in advancing the company’s growth, the company says in a news release.

The release continues:

Home to Dream Hotels, Time Hotels, The Chatwal and Unscripted Hotels brands, Dream Hotel Group encompasses three business lines: Proprietary Brands, Hotel Management and Dining & Nightlife.

“We are thrilled to announce the addition of Laura Mutterperl to our team,” said Jay Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Dream Hotel Group. “With her extensive experience in hospitality and invaluable background in legal counsel, Laura is an ideal fit for the role of Executive Vice President and General Counsel as we continue to drive brand growth.”

Mutterperl joins Dream Hotel Group from Starwood Hotels and Resorts, where she was Vice President and Associate General Counsel. At Starwood, Mutterperl served as a point person across strategic planning and implementation in business operations and hotel development. She also has extensive experience as lead counsel across the restaurant, retail and spa businesses. Based primarily in North America, she also handled matters in Asia and the Middle East and worked for a stint in Starwood’s Asia Pacific headquarters. Mutterperl joined Starwood from Kirkland & Ellis, where she advised clients across private and public transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, financings, joint ventures, public offerings, corporate governance and other corporate matters.

“I am honored to join Dream Hotel Group as the company enters an exciting new phase of growth and development,” said Laura Mutterperl, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Dream Hotel Group. “I’m looking forward to being part of the Dream team as we continue to expand the group’s new and existing lifestyle brands and operations.”

Laura Mutterperl graduated from Harvard College with honors and earned her JD from Harvard Law School. She joins Dream Hotel Group’s executive office in New York.

 

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General Counsel News and Zapproved have posted a complimentary on-demand webinar titled “Trends in Corporate E-Discovery Data Processing: Benchmark Survey Insights Revealed.”

An expert panel will explore the trends, and discuss the results of the 2017 benchmark survey.

The event provides insights and analysis on:

• In-sourcing vs. outsourcing e-discovery projects
• Satisfaction of process with an eye on factors such as time, cost and ease
• Technology trends affecting how in-house legal teams’ work evolves in 2017 and beyond

Speakers were Brad Harris, VP of Products, Zapproved, Inc.; Jack Thompson, Sr. Manager – eDiscovery & Legal Operations, Sanofi US; and Brad Ellis, Corporate VP of Legal Services, Physician Acquisitions, Asst General Counsel – Scripps Health.

The moderator was Corena Bahr, Webinar Consultant & Producer, YourWebinarGuru.

Brad Harris has more than 30 years of experience in the high technology and enterprise software sectors, including assisting Fortune 1000 companies enhance their e-discovery preparedness through technology and process improvement. He is a frequent author and speaker on data preservation and e-discovery issues, including articles in National Law Journal, Corporate Counsel, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel and Information Management and presentations at leading industry events such as LegalTech New York. Prior to joining Zapproved, he led the development of electronic discovery readiness consulting efforts for Fios, Inc. from 2004 to 2009. He has held senior management positions at prominent public and privately held companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix and Merant.

Jack Thompson is a corporate eDiscovery and Legal Operations professional, specializing in the advancement of efficiency of legal technical operations and information governance.  From 2001 through 2014, He was legal operations manager at Purdue Pharma LP in Stamford, CT providing services and solutions to Purdue’s legal technology operations as well as leading the company’s legal analytics programs.  In 2014, Thompson relocated to Atlanta, GA to work as the legal technology manager for the UPS Corporate Legal Department, followed by working as an IT Business Services Manager for The Coca Cola Company’s global legal department providing technical expertise and process workflow implementations.  Heis currently working as the eDiscovery Manager and Legal Operations Lead for Sanofi US, located in Bridgewater, NJ.

Brad Ellis received both his Juris Doctorate and a Master of Law in Taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law. He has 25 years experience in healthcare law, and has worked at Scripps Health for the last 18 years. Prior to joining Scripps Health he was in private practice with a focus in healthcare and the banking industries. In addition to his legal duties, he is responsible for physician acquisition in a business role, and is also responsible for system-wide cyber-security for the Scripps Health system.

See the on-demand webinar.

 

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Corporate legal departments will decrease spend on outside counsel and take more work in-house in 2017, reveals a new report released by Liquid Litigation Management, Inc. (LLM), a legal workflow unification platform provider. “The State of the Legal Industry” report explores the motivations for technology adoption among U.S. law firms and corporations. It also examines the business benefits firms and their clients expect from technology adoption, as well as the lingering challenges they face.

While the corporations and law firms surveyed said their number one goal of incorporating technology is to boost efficiency, the way they use this new technology can prove counterproductive. The survey found that 64 percent of law firms rely on more than four distinct legal software systems to aid in developing strategy, tracking case management, and collecting, processing and reviewing data. This outsized number of systems, which can lead to inefficiencies and increased cost, is one example of why corporations think law firms are not as efficient as they should be. As a result, corporations are taking more work in-house and spending less on outside help.

“The law firms and GC offices participating in the survey show some interesting similarities and differences,” said Cas Campaigne, Chief Executive Officer and President of LLM. “Both are heavily focused on cost-cutting and efficiency gains, but their priorities differ. If law firms and corporations can work together to figure out how to consolidate their technology and reduce some of these inefficiencies caused by the complexity of systems they use, firms will be better equipped to meet the demands of their customers and corporations will save money.”

Some of the reports other key findings include the following:

• Corporations and law firms want greater budgeting predictability
• Corporations are using Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) to reduce legal costs
• Nearly half of firms only use email to track communication around budget and strategy for historical purposes

“Doing ‘more with less’ is a mantra of many modern law departments. They are starting to demand similar discipline from their external providers,” said Casey Flaherty, former in-house counsel and founder of Procertas. “Talking about efficiency in the abstract isn’t enough. Corporations want measurable efficiencies and tractable savings without compromising quality. Many law firms struggle to meet these mandates. Buying technology is different from using technology is different from using technology well. Interoperability and integration are among the primary challenges we have in making our tools really work for us.”

The report provides other insights of particular interest to the legal community, such as:

• The most significant changes firms and GC offices anticipate in the coming months
• Their biggest obstacles
• How frequently firms communicate with their clients
• The ways in which corporations and firms want to use tech to improve operating efficiencies
• The degree to which legal departments and law firms leverage historical data and why
• The impact of AFAs on technology purchases
• The relative ability for firms and clients to keep pace with change

Download the report.

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General Electric has developed what it’s calling a Yelp for lawyers, reports Bloomberg Law.

The report says the internal website allows the company’s approximately 800 in-house lawyers to search “preferred providers” of outside counsel and learn about their track record with the company.

“Titled GE Select Connect, more than 200 of the company’s outside law firms maintain profiles (à la Facebook) that feature firm information, including feedback the outside firms have received from GE lawyers, the firm’s diversity staffing levels, hourly rates, along and discounts the company has previously achieved,” Bloomberg reports.

Read the Bloomberg article.

 

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Bloomberg BNA will present a complimentary event to discuss the widespread corporate apathy towards antitrust risks — and why the business community needs a collective wake-up call.

The event will be at the Bloomberg LP offices at 731 Lexington Ave. in New York on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017, 8-10 a.m.

Robins Kaplan LLP is an underwriter of the event, will carries up to 1.5 CLE credits.

“Companies rely on their sales personnel to drive business growth and generate new revenue, while the in-house compliance team must prevent, detect, and report actions that could draw scrutiny from antitrust enforcement agencies,” Bloomberg says on its website. “But what if those employees don’t even know what types of conduct is problematic under the antitrust laws?”

Bloomberg BNA and Robins Kaplan LLP conducted a survey of corporate sales and compliance professionals, and the results show a widespread lack of awareness of antitrust guidelines. Among the alarming findings: 25% of respondents are engaged in pricing activities that could rise to the level of illegality.

The event is designed for in-house counsel, compliance and business executives responsible for antitrust compliance.

Register for the event.

 

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Navex Global has published its 2017 edition of the annual Top 10 Ethics & Compliance Predictions and Recommendations white paper and made it available for free downloading.

These 10 insider tips and predictions from experts present insight on how to prepare now — and get ahead of the trends that will impact the workforce and industry.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• Deliver a Return on Compliance (ROC)
• Thrive in a Five Generation Workplace
• Sort Through the Alphabet Soup of Global Standards
• Be More Than Just the People Who Say ‘No ’
• Mitigate Cyber Mayhem

Download the report.

 

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Law firm partners have figured out how to increase profits per partner in the face of a declining demand. Firms, on the other hand, have an unsustainable model that remains largely intact even as clients are seeking options, writes Mark A. Cohen for Forbes.

He sees the explosive growth of in-house legal departments as possibly the biggest impact of the fiscal crisis.

“It’s easy to dismiss ‘insourcing’  legal work as labor arbitrage. But the more fundamental reason for in-house growth is law firms’ inability to deliver legal expertise and value — as well as to integrate technology and process in delivery. The value deficiency is linked to the traditional firm model and culture,” he writes.

He lists some of the reasons corporate legal departments now comprise about 45 percent of total legal spend.

Read the Forbes article.

 

 

 

In-house counsel and company executives who can make decisions need to attend hearings to see what they’re getting for their legal fees, patent judges said conference sponsored by University of California Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and Stanford Law School.

In its report on the conference, Bloomberg Law quotes Judge James Donato, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: “I am amazed that you all don’t show up with more regularity, particularly when you’re looking at a summary judgment motion or have a Markman” hearing on claims construction “or some other significant proceeding where you have spent in all likelihood six figures in legal fees and costs to get that thing ready for me to decide.”

Judge Ron Clark, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, requires the general counsel or a corporate-level decision maker to attend hearings either in person or via phone to understand what’s happening and what the court demands, according to the Bloomberg report.

Read the Bloomberg article.

 

 

A study by market research firm Equilar found that 2015 compensation for general counsel rose 6.9 percent and exceeded $1 million, reports Bloomberg Law.

In examining data from more than 1,400 lawyers, the report — with commentary from legal recruiting firm BarkerGilmore — found that:

• At companies with less than $1 billion in revenue, median total direct compensation for GCs was $725,021.
• At companies with between $1 billion and $5 billion in revenue, it was  $1.2 million.
• At companies with between $5 billion and $15 billion, it was $1.7 million.
• At companies with revenues above $15 billion, it was $2.5 million.

On its website, BarkerGilmore explains that the study considered compensation trends by practice area, the average annual in-house counsel salary increase, how well company compensation compares to those of similar size, and what gaps may exist and how to address them.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Download the BarkerGilmore report.

 

 

 

 

As most legal departments’ workload increases and resources diminish, it’s no surprise that running an efficient legal department is challenging. Old processes tracked on Excel spreadsheets or rudimentary databases will no longer cut it. Many legal departments find themselves struggling under the weight of legacy technologies that simply do not work or are expensive to upgrade.

Onit has published an eBook (see the form below) that discusses how ELM solutions are positively impacting corporate legal departments like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), The Home Depot and Under Armour.

The eBook, available for free downloading, covers:

• Why ELM is more than just legal e-billing and spend management and “should” include contract management, legal holds, NDA creation, legal service requests, etc.
• Why “process automation” and collaboration is critical for performance
• Cues from the industry, market trends and Gartner’s predictions
• The new technology curve and future of legal operations technology

Download the eBook:

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The 2016 report on a comprehensive survey of law department operations, “Trying to Take the Leap from Small Changes to Major Disruptions,” can be downloaded from Blickstein Group at no charge.

Since 2008, Blickstein Group has worked in cooperation with Consilio to survey hundreds of law departments solely on the operations function to provide benchmarks that are useful to all law departments.

In addition to releasing the survey report, Blickstein Group will host a live webinar on Dec. 14 to provide exclusive analysis of survey results by five industry leaders. The complimentary online event will be Wednesday, Dec. 14, at 1 p.m. EST.

Some of the topics covered will be:

• The role of the LDO
• Change management
• Alternative fee arrangements
• Technology and tools
• Metrics and reporting

Presenters at the webinar will be:

• Brad Blickstein – Principal, Blickstein Group and Publisher, Law Department Operations Survey
• Elizabeth Jaworski – Director, Legal Operations, Motorola Mobility and Member, Law Department Operations Survey Advisory Board
• Josh Rosenfeld – Vice President, Legal Services, QuisLex
• Robin Snasdell – Managing Director, Consilio
• Aaron Van Nice – Director of Legal Operations, Baxter Healthcare and Member, Law Department Operations Survey Advisory Board

Download the report or register for the webinar.

 

 

As the top lawyer for the Chicago Cubs, Lydia Wahlke spends most of her time protecting and enforcing the team’s brand, but she still gets to be a fan of the new World Series champions, according to an interview published in Bloomberg’s Big Law Business.

She spent four years at Miramax Films as a video editor and field producer before deciding to take the LSAT on a whim. That led to law school and then being hired as a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in her home town of Chicago. Then in 2010 she joined the Cubs organization.

“One of the greatest challenges we have is also one of our greatest assets: our brand,” she told Bloomberg’s Casey Sullivan. “We have needed to find the right path to protecting and enforcing our brand, while allowing our fans to celebrate being fans and celebrate their love of the team. That can be challenging because we are 146 years old and it’s a really complex brand that has come about in many ways, including organically from fans celebrating the team. You have to find that dividing line between fighting people and protecting your licenses and protecting your brand long-term, but you don’t want to take the fun out of it. That can be deciding whether or not to enforce our mark.”

Read the Bloomberg article.