Select Counsel will present its latest In House Focus CLE program, What GCs Need to Know About Vendor, Customer and Competitor Bankruptcies, on Wednesday, May 9, 2018,  at 9 a.m. PT / 12 ET.

The event is accredited for CLE in most states and is free for in-house counsel.

Ted Storey, former general counsel of Round Table Pizza, will join Tobias Keller and Jane Kim, partners in Keller & Benvenutti LLP, to discuss a range of issues commonly presented to healthy companies when vendors, customers or competitors file bankruptcy cases. These issues include engaging in competitive behaviors, recovering claims and evaluating ongoing credit exposure, and protecting against common motions and actions taken in bankruptcy.

Here are some of the questions that will be answered during the course of the program:

1. In what ways can a competitor’s bankruptcy filing be used to your advantage?

2. What will happen to the IP you’ve licensed when the licensor files for chapter 11?

3. What are the pros and cons to buying assets in bankruptcy?

4. How can you get paid when your customer or licensee files for bankruptcy?

Register for the webinar.

Exterro has published its 2nd Annual Study of Effective Legal Spend Management and made it available for downloading at no charge.

The report discusses how legal departments are allocating spend over the past year and what techniques are most effective in reducing legal spend.

It includes:

• 22 Page comprehensive report to benchmark your legal spend against other leading legal departments
• Analysis of the top techniques to reduce legal spend (22 techniques ranked)
• Expert insight with report key takeaways

Download the report.

NAVEX Global has published the 2018 Ethics & Compliance Hotline & Incident Management Benchmark Report. The report is available for downloading at no charge.

The newly released report shows the number of employee complaints and misconduct reports are rising — and a surprising 44 percent of all reports are substantiated.

However, cases are taking longer than ever to close, NAVEX points out in the report. “When cases take too long to resolve, employees feel unheard and are more likely to report outside your organization, where you miss the opportunity to mitigate risk with an appropriate response. Download the report to compare your compliance program against industry standards and get best practices from the experts to help you encourage internal reporting.”

Download the report.

Conga and Forrester have published a new report titled “Best Practices: Uncover the Full Potential of Your CLM Implementation.” The report on contract lifecycle management can be downloaded from Conga’s website at no charge.

In promoting the report, Conga makes three points:

1. Customers are leaving money on the table by not fully implementing CLM. Fewer than one in five of all CLM customers interviewed captures all the strategic values a CLM implementation can bring.
2.  Engage early with stakeholders and manage their expectations. It’s critical to start working with general counsel and other key stakeholders early when developing a business case. Having a holistic plan that ties benefits to stage and to stakeholder will keep the implementation on track.
3. Have a solid and funded business case that drives the later stages of implementation. More than 70 percent of CLM customers interviewed stopped at stage 2 of the implementation. Having funds, resources, and support enables the latter stages of CLM optimization.

Download the report.

Kim Technologies will present a complimentary webinar, “Automating with a Legal Ops Platform vs Siloed Product Solutions,” on May 3, 2018, beginning at 1 p.m. EDT.

“The benefits of a unified software platform over multiple siloed products are clear,” the company says on its website. “Who wouldn’t want to keep all their data in one place; search and report on anything at the click of a button; provide a seamless user experience across the entire department or organization? Traditionally, this ‘holy grail’ has taken huge amounts of time and money to implement and maintain, and has rarely been an option for Legal. Instead, most law departments and law firms have organically grown a hodge-podge of software siloes that create an obstacle to innovation, efficiency and transparency.”

This webinar will cover:

• Global AI market update
• Preparing for the Age of Data
• Platform vs Product and why it matters
• To code or not to code, that is the question
• Automating workflows, documents and dashboards in hours, with no IT support!
• Q&A session

Register for the webinar.

Bloomberg Tax will present a live event designed to help business owners, tax, finance directors, in-house counsel, bankers and investment professionals including PE & hedge fund managers to learn how employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) can provide more than just an exit strategy. They may be an opportunity for a growing business and its employees, the company says.

The event will be Thursday, May 3, 2018, 2:30-6 p.m., at Bloomberg L.P., 120 Park Avenue, New York 10165.

“New Era of Material Wealth Creation With ESOPs” will look at all the benefits associated with ESOPs, including top performer retention, growing capital, and future planning.

Presenters will move past theory into the practical implementation of an ESOP. Through a case study, thought leaders will explore all of the stages of the process, including crafting the right design, securing employee buy-in, and more, Bloomberg says on its website.

Register for the event.

An article published by Zapproved breaks down the results and explains the benefits of replacing an existing system — or lack thereof — with automated, cloud-based legal hold software.

The article can be downloaded at no charge.

Research results demonstrate a real rate of return on investment generated by automated cloud-based legal hold software, the company says on its website.

“E-discovery is expensive, but the risks of not handling it are even more costly,” Zapproved says on its website. “Many legal teams tend to focus their cost-reduction efforts on later phases of discovery, such as processing and review, overlooking the benefits of optimizing the preservation process. Yet putting in the effort to preserve and collect the right data has a trickle-down effect, saving money and time in every step that follows while minimizing potential spoliation. The question is, just how much can you save with effective preservation?”

Download the article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors recently convened a meeting of Fortune 500 audit and compensation committee chairs to discuss the key issues and challenges the board faces in the selection and use of nonfinancial metrics. A free report on the results of that meeting is available from NACD.

Three key takeaways emerged from the meeting.

• Boards should link nonfinancial metrics to strategic and cultural objectives.
• Audit committees should leverage internal audits to meet the challenge of nonfinancial data quality oversight.
• Compensation committees are focusing on the role nonfinancial metrics play in compensation-plan design and in eventual payouts.

The full report from the meeting includes:

• key questions for boards to ask about nonfinancial metrics
• the four critical roles for internal audit in support of governance over nonfinancial reporting
• special considerations for the compensation committee

Download the report.

Flexera will present a complimentary webinar about the basics of open source licensing, vulnerabilities, trends and expectations for compliance.

The event will be Wednesday, April 18, at noon Central time.

Data shows that most companies are significantly under-counting their use of open source software (OSS), leading to potential legal and security concerns that need to be respected, monitored, and — if needed — resolved. Additionally, your customers are expecting higher levels of compliance. This begs the question, what is your legal team’s role in managing compliance and security vulnerabilities associated with OSS?

Marty Mellican, VP and Associate General Counsel at Flexera, will discuss the need for process and lawful management of OSS. This webinar will cover:

• The basics of intellectual property (IP) law and how open source licenses are built on top of those principles
• The most common licenses, including the GPL, AGPL, BSD, Apache, and MIT to name a few
• How to work effectively and securely with OSS both as a consumer and a creator of OSS
• Trends in OSS license enforcement in the last year
• Expectations for compliance and what compliance looks like
• How GDPR will affect your open source use and management

Register for the webinar.

The Association of Corporate Counsel is conducting the new 2018 Global Compensation Survey — the largest self-reported compensation survey within the in-house counsel profession in the world.

This groundbreaking global study of salaries and total compensation will provide in-house counsel and legal operations professionals with the data they need to benchmark pay and benefits.

Participants who complete the survey will receive 25 percent off the report when published.

Take the survey

More whistleblowers turn directly to the SEC to report complaints of alleged misconduct than to internal reporting systems, reports NAVEX Global. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling further encourages this behavior, so it is critical to evaluate a company’s employee whistleblowing program.

NAVEX will present a complimentary webinar on the subject on Tuesday, April 10, 2018, beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific / 1 p.m. Eastern time.

Participants will hear new insights from the 2018 Ethics & Compliance Hotline & Incident Management Benchmark Report. Experts at Baker McKenzie and NAVEX Global have analyzed the data to show you how to assess your program and improve the odds that an employee will report to you first—giving you critical foresight into potential organizational risk.

Presenters will be Carrie Penman, Chief Compliance Officer and Senior VP, NAVEX Global; and Scott Nelson, Partner, Baker McKenzie LLP.

Register for the webinar.

Exterro has published a complimentary new visual guide, “What AI Is-and Isn’t-In E-Discovery,” that explains where artificial intelligence was, where it is today, and where it’s heading in relation to e-discovery activities.

Artificial intelligence is back in the news as one of the hottest tech topics across multiple industries, and e-discovery is no different, the company says on its website. But with confusion between terms like AI, machine learning, predictive coding, and technology-assisted review all too common, how can e-discovery professionals understand the differences between competing technologies and how to best use them in their day-to-day professional lives?

The guide provides:

• Expert analysis from e-discovery and artificial intelligence thought leaders
• Clear explanations of concepts like AI, TAR, machine learning, and predictive coding
• Practical tips you can use to get the most out of your investment in AI technology

Download the guide.

East Texas trial lawyer Clyde M. Siebman of Siebman, Burg, Phillips & Smith, LLP, recently was honored by Chief Judge Ron Clark of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas based on his years of work benefitting the district.

In a surprise ceremony attended by U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Nowak and local dignitaries, Judge Clark announced that Siebman’s portrait will now hang in the attorney conference rooms at the Paul Brown Federal Courthouse in Sherman.

Siebman is a former law clerk to the late Judge Brown and the founding president of the Eastern District of Texas Bar Association. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and has been attorney of record in hundreds of Eastern District cases.

Chairman of the Eastern District of Texas Bench Bar Conference since 2009, he also has served on the Eastern District’s Local Rules Advisory Committee, Non-Appropriated Fund Committee, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Committees.

In another honor, Siebman was selected as the Dallas/Fort Worth Lawyer of the Year for patent trials in the 2018 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Trial lawyer Courtney Ervin has joined commercial litigation boutique Hicks Thomas LLP, the firm announced.

“Courtney is a highly skilled and effective trial lawyer” said Hicks Thomas co-founder John B. Thomas. “She is an exceptional advocate and has great instincts. Her addition enhances our diversity and positions us to serve our client needs well into the future.”

Ervin was profiled as one of the leading energy litigation lawyers in the U.S. in 2016 by The Legal 500 and has repeatedly earned a place on the Texas Rising Stars list recognizing up-and-coming lawyers, the firm said in a release.

She earned her law degree from the University of Houston Law Center, magna cum laude, and her bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University.

Read details of the announcement.

Zapproved has published “Audit Trail Checklist: Set Yourself Up for Success,” a guide that presents five steps to a defensible legal hold audit process.

The guide can be downloaded from Zapproved’s website at no charge.

“Litigation is inevitable — and all too often, so are accusations of lost, destroyed or withheld evidence,” the company says on its website. “Yet many companies aren’t prepared. They may not have a clear record of when a legal hold was issued or who received it — meaning they have to scramble to put notices together when litigation arises. Out-of-date legacy systems of complicated spreadsheets or confusing email read receipts are expensive, time-consuming and risky.”

Zapproved’s audit trail checklist provides five simple steps to create a customized litigation response plan. It includes an outline of where to start, which is where discovery obligations begin, with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It goes on to discuss tips on assessing your current approach and selecting automated, cloud-based tools based on today’s best technologies. The guide also includes suggestions on how to get a team on board.

Download the guide.

Exterro has published a  comprehensive guide to the e-discovery software purchasing process, which can be downloaded from the company’s website at no charge.

In the guide, three in-house e-discovery experts share their experiences leading e-discovery procurement and implementation projects. Using a series of critical questions that a software purchaser must ask and answer, they explore the steps that should be taken when facing a similar challenge.

The guide includes:

• 6 simplified steps for starting your e-discovery software buying process
• Key insight from 3 in-house legal professionals who have already gone through and refined their buying process
• A product agnostic, purely educational guide for successfully navigating the e-discovery software buying process

Download the guide.

The National Association of Corporate Directors has published an article titled “The Innovation Era’s Implications for Boards,” which available for downloading free of charge.

The article, from NACD Directorship magazine, suggests five steps for boards and executives to become better versed in cutting-edge technologies—including combinations of new technologies—to create totally new business categories. These five steps are summarized below.

1. Create a technology learning plan.
2. Assess advanced technologies and their potential impact on your business.
3. Elevate board skills and competencies.
4. Reconsider which companies might be future competitors.
5. Identify internal and external experts.

Download the article.

The Association of Corporate Counsel has set the agenda for the 2018 ACC Mid-Year Meeting, which will be in Denver April 22-24.

The ACC is promoting two special sessions: “Advanced Ethical Issues in Negotiating and Drafting Contracts” with Clara Ohr, general counsel for East Coast Power & Gas, LLC, and a presentation by Gary Kennedy, former CLO of American Airlines and author of “Twelve Years of Turbulence: The Inside Story of American Airlines’ Battle for Survival.”

Three major components of the meeting will focus on:

• Contracts: Learn advanced drafting and negotiation techniques and tools that drive contract performance, mitigate risk, and meet rapidly changing needs of your organization.
• Mergers and acquisitions: Knowing business—and your company’s business, specifically—will make you an immensely more valuable business partner as your company navigates complex corporate transactions.
• Business training: Business management is the #1 non-legal skill desired by CLOs for their lawyers. Boost your business acumen through academic-taught live and on-demand sessions on key finance, accounting, and emotional intelligence concepts.

Get more information.

Employers are finding that generic harassment policies with one-size-fits-all instructional videos are not addressing key issues, says Audrey Mross, employment partner at Munck Wilson Mandala.

She and her firm offer a training session for managers and supervisors as well as an employee version of the training.

“Using actual examples helps attendees begin to understand where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable behavior,” she says. “I’ve found that this is what triggers an ‘aha’ moment for many, and often individuals will speak up and share their own experiences with their peers in the training session.”

Read the article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors has published its 2018 Governance Outlook and made it available for downloading at no charge.

The report provides perspective on the trends, issues, and risks that will command the board’s attention this year.

“Perhaps the biggest challenge for directors right now is deciding where to focus their attention,” the NACD says on its website. “Both risks and opportunities are proliferating at a bewildering pace. How can boards and directors make the most of their limited time?”

The report includes:

• a summary of directors’ priorities from the 2017–2018 NACD Public Company Governance Survey;
• an assessment of the future of risk management from Grant Thornton LLP;
• a look at the forces driving change in board composition and succession;
• an alert to an often-overlooked liability risk: failing to reveal pertinent information;
• new trends in D&O exposures; and
• insight into workforce disruption, cyber-risk reduction, and other risks.

Download the report.