Resource Library

The 2012 amendments to the American Bar Association Rules amended the comments to Rule 1.1 to say: "A lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology." What does the change mean for attorneys in general and specifically in-house counsel? What technology is out there that in-house counsel can use to more efficiently run their departments? This interactive roundtable session will focus not only on the potential ethical implications of technology but on how the legal department can work with the IT manager or chief information officer to cooperatively achieve results in the areas of litigation holds, data security, review of IT-related contracts, document retention, and internal investigations. Faculty will provide guidance on explaining the contract terms and legal risks to your IT department and answer important questions like: What questions do I need to ask my IT department to properly evaluate the risks and contract terms? What happens if the product or service does not perform as expected? The panel will also examine everything from apps that improve efficiency to document management system tools that help with litigation.

A trade secret’s existence and value are challenged by increased outsourcing, subcontracting, and employee mobility. This panel will discuss tips and tactics for establishing and protecting trade secrets in the context of a remote and mobile workforce, including hiring and firing concerns and risks and strategies associated with telecommuters, bring-your-own-device policies, and secure data access and management.

Based on responses from over 1,300 in-house counsel in 41 countries, the ACC Chief Legal Officer 2016 Survey offers legal departments, law firms, and other legal industry partners insight on the practices, trends and changes in the role of the CLO. The 2016 report examines how CLOs source work in-house, to law firms and legal service providers. In addition, the report highlights plans and historical trends in hiring, staffing and budgeting. Notable findings include what keeps CLOs up at night, how they view the future of departmental budgets and staffing, where they plan to grow their departments, and where data breaches and regulatory issues have the greatest impact.

ACC Chief Legal Officer (CLO) 2016 Survey - Executive Summary

Discuss provisions in cloud computing agreements that address sensitive issues, such as data ownership and protection, privacy and intellectual property. Obtain tips on negotiating liabilities and risks in cloud computing contracts — what provisions SaaS providers commonly include in agreements, provisions large customers typically request, which are negotiable and how to mitigate the impact of terms you cannot change.

The scope of due diligence is expanding in response to the focus on data privacy and security. Find out what you need to know about privacy (through the information lifecycle) for due diligence in mergers and acquisitions and the barriers to collecting and reviewing private information in due diligence. Examine due diligence requests (privacy policies, guidelines, data classifications, security controls) and get suggestions on which members of your due diligence team need to be involved in this effort. Examine limits to gathering, processing and reviewing all of the information you would like to see as you make your decision on whether the deal presents (too much) risk.

While there are some that may argue that the essence of being a lawyer has changed little over the past century, there is no doubt that the traditional system and way of delivering legal services is being challenged.

This is an outline of issues that challenge law departments when dealing with M&A transactions.

A sampling of surveys our in-house research team has tabulated.

A sampling of surveys from ACC's research team.