No matter how well you think your company runs its safety program, sooner or later you will get a frantic phone call: OSHA inspectors are at the door. Senior management gets pretty jittery when OSHA inspectors arrive unannounced. Your best defense is a good offense, including knowing your procedural rights before the inspectors are on the doorstep.
The articles in this Out In Front include: Going Global: IT Systems Legal Health Check Part 2, Shoveling Smoke: The Flip Side of Client Relations, Business Ethics: Carrots & Sticks and Contractual Cogitator: The Sweet and Sour of a Deal in Steel.
Compliance is difficult enough when a company operates in just one country. But difficulties become much greater when a company operates in many. Here are some resources for creating effective global compliance programs that support your company's business goals.
Discusses whether in-house counsel may move to a competitor company and the requirements of ethical compliance.
Sure, we all know that compliance departments provide oversight, coordination, and strategic direction to regulatory compliance activities throughout the company. But what if you've never had one before, and need to get something organized, right away? The author gives tips and insights into setting up a brand-new department.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board recently issued its long-anticipated rules on auditor independence issues and the relationship with the company's independent auditor. The authors give tips on how you can keep your audit committee up-to-date and on the straight and narrow.
Don't pay big bucks to outside counsel for a corporate code of conduct. Use one of the many available in ACC's Virtual LibrarySM, like this one.
Conflict of interest issues can be extremely difficult to solve because they often occur in highly personal contexts, raise complicated questions of law and ethics, and do not allow for clear-cut answers. The best way to handle such conflict of interest issues is proactively, and this Toolkit gives the basics on how it's done.
Another process server. Someone else is suing your company. How tiresome. Let's see the complaint. Wait -isn't that our counsel who appears to be the plaintiff's counsel? Is that possible? Is it ethical? Here comes the head of litigation trotting in with their retainer letter-containing an advance waiver. Now you remember. The law firm did discuss this with you. But the question remains: Is it enforceable?
In-house counsel know the high price for bungled e-discovery. But complying with e-discovery requests can just about put some companies into the poorhouse. Use this guide to proactively reduce e-discovery costs.