Nominations Sought for ACC's Board of Directors - ACC and Altman Weil Release Results of 2003 Chief Legal Officer Survey - Have an Interest in Judicial Elections? - More Valuable Insights from the 2003 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey - New to In-house: The Running Man - Shoveling Smoke: Professional Standards: Beyond Conduct Rules
Every penny that you spend on outside counsel reduces your organization's revenue. So come along, Grasshopper, as we learn the lessons of kung frugal--getting more for your money from outside counsel.
Many in-house counsel are deciding that an ideal relationship with outside counsel involves a long-lasting commitment to partnership and collaboration, to understanding each other's interests and goals, to open communication and to pursuing new strategies. Read this article and learn how to establish outside counsel partnerships based on trust.
Much of the litigation that global corporations face involves rapidly changing areas of the law that could affect shareholder earnings in a major way. In a high-stakes matter, therefore, your team of outside lawyers should include someone who is an expert at guiding a case through the appellate process.
When you are trying to figure out whether to go to outside counsel for a legal opinion or to recommend that your company obtain UCC insurance, you need to consider several factors: what constitutes UCC insurance, comparison of typical legal opinions and UCC insurance coverage, multijurisdictional issues under the UCC, and cases requiring UCC insurance.
This article takes you through each stage of the comprehensive outside counsel selection process. It identifies issues and recommends certain courses of action that legal departments should include in their planning for each stage of the selection process.
Your outside counsel has just called you in a panic. He has the company's outside auditor on hold on his other line. The auditor is demanding the law firm's evaluation of a very large and difficult lawsuit now pending against the company. The auditor won't accept the formulation from the ABA-AICPA treaty that allows counsel to decline to provide an evaluation unless the lawyer concludes that liability is either "probable" or "remote." The auditor claims that the lawyers can no longer "hide behind" the "treaty" and must provide a complete analysis because of Sarbanes-Oxley. You know that the law firm has a very negative evaluation of the case, which will result in a big reserve and a large hit to earnings if disclosed to the auditor. But you believe that it is too early to get a good estimate. So you tell the law firm auditor to "stick to the treaty." Your outside lawyer asks, "Have you read the Commission's new Rule 13b2-2 regulation"? No? Well, you had better do so.
Failure to discover that your company may have had insurance coverage could cost your company. You must make it clear who is responsible for seeking insurance coverage and dealing with your insurance coverage issues: in-house counsel, outside defense counsel, or outside coverage counsel. The best place to allocate those responsibilities is in your company's engagement letters and guidelines for working with outside counsel. Thus, in selecting a law firm to defend a case, it is critical to determine whether that firm has sufficient insurance coverage experience. If it does not, it is advisable to retain separate coverage counsel early on.
In the midst of all of the corporate scandals that have erupted since the Enron bankruptcy filing last year and in light of the new requirements established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, what do in-house counsel of public companies need to do both to protect their clients (the corporation, its officers, employees, and shareholders) and themselves? Read this article to get a better grasp of the scope of the problem and use the five-point compliance plan to help plan a solution.
This article offers practical tips on how to "flip the coin," suggesting that in-house counsel help outside counsel become genuinely more client-focused and thus better able to deliver value, not just time and effort.