David Brown, president of Thomson Reuters IP Solutions, took a few moments out on his recent trip to Beijing to share his thoughts on global growth in the patent and trademark industry.
In this podcast, he discusses how law firms are capitalizing on these growth opportunities, especially in China and Korea, to develop new clients and retain market share, and how Thomson Reuters is supporting their patent research needs through the new combined offering of Westlaw Patents + Thomson Innovation.
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There are many places to turn for compelling, fictional stories that have the law or legal issues at the core. Movies, television and books bring these tales to life.
Many of them challenge our thinking. Many of them provide legal lessons for real life. I had a chance recently to learn more about the story behind a work of fiction that does that – published by West.
Yes, fiction.
Rediscovering Lone Pine is from Andrew F. Popper, a professor at American University, Washington College of Law. West just published the award-winning novel (it won a 2005 Maryland Writers’ Association Prize for Mainstream Fiction).
For Popper, his novel is central to what he says every law student and lawyer needs to develop – the ability to tell a story.
“We all, in the end, are storytellers and we have to decide how to do that succinctly and how we capture our audience and figure out and adjust for the interests of people we represent,” Popper told me. “I think it is the challenge of every lawyer, in fact everybody involved generally in the legal system, to figure out how one goes about telling an effective story.”
So what is Rediscovering Lone Pine about? Well, it tracks childhood friends through their youth, teenage years, law school and into their first years in practice.
The themes involve providing counsel to a close friend and the struggle to maintain independent, professional legal judgment; the competency of a defendant and the Vietnam War veteran experience; and the impact of troubled family situations on children.
But it all begins with the disappearance of a boy in the deep woods of New York.
Are you hooked? (more…)
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What are successful firms doing to gain new customers, retain their current clients and leverage more from their business in the current economic climate?
A recent Hubbard One quarterly Pulse of the Industry survey asked law firm marketers these questions. And while the findings acknowledged many challenges ahead for legal marketing professionals, nearly all respondents shared a positive outlook for the future and underscored the importance of technology for continued business development success.
Jeanne Hammerstrom, chief marketing officer at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Arnoff LLP, and the recent co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association annual conference, shared her thoughts in this Westcast podcast on the state of the industry and discussed how she is approaching these challenges today through technology.
“Where firms used to spend millions on events, brochures, trade shows, newsletters and advertising to acquire and develop relationships, many legal marketers are changing their strategic focus,” said Preston McKenzie, vice president and general manager of Hubbard One. “Many of our customers are turning inward and utilizing technology solutions to manage their firms’ existing relationships with customers and prospects, allowing them to do more with fewer staff resources.”
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Drunk driving laws vary. From the blood alcohol level limits meant to keep impaired drivers off the roads to the punishments for those convicted of driving drunk for a first or multiple offense, the amount of legal work and litigation that can come out of a drunk driving case can be overwhelming for an attorney.
As people across the United States prepare for the 4th of July holiday, many states and cities are planning to beef up their law enforcement to look for drivers suspected of being under the influence of alcohol.
The legal and societal implications of the decision to drive drunk are significant. If arrested, you’ll need an attorney who is abreast of recent decisions related to the motivation for traffic stops and arrests, the validity of breath tests and field sobriety tests, and who also has experience in addressing the legal issues of DUI/DWI in court.
One of the main issues remains the administration of the breath test and how those results play out in court.
“Your basic three-part approach for the traditional scientific predicate is that the officer needs to know what they’re doing, the test is capable of giving the type of result that they want, and that the test was then conducted properly,” said Flem K. Whited III, a noted drunk driving defense attorney and West author based in Daytona Beach, Florida.
I talked with Whited in this Westcast podcast about some of the trends in drunk driving cases.
Whited is a founder of the National College for DUI Defense. He’s also the author of the Drinking/Driving Law Letter , Drinking/Driving Litigation: Criminal and Civil and Drinking/Driving Litigation: Criminal and Civil Notebook, all published by West.
Whited says the advent of new breath test machines and enhanced penalties that go along with DUI cases have led to more litigation. Clients facing the loss of their driver’s license for ten years or more are challenging the breath test procedures and equipment.
“You’re seeing a lot of efforts now to get inside the breath test machines and wanting to take them apart and subject them to independent analysis,” Whited said.
Hear more from Whited in our podcast with him and see the list of Whited resources, as well as other notable West state-specific and national drink driving titles, on this page.
Posted by Kevin Hunt in:
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When describing Black’s Law Dictionary, Bryan Garner refers to it simply as “the law dictionary of record.”
To him, that says it all. And it represents the amount of time and work that goes in to keeping Black’s in its respected position among scholars, judges, lawyers and law students.
“It is the most widely used legal dictionary in the world and it has been that since Henry Campbell Black wrote the first edition in 1891,” says Garner, the editor-in-chief of Black’s. “When I took it over in the 7th Edition we – a team of scholars and I – rewrote it and re-researched it. I’ve tried very hard over the 7th, 8th and now 9th Editions to deepen the scholarship and make it just as reliable a reference work as we can have.”
The new edition of Black’s, the 9th – published by West – contains more than 45,000 terms, including 2,500 new entries than the 8th. In addition to the new terms, more than 15,000 entries now cite the date when they were first used in English-language contexts, especially in judicial opinions.
Garner says the work to find new terms for Black’s is extensive and requires a lot of reading, by a lot of people.
“The way to acquire new terminology for any dictionary is to have a reading program and I have a small army of readers, volunteer readers, who help supply me with potential new terms for Black’s from books, judicial opinions, law review articles and more,” he says.
Garner, who operates LawProse in Dallas, enlists his team to help him research and write the definitions for the dictionary once he’s alerted to new terminology, as well as to review and edit the older terms.
Garner leans heavily on more than 200 legal scholars and legal professionals from around the world. (Find out more about that process in this Westcast audio podcast).
A would-be lawyer’s first link to all the hard work that goes into Black’s Law Dictionary begins in law school. Garner says “if you’re a law student and you’re trying to read a casebook or prepare to give an accurate answer in class or for an exam, you need to know precisely what a term means.”
He adds, “when you become a lawyer, if you’re making an argument in court, you want to be able to cite a reliable reference work. Black’s is the only dictionary ever to have been used as the exclusive basis for a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and Black’s is cited by the Supreme Court just about every term and by federal appellate courts and state supreme courts week in and week out.”
Garner says the 9th Edition meets his standard for honoring the legacy of Henry Campbell Black.
“He was a wonderful scholar and I’ve tried to carry on that tradition,” says Garner. “Black’s Law Dictionary is not merely a collection of what courts have said. It’s not a regurgitation of judicial definitions. We on the Black’s team view it as more of a primary source and we are as lexicographers giving it our best shot at defining the terms as well as possible to really bring it to a new level of scholarship with every edition.” (Watch a video interview with Garner).
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The Hildebrandt Peer Monitor Economic Index (PMI) fell slightly to a reading of 40 in Q1 2009, essentially flat to the previous quarter, a result of soft law firm demand and rate conditions, weighed against aggressive measures taken by firms to cut costs.
In the first quarter, law firm demand continued the sharp decline noted in the previous quarter. It remains to be seen whether some signs of relative strength late in the quarter represent a potential bottoming or merely a blip in the downward trend. Meanwhile, rates grew at the slowest rate in the last several years.
Hildebrandt Vice President Lisa Smith and I discuss the PMI report in this Westcast podcast (Runs 9:18).
In addition, Lisa and I will conduct a virtual seminar on June 15 to provide a mid-year PMI economic update and discuss actions that will help firms emerge from the downturn in a stronger competitive position. You can register here.
Mark Medice
Program Director
Hildebrandt Peer Monitor
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The practice of law in the People’s Republic of China can be a challenge for any attorney working on behalf of companies doing business with the Chinese.
China, now the world’s third-largest economy and the recipient of more foreign investment each year than any other country, can be a bit intimidating. Its business laws and the practice of deal-making have long been a source of confusion or mystery.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I recently talked with Owen D. Nee Jr., of counsel with Jones Day, for a Westcast podcast (Listen to the audio).
Nee told me the failure of many joint ventures is linked to basic misunderstandings of the deal-making process, which too often occur because the investor or its counsel fail to study the applicable legal ground rules.
Nee wrote the new Shareholder Agreements and Joint Ventures in China from West, and co-authored Mergers and Acquisitions in China with Jingzhou Tao, partner at Jones Day.
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Timed for release this week from the LMA Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, the latest Westcast podcast features a discussion on legal marketing with someone who certainly knows the impact marketing can have on a law firm’s success.
Hubbard One named Deborah Roth Grabein, director of marketing at Andrews Kurth LLP, as its Marketing Professional of the Year in the 2009 Hubbard One Excellence in Legal Marketing Awards.
Roth Grabein has more than 25 years of experience in the legal industry. By leveraging leading marketing and business development technologies, she has built an impressive track record of working with her firm’s attorneys to develop and retain clients.
One of Grabein’s recent accomplishments was the implementation of an enterprise relationship management (ERM) system that reviews existing data sources to uncover valuable information about the firm’s network of relationships with clients and prospective clients. The initiative was delivered on time, on budget and has surpassed expectations, due in large part to Deborah Roth Grabein’s leadership, her team, and her partnership with other firm leaders.
Listen to the Westcast podcast with Deborah Roth Grabein.
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The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed David Kris as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Kris is the co-author of National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, published by West.
His confirmation yesterday is the subject of this article on Law.com.
Kris spent the last six years as senior vice president and deputy general counsel at Time Warner. From 2000 to 2003, he was associate deputy attorney general. In that role, his unclassified responsibilities included supervising the government’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
To hear some of his insight on national security, listen to this Westcast podcast.
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Attorney – and West author – Careen Shannon recently paid a visit to the headquarters of the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters to help get the word out about a new book.
Shannon, along with Austin Fragomen and Daniel Montalvo, wrote the State Immigration Employment Compliance Handbook.
Shannon is with Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy. She also is an adjunct professor at at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
In this video interview, she told us there’s a real need for attorneys and businesses to pay closer attention to state immigration laws and the consequences of violating them:
Shannon, along with Fragomen and Montalvo, also is featured in this Westcast audio podcast, discussing the reason for the rise in state immigration laws and the challenges for abiding by them.
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Thomson Reuters, Legal, President & CEO Peter Warwick offered his perspective on the company’s approach to the current economic reality in a panel discussion, “Adapting and Thriving in a Challenging Economy”, at the Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference.
The launch of WestlawNext brings a significant advancement in the way professional legal research is done.
Andrew F. Popper, a professor at American University, Washington College of Law, talks about his award-winning novel “Rediscovering Lone Pine.”
