That’s about 60 new regulatory announcements every working day, and up 16% from 2011.

The study says the problem will only grow worse in 2012.  Major portions of the Dodd-Frank Act take effect later this year.  And while the SEC and FSA get most of the attention, the major regulators in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Hong Kong combined accounted for just 20 percent of overall activity last year.

A copy of the report can be downloaded here.

Online retailing is an increasingly popular way for consumers to do their shopping, and is expected to hit record levels this year.  But online shopping websites usually display detailed terms and conditions regarding subjects such as canceling orders, return of merchandise, resolving disputes and privacy protections for customer information.

According to the FindLaw.com survey, fifty-four percent of Americans say they only quickly read or skim, or completely ignore those legal agreements when they shop online.

To learn more, check out the full news release.

With the rapid growth surrounding LPOs in the legal industry, the panel addressed numerous topics and issues ranging from: how each company addresses the relationship with the LPO differently to the best way to get started and how to make it work; how LPOs keep their employees and motivate them; and that law firms will work with LPOs, but they need to be directed by the client. 

As LPOs have become an accepted solution to large and small corporate legal departments, the trends discussed focused on benchmarking the service, how the process works and if the service is right for you. 

In a video recap, Perla discusses the three main takeaways, current trends and what he wanted the audience to know.

A new report from Thomson Reuters Governance, Risk & Compliance says the volume of M&A deals fell 10 percent globally in the third quarter.  Most of the drop was among high-value deals, reflecting uncertain and volatile financial markets.

The Thomson Reuters Accelus “M&A Hostility Index” has been rising over the past two quarters, suggesting that deals are becoming both more contentious and more legally complex.

The telecommunications sector had a particularly slow quarter, down 49 percent compared to last year’s volumes.  Deal volumes in manufacturing, real estate and technology have remained  mostly steady year-over-year.

Private equity deals declined in line with the overall market.

Globally, M&A volume activity has slowed in a number of countries, including the U.S., India and Spain, while China, Japan, Canada and Russia saw their deal volume activity increase over the last four quarters.

A copy of the full report can be downloaded here

Each video highlights industry issues and market trends related to Hubbard One’s customers’ needs, including:

• The Mobile Marketer
• The Evolution of Legal Marketing
• Bridging the Gap between Marketing & IT
• Real World Social Media
• Collaborating with Clients through SharePoint
• Collaboration Culture

Today, they are releasing the 9th video in the series which features an interview with Jennifer Skiver, Client Relations Manager at Latham & Watkins. This episode looks at the changing client landscape and explores innovative ways firms can enhance the client experience.

You can watch all of the Insight videos on the Hubbard One website.

Most corporations surveyed have one or more of the following potential security issues involving information provided to board members, including:

- Unencrypted board communications   (85%)
- Board documents stored on personal computers at home or work   ( 79%)
- Board documents stored on personal mobile devices   (75%)
(e.g., iPad, laptop, smartphone, etc.)
- Documents sent to board members via personal, non-commercial email addresses  (73%)
- Board documents accessible via wi-fi or unsecured networks    (71%)
- Have reported computer, mobile devices, or sensitive company documents    (10%)
lost, stolen or left in public places

A detailed copy of the report can be downloaded here

Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, along with six industry leaders, including CIOs from prominent law firms, discussed this question and more in an energizing panel session on Wednesday morning: “[R]evolution: Industry Leaders Discuss Law2020 Hot Topics”.

The format was modeled after the popular TEDTalks seen on Ted.com and each of the panelists gave a short 9-minute presentation before opening up the floor for questions.

Highlights included a humorous presentation by George Rudoy, founder & CEO of Integrated Legal Technology, LLC on the numerous faux pas that one can inadvertently commit while conducting business in the new global environment.

Panelists also discussed the use of mobile technology, including iPads, and how firms are working to incorporate these technologies into their daily operations including providing technology support and allowances to purchase the equipment.

There was also a fair amount of discussion around the “new normal” legal market environment, and one panelist commented that 2008 is when lawyers stopped being a “protected species.” But instead of trying to do more with less, which is unsustainable, panelists encouraged law firms to look for ways to do things differently.

Overall, it was a very lively session with a lot of great discussion. Afterwards, we caught up with Monica Bay and Brian Zeve, consultant to the legal industry and former head of Microsoft’s legal and professional service industry initiative, to learn their takes on the discussion. Check out both videos below:

He started out by defining innovation as any project that is new to you and has an uncertain outcome. With this definition in mind, he talked about how innovation and ongoing operations are inevitably in conflict because one focuses on predictable, repeatable processes while the other is non-routine with unpredictable outcomes.

Chris states that the well-tried and repeatable processes of a company’s ongoing operations make up the performance engine of the organization. These processes allow companies to understand their customers and competition, operate efficiently, and consistently produce results that are on-time and on-budget. Chris acknowledges that all of these things are very good and lead to highly successful and profitable companies, however, this model is not the most conducive to innovation.

He offers three models for innovation:

Model 1: Innovation = ideas + motivation

This model encourages all employees to pursue innovation on their own initiative.
A limiting factor to this model is time – people have to squeeze innovation in, which works well for continuous improvement but not for creating completely new ideas or large-scale change.

Model 2: Innovation = ideas + process

This model treats innovation like any other business process: script it, make it efficient, make it routine.
The limitation to repeat innovation is that you get this year’s version of last year’s product instead of a something totally different.

The third model, which Chris advocates as the only real way to execute high-level innovation projects, is often met with a lot of anxiety and resistance. In order to move past some of this resistance, we must first destroy what he calls the “myth of the innovation man.” This myth involves looking inside an organization for individual heroes. He argues that one person fighting the system doesn’t work.

Model 3: Innovation = ideas + leaders + team + plan

This model is different because it calls for a special kind of team and a special kind of plan. Chris argues that the only way to successfully execute this model is to create a separate, dedicated team. He says that this team should be viewed as building a new company from scratch – new structure, new people, new titles. In order for this to work there needs to be a partnership between the performance engine (on-going operations) and the innovation team.

He states that innovation is an experiment but you need to learn quickly, make predictions, measure results, and make better predictions.

He also acknowledges that implementing the third model is difficult but that the companies who manage to do it successfully will be the ones who will continue to succeed in the future.

Overall, it was a fabulous start to the conference!

Thomson Reuters ProView will allow users to access ProView digital eBooks anywhere, anytime with the advanced features that legal researchers need, including full-text Boolean search, standardized formatting and links to WestlawNext content.

Dan Bennett, senior director, Mobile Technology Strategy, demonstrated the new product at the Thomson Reuters booth Saturday night. View a recap of the demo here.

WestlawNext Patron Access is designed to meet the needs of public library patrons, allowing them to quickly get started and navigate their research with fewer questions.

Stay tuned to Legal Current for a guest post on WestlawNext Patron Access from marketing manager Nancy Wiens, as well as for further coverage of AALL 2011.

Thomson Reuters ProView is the first professional-grade eReader software application, with advanced features such as Boolean full-text search based on the familiar Westlaw search, links to WestlawNext content and automatic content updating.

Thomson Reuters is showing ProView at AALL to get feedback and input from the librarian community. Thomson Reuters ProView will be a free downloadable software application for the iPad and web browsers. It will be available first through our Carswell business in Canada next month, and available to U.S. customers later this year.