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Insights & Trends

Corporate counsel collection

Stay current with this timely collection of best practices, peer profiles, and trending topics for corporate counsel

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Top ten ways to know it’s time to employ technology in your legal department

time to employ technology

Small but growing legal departments often struggle to define exactly when it's time for them to invest in technology for their legal department

Using numbers (and analytics) to your advantage

David Houlihant

Whether in-house lawyers like it or not, numbers and analytics have become a big part of your job when it comes to managing your legal department and its limited resources and budget.

The “New Order” of GCS and the law: Comments on the results of the 2015 general counsel excellence report

The recent 2015 General Counsel Excellence Report touched on yesteryear lawyer stereotypes and was a reminder of how times have changed.

Thomson Reuters survey of legal departments highlights in-sourcing, outside partners

survey

Eighty-four percent of legal departments outsource half or less of their company’s legal work to outside counsel, with the average department using outside counsel for only 26 percent of their work.

From the outside in: Making the case to bring more work in-house

bring  more work inhouse

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and shrinking legal department budgets, one solution soon became clear: retain business-savvy attorneys to handle work in-house rather than hire outside counsel.

Overwhelmed by your workload? Outside counsel is not your only option

overwhelmed by workload

Is your company looking at an abundance of work that it can’t address quickly with the department’s current resources? This common challenge is often addressed by either retaining additional outside counsel or increasing the department’s headcount — both of which may be expensive roads to travel.

Planting the seeds of diversity with Eric de los Santos

Eric de los Santos

From a Filipino-American community along the sandy beaches of Hawaii, to ivy-covered halls of Brown University on the East Coast, to a global roll-out of his growing legal department, Eric de los Santos has been planting the seeds of diversity and inclusion all along the way.

Power to the people

Suzanne Hackett

It's often easy to forget that the most powerful weapon in any legal arsenal is the people who make up the team. If your team is running on all cylinders, there's no stopping you

Law 3.0: The challenges facing legal leadership

Leadership is something that is inherently good in most every situation, but really difficult to define – you often "know it when you see it," but can't reduce the concept into an easy description that's helpful in situations requiring it or for those who want to cultivate it.

Leading change in your legal department

leading change

While the legal industry may be slower to adopt change than other industries, change has come to it nonetheless. The types and degree of change appear to be accelerating, leaving many both on the legal department side and law firm side scrambling to keep up.

Trends in privacy and data security

Jeffrey Neuburger

Recognizing the need to ensure that privacy and data security protections remain effective as data collection capabilities evolve, lawmakers throughout the world have been vigilant on the regulatory and enforcement fronts.

New EU high court ruling may end all data transfers to U.S.

Cybersecurity

The primary legal mechanism relied upon by thousands of European and American companies to easily move data between the two regions is gone.

Flying into the cloud without falling: Understanding the intersection between data privacy laws and cloud computing solutions

Electronic Person

If a corporation using the cloud to store electronic information becomes embroiled in an investigation or litigation, the corporation must consider relevant laws before gathering, reviewing, and producing responsive electronic data.

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail woes, and their lessons for your organization

Critics contend that Hillary Clinton's use of the private e-mail system for official communications raised important network security and government transparency concerns.

Despite hacker threats, information security officers remain undervalued

In a world of highly visible and catastrophic data security breaches, we would expect that corporate chief information security officers (CISOs) would be valued and respected in their organizations.

Breaches in the boardroom: What directors and officers can do to reuce the risk of personal liability for data security breaches

Corporate directors and officers may increasingly be targets of shareholder derivative lawsuits in the wake of the surge of regulatory actions and private litigation around data breaches.

Are you ready for cyber attack?

money

With more than 70% of global organizations expecting to experience a breach in the next 3 years, companies of all sizes must prepare a cyber security strategy to respond to evolving cyber attacks. Take the quiz to see if your company is ready.

The ten factors which most impact heads of AML

money

Times have changed, laws have changed, tolerance has evaporated, money is the life blood of crime and governments want to stem the flow of money laundering.

Top 10 things to know about due diligence for corporate counsel

Computer With Lock

The increasingly complex demands of our changing regulatory environment alongside the effects of globalization have elevated the importance of understanding due diligence for general counsel to new heights.

Enhanced due diligence – best ways of meeting the requirements and managing business risk

electronic lock

The due diligence process has long been an integral part of the risk landscape. In the last few years, even more emphasis has been placed on proper information gathering and screening processes.

The evolving customer due diligence landscape

legal scale

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed in 1989 as an intergovernmental body designed to prevent, detect and deter money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

Know your customer to protect your organization’s exposure to money laundering

Money laundering has become so rampant and woven into the fabric of our world’s economy that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated in 2009 that criminal proceeds amount to approximately 3.6 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

Confluence of legal, risk and compliance – best practices and insights

Risk and Compliance heads spoke to the changing regulatory landscape and what the current financial and compliance challenges mean for them practically.

What GCs and CCOs can learn from each other

Tom Kim

While the GC oversees the legal affairs of the company and is seen at times as the company's legal advocate, the CCO has specific responsibility for the company's compliance program, responsible not only for helping to prevent misconduct but also for identifying misconduct that may have occurred.

Avoiding the cost of noncompliance: A discussion with Michael Shepard

Alan Gutterman

From harm to company reputation to actual financial fines levied, recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions confirm that noncompliance can be incredibly costly.

Is it material? The top 10 questions to ask when determining

A data breach as a trigger for a litigation hold

The most common and most important question for any securities practitioner is the cornerstone question, "Is it material?"

Top ten guidelines for your law firms

Patrick Johnson

Putting in place and reviewing law firm guidelines on a yearly basis can seem like a tedious process for in-house counsel. However, having these guidelines in place can clarify the company-law firm relationship and save a great deal of time.

Top ten tips in drafting and negotiating international contracts

Man and woman standing by table

Contracts for international transactions contain a mix of the familiar and the exotic. If you ignore the familiar, you end up reinventing the wheel. If you ignore the exotic, you might be in for unpleasant surprises.

Top ten steps for effective contract management

Alan Gutterman

Contracting is one of the most crucial activities in determining the success of any business arrangement.

Top Ten Tips Out of the Gates for New In-house Counsel

Alan Gutterman

We've all heard that law school doesn't always prepare new attorneys for the challenges of practice in the "real world." What does a new corporate counsel need to know?

Data insecurities and other issues: Results of the latest Consero General Counsel survey

Nearly half of all general counsel feel that their company is not ready for a cyber security breach, while others wrestle with writing a social media policy

Managing employee relations in the digital environment

Companies must develop policies, practices, and procedures that support effective management of employee use of advanced communications technologies in the workplace

Top ten Bitcoin issues: World peace, wild west, or both?

Bitcoin

Top questions and issues regarding Bitcoin, from its beginning, how it is acquired, federal and state regulators' opinions

New GC? Top 10 ways to succeed in your new role

Key actions a GC can take in the first few months on the job to ensure success

Do your employees have the keys to the kingdom?

Make sure that document discovery against your individual employees doesn't serve as an entrée into your corporate files.

New GC? Making a successful transition in your first 6 months

The first months in any new role have a tremendous effect on how an employee is perceived.

5 unbreakable rules for successfully managing litigation counsel

5 unbreakable rules

Corporate counsel must budget and control litigation expense, oversee the litigation, and take steps to ensure objectives are met.

Tips for protecting your organization's data

Tips for protecting data

Both the bad guys and the good guys are aggressively pursuing the data of individuals and organizations. Legal counsel play a critical role in applying basic protective measures.

Top 10 tips for leveraging cutting-edge legal research technology

Top 10 tips for leveraging cutting-edge

Immediate and easy steps to control research costs, drive productivity, and connect legal research to value-based billing.

Armed with numbers, GCs can make their case

Armed with numbers

Sales departments have revenue numbers and marketers have click-throughs. What numbers should a legal department be watching?

Metrics that every legal department should track: 1. Spend to budget

Metrics

In consulting with hundreds of legal departments, one surprise is how few have an accurate idea of how much they spend on outside counsel. What other business unit can get away with this?

Data licensing: Taking into account data ownership and use

Data licensing

Understand the range of agreements that implicate the protection and treatment of data and related intellectual property rights.

5 things your IT department wants you to know about data security

know about data security

Amid the data breaches at large companies, plus the knowledge that Big Brother really has been watching through the NSA, every corporate counsel ought to be concerned.

Managing the information privacy obligations of your organization

Managing the information privacy obligations

Governments are placing more constraints on the collection and use of consumers' personal information. It's likely that your organization already faces privacy compliance obligations.

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