New England Biz Law Update

Increased staffing of in-house legal departments and less work for outside counsel can be expected over the next year, according to a recent survey. Altman Weil, Inc. reports that 49 percent of the chief legal officers participating in its 2008 ...

Lawyers across the country are peeking at hidden “metadata” in electronic documents, and state ethics boards are all over the map on whether that practice is permitted. “There have been an increasing number of opinions on the metadata issue just ...

Law firms are increasingly turning to client interviews as a marketing and client retention tool. “During the last two years, there’s been a big change,” said Mozhgan Mizban, partner at The Zeughauser Group, a San Francisco-based legal consulting firm. “People ...

The latest wave of Vioxx rulings appears to have dashed any lingering plaintiffs’ hopes as the pain-killer litigation winds down. And the decisions – especially one from the New Jersey Appellate Division – may make it harder to pursue other ...

The use of trademarks sold as “keywords” by Google and other search engines to trigger “sponsored links” on the side of a search page continues to be a hot button issue for any business with a website. The dispute is ...

The meteoric rise of the green building industry seems like a feel-good tale suited for the Disney Channel. Builders, contractors and tenants all want to be part of projects that are energy efficient. Owners are finding that green buildings are ...

Companies who want to do work for the federal government may soon have to do some mouse-clicking on the Internet first to make sure there are no illegal workers on their payrolls. A proposed rule that could potentially affect hundreds ...

A top Justice Department official told lawmakers earlier this month the controversial “McNulty Memo” would soon be a thing of the past. The memo – which authorizes federal prosecutors to offer favorable terms to corporate criminal defendants in exchange for ...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently gave a big weapon to employees when it ruled that a Civil War era statute – 42 U.S.C. §1981 – encompasses retaliation claims related to workplace discriminatory animus. Interestingly, the statute itself does not even ...

“She never gives in. She just changes her mind.” – Billy Joel The specter of over-regulation, onerous reporting requirements, and the implementation of Sarbanes Oxley, including SOX Section 404 (concerning internal financial controls), have often been cited as inducing flight ...