New England Biz Law Update

Newspapers these days are full of stories about reduced profits, job losses, and cost cutting by large and small employers. The most recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 80,000 jobs disappeared in March, the third consecutive ...

Conducting an intellectual property audit is an important business process. It can provide information to a potential investor or acquirer or licensee of a company about the company’s IP positions and risks. More specifically, it can insure that a company’s ...

The 9/11 terrorist attack and extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina show that a company’s normal operations can be suddenly and unexpectedly delayed or halted for extended periods of time. 3Com Corporation in Marlborough, Mass., faced such a situation ...

The job of corporate counsel is never easy, but sometimes the difficulties approach nightmarish proportions. This article examines the interplay of moral and legal ethics revealed in the recent federal prosecution of Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (Chiquita) for authorizing payments ...

Despite several months of economic doldrums, the brisk pace of in-house hiring continues unabated, partly because the costs of expanding legal staffs look increasingly attractive compared to rising outside counsel costs.

In-house lawyers working in Massachusetts but licensed elsewhere will have to register and pay a registration fee annually to the Board of Bar Overseers under a new ethics rule adopted by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

Characterizing a company’s e-discovery violations as “monumental,” a federal judge in California recently imposed $8.5 million in sanctions, yet again demonstrating that in-house counsel must actively assess efforts by their companies to produce requested electronic documents.

Business law practitioners in the Worcester, Mass. area are hoping for one major change to the state's business litigation session – the expansion of the court's jurisdiction to their city, the second largest in New England after Boston.

A number of pending cases in New England and before the U.S. Supreme Court could potentially have a significant impact on businesses in our region.

All in all, joint-defense agreements help level the playing field when addressing SEC investigations and securities enforcement proceedings and prosecutions. However, members of the groups that employ these agreements must be mindful of their limitations that could lead to the loss of protection of the attorney-client privilege or potential disqualification of counsel.