Office of Foreign Assets Controls Considers Many Factors in Determining Egregiousness of Violations If your company is involved with importing products overseas, it’s especially important to stay ahead of federal regulations regarding shipments to sanctioned countries and regimes and to avoid...

Mitigate Third-Party Supply-Chain Risks with Planning, Calm & Creativity Just scan the headlines about food recalls and you will never eat again. Read the reports posted on foodsafetynews.com, a website backed by — guess who? — a well-respected attorney who specializes in representing...

U.S. Tensions With Iran Require Stricter Controls From Exporters To Remain In Compliance As it navigates a post-9/11 world and continues to engage enemies abroad, and as tensions escalate with Iran, the United States government is more focused than ever on export enforcement. Companies - especially...

Indemnification Agreements: Who Benefits From Your Coverage? Samantha Drake Shifting financial liability through contractual apportionment of risk is nothing new. But issues such as the scope of indemnity, choice of law and naming additional insureds adds so many potential wrinkles to an already...

With Growth Comes Risk for the Mobile Banking Industry Mobile banking is a growth industry in both domestic and international markets. Mobile banking is expected to grow in conjunction with the growth of the smartphone user demographic. In the United States, the number of smartphone users nationwide...

'America Invents’ Act Brings About Major Changes To U.S. Patent Law Dylan McGuire The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (H.R. 1249), approved by the Senate on Sept. 9, 2011, makes fundamental changes in the way patents are filed and handled in the United States. Corporate attorneys will...

The U.S. Debt Debate: Sitting Idle While Government Slashes and Reforms Is Unwise The first round of political chicken over the debt ceiling limit may be over, but the fight is certain to flare up again as the 12-member congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, commonly called the...

Cross-Border M&A: In-House Counsel Urged to Know the Territory The role in-house counsel at private companies plays in an international merger acquisition goes far beyond drafting and reviewing documents. Responsibilities include preparing for the transaction, due diligence, structuring the deal...

How the RFP is Being Used by Legal Departments to Drive Efficiency In an era of increasing regulatory scrutiny, compliance concerns rank as one of the top priorities for in-house counsel these days. However, according to the 2010 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey Report, controlling outside...

Business Contracting in a Virtual World—Is There a Difference? Traditional contracts between business partners usually include a mutual agreement and understanding of the terms and conditions of the business arrangement. Most of the time the agreements are written, printed and signed in ink...

The CFPB: Consumer Savior or a Toy Without Batteries? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) might have been a household name by now. It might have been, depending on who you talk to, the defender of every misinformed consumer in America, or the surest path to a new round of bank failures...

Private International M&A: Climate Improves But IP, Tax and Enforcement Trends Can Bring Cloudy Skies The climate for private international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) may be more positive than it has been in recent years, but counsel still need to be sensitive to intellectual property...

Earthquake in Japan: The Global Insurance Impact The latest damage report for the earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan could potentially reach $300 billion, making the catastrophe the world’s costliest natural disaster ever recorded. At latest count almost 50,000 buildings...

Companies Must Plan for the Internet’s New Top-Level Domain Names Companies that want to take advantage of the forthcoming top-level domain name system need to start planning and budgeting for it now, because the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is set to launch the...

Conducting Business and Law on “The Cloud”—Does it Compute? Card catalogs, dusty law books and visions of bespectacled librarians updating pocket parts have perpetuated the not-so-secret stereotype of the legal industry’s aversion to technology. However, a December 2010 survey...

Succeeding in China—What Are the Chances? There is an old axiom to doing business in China, “Reaching an acceptable agreement to do anything … is not an end,” so says Mike Saxson, author of An America’s Guide to Doing Business in China. Murphy’s Law certainly seems...

Disclosure in M&A: When Is it the Smart Call? Courts have said it over and over again in one form or another: a corporation involved in a merger or an acquisition is not required to disclose a fact merely because a reasonable investor would very much like to know that fact. It’s a virtual...

Keeping Sourcing Contracts Out of Court Outsourcing agreements aren’t new; they’ve been in vogue in America since Washington invited Prussian soldiers to train his army at Valley Forge. And it’s a safe bet that litigation over outsourcing agreements—all manner of sourcing contracts...

Legal Process Outsourcing: Success Reliant on Ethics and Quality A recent ALM Legal Intelligence Survey of 324 legal departments showed 85 percent of general counsels are evaluating, are planning to use or are using legal process outsourcing. If you are one of them, your success rests on whether you...