Trial is war and the best weapon in your arsenal should be your discovery depositions. Effective depositions are the foundation of a successful case. Cases can be won or lost at the deposition stage. A deposition is not simply a conversation. It’s a complicated inquiry and at times an interrogation that – with meticulous preparation and thoughtful strategizing - can elicit answers that will increase the likelihood of a desirable result for your case. Depositions are often the most useful discovery mechanism to help you win your case or push your case to settle. Defending depositions also takes strategic thinking to ensure that your client is prepared and equipped to navigate difficult questions. It is critically important to properly prepare your client and to also be prepared to properly intervene when necessary to protect your client and avoid improper questioning and harassment by your opponent. Seasoned trial attorney Joshua Van Naarden will examine the best strategies that will help you maximize the efficacy of your depositions. Watch this webcast and become armed and ready to win your next case with tried and true strategies that will help you take effective depositions and obtain compelling testimony for use at trial.

Indemnification, limitation of liability, and representations and warranties provisions are the foremost clauses parties entering into a commercial agreement use to limit exposure to risk. The clarity of these clauses contained in the contract, along with the interplay between each, become critical should disputes between the contracting parties arise and the disagreement be taken to court. As counsel, it is essential you know how to negotiate, draft, and revise these clauses to avoid boilerplate or ambiguous language that can lead to costly litigation.

Ensuring a business legacy can be a complicated undertaking. Family owners often focus on operational matters while ignoring succession planning. At other times, succession planning may be mired in family strife to the detriment of operational success. In fact, inadequate business and succession planning is one of the leading causes of family business failures.
Taxes add yet another level of complexity for family businesses. Compensating owners for services, rent of owners' property, and various other arrangements can trip up business owners. Business succession plans can affect estate tax values. Deferred or uncertain estate tax liability can cause a family business to lose its line of credit, accelerate a long-term loan, or negatively affect a surety bond.
This highly rated program addresses these issues and offers practical tips for counseling clients on business succession and tax challenges. Attended by sophisticated legal practitioners and industry professionals nationwide, this annual program is a go-to resource for family businesses seeking prosperity beyond current owners or business-savvy exit solutions.

Force majeure, often thought of as a catch-all boilerplate clause that provides a panacea to protect against the risk of non-performance, has increasingly become the focus of an emerging litigious battleground in the post-COVID landscape. Resolution of disputes often hinges on how courts construe force majeure clauses, regularly relying on how narrowly or broadly these provisions were drafted. What have we learned based on recent court decisions and how should force majeure provisions be drafted moving forward to get the best results for your clients?

Shareholders agreements delineate the rules and terms of the business relationship, as well as expectations for all parties involved, to ensure that shareholders receive the rights promised in return for investment in a business. Although even the best drafted shareholders agreement won’t prevent all disputes from happening, a clearly and thoughtfully prepared shareholders agreement will minimize the likelihood of costly, time-consuming litigation between shareholders.

In times of economic uncertainty, being able to understand and analyze financial statements is often critical for advising your clients on transactions, disputes, employment, and finance. Knowing where to look and what to look for in a balance sheet, an income statement, or a statement of cash flow can give you the knowledge to negotiate a better deal or stop a bad deal before it even begins.

The decision to open your own practice–whether it’s a solo or small firm–may be an easy one to make. But the process to get there and be successful requires a bit more. Forethought and advance planning is necessary to improve your start-up practice experience because most lawyers lack business and information technology expertise. Join Hong Dao, Director of Practice Management Assistance Program from the Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund and Kim Le of Source Law for a 90-minute CLE on what lawyers should think about and plan for when opening a solo practice or a small firm.

The success or failure of your case may rely on a battle of the experts. If your expert is admitted you are one step closer to winning but if your expert is excluded it may mean you’ve already lost. In many instances, an expert challenge might be the most significant issue in your case. Expert challenges are rife with pitfalls and are further complicated by the evolving Daubert/Frye caselaw that governs the admissibility of opinions and expert testimony. Register for this program on expert challenges and learn how to put yourself in the best position to win the battle of the experts! By utilizing the best practices and the strategies you’ll develop with this webcast you’ll improve your chances of winning the expert witness battle. In addition, the skills you’ll perfect during this evergreen program will strengthen your presentation of expert testimony and foster more successful trial outcomes.

Drafting a legal opinion requires specialized due diligence and legal research, often while under a tight time constraint as the clock ticks and the pressure builds to get the deal finalized. Careful consideration must be given that the information detailed in the legal opinion letter is not only in accordance with the sometimes vague rules of customary practice, but also does not render an opinion that will mislead the recipient.

Your fee agreements and engagement letters are designed to establish a “meeting of the minds” between the lawyer and client -- on both the scope of the work to be performed and the ground rules each party will follow. And since you had contract law as a 1L, you must know how to draft a simple client representation agreement, right? Wrong! This one-hour program explores the top ten commonly made mistakes on fee agreements and engagement letters, and provides clear instructions on how to fix them. It will also review the clauses that should be in every fee agreement versus those that are used more selectively. If you want to improve your client-lawyer relationships and protect your firm from future fee disputes, this program is not to be missed