In this FRONT piece, Joe Calve, Editor and Co-Founder of CCBJ discusses his quick thoughts on a number of pieces from the In-House Ops Newsletter.
Privilege Case Causes Concern . . . Adam Shaw, a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner, writing for Bloomberg Law, worries that protecting privileged communications may get much harder in the not-too-distant future. “For the first time in 40 years, in In re Grand Jury, the US Supreme Court will set the standard for when legal and business communications are covered by attorney-client privilege, which is central to the everyday work of in-house counsel. “Corporate counsel play significant legal and business roles and regularly create communications that contain both legal and business advice. It would be burdensome and futile to try and keep those roles and purposes separate.”
SEC Ratchets Up Enforcement . . . In this piece from TheCorporateCounsel.net, Dave Lynn, a partner with Morrison Foerster, looks at the SEC’s 2022 enforcement activity. “[I]t should come as no surprise that overall enforcement activity at the agency was up in the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2022,” writes Lynn, noting that the agency’s 760 enforcement actions – a 9 percent increase over the prior year – included 462 new actions, 129 actions against issuers delinquent in their filings, and 169 follow-on administrative proceedings to bar or suspend individuals from certain functions in the securities markets.
When Tech, What Tech, Why Tech . . . In this piece from the Law Society Gazette of England and Wales, Mike McGlinchey, head of client consulting at Pinsent Masons Vario, Glasgow, discusses legal tech in a very practical way, noting that the growth of tech is sprouting new problems as the number and variety of products becomes overwhelming and the perception that technology is always the answer takes hold. To wrestle tech issues to the ground, McGlinchey suggests grouping them by focus area (e.g., knowledge management, risk and compliance, contracting, spend management) and try color coding to show the capabilities you have, the capabilities you need, and the benefits to be gained.”
Teaming Up for Diversity . . . Onit, which provides enterprise workflow solutions, and JusticeBid, a minority-owned diversity analytics and outside counsel selection provider, have joined forces in a strategic technology alliance to provide tools to improve the diversity of outside counsel and other vendors. The idea is to provide clients with a better understanding of their diversity climate and help them find new diverse options using JusticeBid's outside counsel selection platform. This, say the folks from Onit and JusticeBid, can significantly save in-house time and money.
ESG: Today’s Boardroom Hot Potato? . . . In a recent BDO survey of 250 public company directors, well over half of respondents said ESG oversight is the lookout of the Nominating and Governance Committee, while a mere 13% said they have a separate ESG Committee. According to TheCorporateCounsel,net, this means that other standing board committees increasingly find ESG landing on their plates – whether that makes sense or not.
Automatic Writing . . . Can tech transform legal writing? Absolutely, says Ross Guberman, founder of Legal Writing Pro, which helps attorneys and judges write more effectively, and the developer of BriefCatch, a legal editing software tool. He elaborates in an interview with the ABA Journal. After years running legal writing workshops, Guberman’s clients convinced him to automate his writing tips and techniques. That led Guberman to develop BriefCatch, which attempts to walk the line between quality and efficiency in legal writing by using tech to scan an entire document and applying 12,000 rules to it in just seconds.
Ignoring Legal Reforms . . . In this piece, Above the Law digs into fundamental reforms to the structure of the legal profession that we should be, but are not, talking about, including very positive developments in two western states, Arizona and Utah, which both instituted new rules permitting non-lawyer ownership of legal practices. Unfortunately, Patrice explains, nobody seems to care. “Protectionism is a pernicious beast,” Patrice says, “but there must be other states ready to admit that enough is enough and open the door to reform. Right?” Maybe not.
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Published January 26, 2023.
