Online Legal Advice
September 23, 2005 | Filed Under Technology, New Services
Got a minute? Get an answer.
The New York Times covers the growing area of online advice services.
One of the companies profiled that offers legal services is Ingenio. The page for legal services is here.
Potential clients can see the per-minute charge for legal services and the rating of the attorney. The ratings are in a format similar to those found on eBay.
While many of the offerings are for the needs of individual clients, some could be helpful to smaller businesses, such as this one from a patent agent.
There are also recorded listings on matters of more general interest.
This is clearly an industry in its infancy. But for smaller businesses or the solo GC, why not give it a try? People are buying luxury autos on eBay without ever driving them. Why not find out at $2.99 per minute whether an idea is patentable or whether a potential employee from India would have an immigration problem?
It’s the opposite of the DuPont Legal Model. You don’t want to just converge to a smaller number of law firms. You want a virtual community of people who can give a quick answer on subjects that don’t merit much time.
I’ve spent more money at Starbucks.
The Lawyer Joke as Scholarship
September 21, 2005 | Filed Under In the News, General
How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Professor Marc Galanter (U-Wisconsin and The London School of Economics) is giving a lecture next month entitled “Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture.” He will soon publish a book of the same name.
According to the lecture announcement, Professor Galanter will argue:
… that the increasing reliance on law coexists uneasily with anxiety about the “legalization” of society. And he will explore the tensions between Americans’ deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.
Hard on the heels of Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt’s succinctly-titled book, it is apparently time for scholars to go mainstream. Easy to do when you have tenure.
The lawyer joke has spawned websites; there are stray ones everywhere.
I know some lawyers who find these jokes very aggravating; I see them as more revealing about the teller than the target. Lawyers are one of the few groups left that people feel they can joke about without crossing current norms of propriety.
When someone in my company feels comfortable enough around me to tell a lawyer joke, at least I know that the open-door policy is working.
And then I talk to HR…
(punchline) …How many can you afford?
Tyco and Compliance Training
September 19, 2005 | Filed Under Compliance, In the News
Today’s sentencing of Tyco’s former senior management is a good reminder for companies to review their compliance programs and related training.
IT Business Edge offers 3 questions and answers on challenges involved in compliance training. The answer to question 3 on the interplay between leadership and corporate codes of conduct is instructive:
A good compliance initiative has the leaders managing the process and not the people. If the process is properly managed, the people will actually follow. One may argue that not all will follow, which is true. The reason you need the process is to handle discrepancies, so it’s always about the process. This is communicated through the corporate code of conduct. It sets up consistent expectations so that you don’t have to manage every fine detail of employee behavior.
Corpedia notes 8 best practices in corporate compliance and training. Practice #2 bears upon the leadership issue: setting the proper tone at the top. Former leaders of Tyco, WorldCom and Enron under indictment were probably not seen by key employees as having the proper commitment and respect for compliance. This may even be true for those Tyco employees who weren’t invited to the party.
In my experience practice #5–respecting employees’ time–is also important. One way of doing this is making compliance part of the daily routine and not just some once-a-year training to be endured until the obligatory sign-in sheet passes by.
Update (20 Sept 05): Kozlowski and Swartz are sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Bad news: it’s likely Sing Sing or Attica (not Rikers Island, per a loyal reader), state penitentiaries, not a federal, Martha-type facility. Good news: the state allows parole after 8+ years, likely less than current federal sentencing guidelines would require.
Power Dive
September 16, 2005 | Filed Under In the News
Right idea, but 30 days early.
I previously discussed a likely Northwest Airlines Chapter 11 petition before new bankruptcy rules took effect October 17.
But the apparent speed of filing wasn’t just a new Chapter 11, but a large dose of Chapter K — as in Hurricane Katrina. The New York Times reported yesterday that the rising cost of jet fuel may have been the final staple in the petition, forcing the hand of CEO Douglas Steenland. I still think this was inevitable, but when you start missing aircraft lease payments, you risk having the repo man show up on the tarmac. For some reason that frightens passengers. Delta, in even worse shape, filed the same day.
Former Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune has observed that Northwest and Delta may consolidate operations. This report also describes in a nutshell the sad state of the US airlines industry:
The only U.S. airline that has been consistently profitable in recent years is Southwest, whose stock value exceeds that of all other U.S. carriers combined. The biggest and oldest carriers like Northwest and Delta have high costs and pension liabilities that a young company like Southwest does not have.
Given how Northwest dominates airline service in the Midwest, we now will join much of the rest of the country in flying on bankrupt carriers (United and US Airways are already in the tank).
Something to think about when you are on final approach.
Update (20 Sept 05):A silver lining in this dark cloud? Lawyers get ready to soar.
Jurors Respond to the “Unwritten Policy”
September 14, 2005 | Filed Under Governance, In the News
A verdict stemming from a multiple count indictment is usually handed down in writing.
Earlier this summer, I noted the pending Westar corporate fraud case that involved a defense of an “unwritten policy” allowing family use of corporate aircraft.
A press release from US Attorney Eric Melgren Monday described the verdict that found ex-Westar executives David Wittig and Douglas Lake guilty of conspiring to loot Westar of money and assets. The schemes detailed in the indictment included:
falsifying company records, circumventing internal controls, perverting corporate programs for personal profit, structuring a subsidiary with intent to loot company assets and leave debt behind in the utility for ratepayers, using corporate aircraft for personal business, misusing corporate counsel to assist in removing directors who were critical of management; depleting company assets through lavish spending, making false statements in Director and Officer Annual Questionnaires, making false statements in reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other violations.
The part in bold about misusing counsel to aid in removing critical directors is a new tactic to me. Corporate counsel are not counsel to senior officers.
Arguments from Wittig and Lake that their actions were legal, approved by directors, and disclosed in regulatory filings apparently did not persuade the jury.
Now the focus of the government turns to how much defendants Wittig and Lake should forfeit.
Further details are available from the intrepid Tom Kirkendall.
In a final counterpoint to the “unwritten policy” gambit, AUSA Richard Hathaway stated in his summation that the weeks of trial demonstrated “robbery with a fountain pen.”
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