One Way to Deal With Corruption
May 29, 2007 | Filed Under Criminal Liability, In the News
The New York Times reports that China’s former top food and drug regulator has been found guilty of accepting bribes.
The sentence: death.
While possibly intended to signal how seriously the Chinese government takes the problem of adulterated food or counterfeit drugs, it may send a mixed message to the global marketplace.
The World Bank Ex-GC Speaks
May 21, 2007 | Filed Under Investigations, Governance, In the News
Corporate Counsel’s David Hechler offers a fascinating glimpse into a GC’s view of events in the news. Mr. Hechler reports on the legal maneuverings behind Paul Wolfowitz’s fall from grace at the World Bank, with insights from Roberto Dañino, the bank’s former GC. This account provides a welcome counterpoint to some opinion pieces, such as this one from the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Wolfowitz, as Wired GC readers undoubtedly know, resigned last week as president of the World Bank over concerns about his handling of the transfer of his girlfriend from the bank to the State Department. As the president of anything, you normally don’t want any personal ethical problem in the news, let alone one that involves your “girlfriend.”
Anyway, at various times in the review of this delicate situation, Mr. Wolfowitz reportedly consulted Mr. Dañino, utilized personal counsel, and then went to outside counsel when Mr. Dañino was “conflicted.” These actions didn’t make sense to the then-GC:
Dañino says he’s baffled by this decision. “How [could Wolfowitz] make a call about conflicting out the lawyer of the bank, who happened to have also given advice that he didn’t like?” Also, he adds, the rationale in the adviser’s memo made no sense. Not only was Wolfowitz represented by his own lawyers, “the general counsel is not the personal lawyer of the president,” Dañino says. “The general counsel is the lawyer for the institution.”
Mr. Dañino was allegedly not shown the terms of the employment contract for Mr. Wolfowitz’s girlfriend that may have contained terms more generous than those approved by the bank’s ethics committee. Experienced GCs know that outcomes can sometimes be “managed” by corporate personnel based upon the extent of disclosure of key documents and whether direct contact is allowed with key actors in real time.
My favorite remark from Mr. Dañino:
“I tell my children all the time: When you make a mistake, it’s not so much the mistake you make [that counts], but how you react to your mistake…”
General Counsel rarely speak with the press; rarer still are comments about the inside doings of events in the public spotlight. Two cheers for Mr. Dañino for allowing a look behind the veil; three cheers for Mr. Hechler for going well beneath the surface in his excellent and timely reporting.
Legal Hiring: Half-and-Half
April 30, 2007 | Filed Under Law Firm Trends, Legal Resources, In the News
Robert Half Legal reports that nearly 50% of “law offices” will add staff; and the other half will “stay the same.” The survey came from 300 attorneys among the 1,000 largest law firms and corporations. Only 2% reported staff reductions.
The leading areas of hiring gains according to the survey:
- Litigation 30%
- Ethics and corporate governance 22%
- Intellectual property 18%
- Real estate 11%
Since litigation is the biggest growth area, it tells me that the survey is skewed towards a law firm sample. Most corporations don’t staff litigation in-house. The executive director of Robert Half Legal, Charles Volkert, seems to acknowledge this:
“Litigation occurs in every industry and is a practice area that continually produces a significant volume of work. Because case demands vary, however, law firms often supplement their full-time staff with project professionals to meet peak workloads.”
This is why combining law firms and corporate legal departments in the same survey sample renders the results less informative for me. In many law firms, for example, the better question is whether you will see a net gain in staff (we know a high percentage of associates eventully leave).
Adding to ethics and corporate governance resources are more a bit more plausible, especially in financial companies with public reporting obligations.
One good bit of news for law firms with a global footprint from Mr. Volkert:
“As companies expand into overseas markets and enter into partnerships on a global scale, they’ll look to outside counsel for advice on operating within a foreign locale’s regulatory framework as well as for guidance on how to minimize risk while making the most of new business opportunities.”
Recent examples of this include Tyco/Eversheds and DLA Piper/Linde. These arrangements are examples of law firms and corporate legal departments working together to deliver services for companies that want to remain competitive globally.
From this perspective, “adding staff” is an attribute of the old economy; “partnering” and “risk-sharing” are tactics of the new economy.
Those are issues a bit harder to survey; this one’s not half bad…
The Wired GC: Naming Names
March 17, 2007 | Filed Under Law 2.0, In the News
It’s time to leave the days of an anonymous Wired GC behind.
The new venture I’ve been working on for the past few months is emerging from stealth mode.
It’s Lexvista Partners, an advisory firm focused on improving corporate legal perfomance.
A bit of the philosophy behind Lexvista Partners is outlined here. I’m very excited to work with people who see the law as an important way to achieve business goals, and want to help lawyers be at their best in the process.
It may not be all about Law 2.0, but it is definitely John 2.0.
A few in the know have asked: what about the Wired GC if you’re not a GC? It’s actually full speed ahead, and I’m looking forward to exploring some issues that might have been off-limits before. Consider this new phase The Ex-Files.
So during the start of March Madness, I’ll settle for a bit of today’s Luck of the Irish.
Microsoft vs. Google: Waging War In-House Style
March 6, 2007 | Filed Under Compliance, In the News
Microsoft takes up the banner of copyright today against Google. It’s lead warrior is none other than one of its in-house lawyers, Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin.
The New York Times reports that Mr. Rubin will give a speech today to the Association of American Publishers, and draw a bead on arch-nemesis Google:
“Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and I.P.O.s,” said Mr. Rubin, who oversees copyright and trade-secret law.
Google responded last night, before Mr. Rubin uttered a word:
David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president for corporate development and its chief legal officer, said in response that Google worked with more than 10,000 publishing partners to make books searchable online and had recently added the BBC and N.B.A. as YouTube video partners.
“We do this by complying with international copyright laws,” Mr. Drummond said, “and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content.”
This copyright-fight by Microsoft against Google was carefully choreographed. The Financial Times seems to have broke the story, since it just happened to have an article by Mr. Rubin dated today on its web site last night (that link only works for FT subscribers). One excerpt:
Google, for example, says its book search technology will one day make available a copy of every book ever published in a vast online database of indexed content. A worthy goal, to be sure. But in pursuit of that goal, Google has taken a unilateralist approach by contending that it is entitled to grab books off library shelves and copy them wholesale without obtaining the permission of the publishers and authors who own the copyrights in those works.
It’s certainly a sign of the pressure that Microsoft feels from Google that it takes a public-service position before a publishers association. While one focus of Mr. Rubin is Google’s book indexing project, certainly YouTube is on its mind and in its cross-hairs.
The text of Mr. Rubin’s speech is here; the related Microsoft PressPass interview with him is here (where he mentions Microsoft’s own Live Search Books initiative).
In fact, this appears to me to be a sign that Microsoft has decided to use copyright as a legal weapon in this one battle as part of its larger war against Google. It’s almost as if Microsoft is taking on the entire business model of Google.
I bet Google already has a war room (or war-wiki?) going on this, as evidenced by the quick response from its CLO, Mr. Drummond. Perhaps ace Google copyright counsel William Patry will take this up on his copyright blog.
Game on! Maybe Microsoft will release “Halo 4 — Copyright Wars” for the XBox 360.
Search
Powered By
Links
| ||||
 | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
