By Lee Matthews and Matt Kivlin / Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions

When you order a meal at a restaurant, there’s a menu and a waiter to provide information, service and, if something goes wrong, accountability. It’s a pretty simple system, but it works. What happens when someone on the business side wants to order up something from the company’s legal team? It’s not always so easy. And that’s the issue that Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions wants to address. Lee Matthews, the new ventures strategy director, and Matt Kivlin, a senior director of product management growth markets, sat down to talk about their approach. The interview has been edited for style and length.Continue Reading I’ll Have a Contract with Those Fries: How one firm is trying to advance the delivery of in-house legal services

By Joe Calve, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

It sounds like a bad science fiction movie. The people of planet Earth are, as usual, blissfully unprepared for the alien invasion. Spindly, big-headed creatures – legions of them – emerge from their improbable flying machines. They are nothing like us. What are their intentions? Are they friend or foe? How will we communicate? Can we work together in peace with this job-hopping, oversharing, disloyal, entitled, itinerant, social media-addicted alien hoard?Continue Reading Backstory: The Millennial Invasion

By David Hechler, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

The Civil Justice Playbook sometimes cribs its best material from the Criminal Justice Playbook. What follows is a prime example.

In early February, the fraud section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division posted a seven-page document that nobody seemed to notice. It’s called Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs [https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/page/file/937501/download] [or bit.ly/2lEphmk], and it’s no wonder it glided under the radar. DOJ posted 89 press releases on its site in February, but there wasn’t one about this. (Maybe the authors should have asked the president to tweet about it.)Continue Reading Civil Justice Playbook: DOJ’s Missed Guidance:Corporate compliance programs would do well to take a long look

By Trisha Anderson, Inventus LLC

According to the U.S. Census, there are over 83 million millennials. They make up over a quarter of the nation’s population. The growth of this demographic has had an inevitable impact on the demographics of the workforce. By the year 2020, millennials will account for 46 percent of all employees.Continue Reading Millennials Are Leading—Is Your Company Following?: A new generation of employees is setting the pace for modern communication

By Charlie Platt, iDiscovery Solutions

Like many, I attended LegalTech Jan. 31 – Feb. 2 and enjoyed catching up with old friends while seeing new, emerging technologies. Did you see the car forensics kit being offered by Berla? That was pretty cool and something I am definitely going to keep an eye on. One of the things I always enjoy is the post-LegalTech articles. Everyone talking about what they saw, what caught their eye, and where they think the legal technology world is heading. I was really looking this year for anything related to the internet of things (IoT), especially with Alexa making the news recently as an eyewitness to murder. Of course, there’s also the pacemaker that recently provided critical evidence in an arson investigation, and Fitbits are becoming notorious for impugning eyewitness accounts. Our devices aren’t only spying on us; they’re turning state’s evidence!Continue Reading The Ethical Hacker: Field Notes: Leveraging IoT Data Isn’t a Budget Killer

By Reese Arrowsmith, Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)

Intro: Reese Arrowsmith, who heads legal operations at Campbell Soup Company, is the inaugural chair of the legal operations membership section of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC). He spoke with us about his new role at ACC, the growth he’s seen in the field of legal operations and where he thinks it’s going next. His comments have been edited for style and length.Continue Reading ACC Is All In on Legal Operations: The association’s first chair of its ops section explains why

By Rees Morrison, Altman Weil, Inc.

The Roman god Janus looked both ways at once. That’s an apt metaphor for the divergence in how lawyers look at the use of data in management decisions. Some lawyers look askance at data being used to augment decisions; others look with favor on it. The more clearly that lawyers understand the conflicting bases for their own views and those of their colleagues, the more adroitly they will deal with data in decisions.Continue Reading A Metrics Conundrum: What Would Janus Do?: Lawyers are sometimes torn when considering how much to rely on data

By Candice Lang, AlixPartners LLP

Properly managing the personally identifiable information (PII) of employees and customers has become a primary concern for corporate counsel and risk managers. It’s no wonder given the massive fines regulators are dishing out. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for misrepresenting the information it collects on its users. More recently, the Federal Communications Commission slapped a $25 million fine on AT&T stemming from the company’s lax internal data security practices that allowed the Social Security numbers of more than 200,000 customers to be accessed and sold to criminal organizations.Continue Reading Managing Privacy Risks in E-Discovery Data Collection and Processing: Understanding data privacy regulations for personally identifiable information

By Yvette McGee Brown, Jones Day

Introduction: Yvette McGee Brown, a native of Columbus, Ohio, has had a varied career. She’s been a common pleas court judge, she ran the child abuse and behavioral health division of a children’s hospital, she made a run for lieutenant governor of Ohio, she’s served on the Ohio Supreme Court, and now she is a litigator at Jones Day. Given the diversity of her career, it seems like poetic justice that she serves as Partner-in-Charge of Diversity, Inclusion and Advancement at the firm. Below, she discusses her career and her role in promoting diversity in the profession, at Jones Day and beyond. Her remarks have been edited for length and style.Continue Reading Definitively Driving Diversity: Exposing students to law firm life early can make all the difference

By Stephanie Mullette, Robert E. Bostrom, National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), Abercrombie & Fitch

Introduction: As the role of general counsel has evolved, they are increasingly called upon to provide corporate boards with advice on company strategy and business operations. This has led the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) to launch a new initiative, the Strategic-Asset GC, designed to help boards fulfill their mission of creating long-term corporate value. Stephanie Mullette, NACD’s Director of Corporate Solutions, and Robert E. Bostrom, previously a lawyer at the Federal Reserve of New York who became a partner at Winston & Strawn, SNR Denton and Greenberg Traurig, and general counsel of NatWest Bancorp, Freddie Mac and, currently, Abercrombie & Fitch, discuss below the initiative and what it takes to be a Strategic-Asset GC. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.Continue Reading GC Outlook: Clear and Stormy: In a crisis, it’s easy to contribute. The challenge is when it’s calm.