The Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation group at Bingham McCutchen LLP put together a nice summary of the steps employers need to take in light of the changes to COBRA under the the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They dive into many of the details of who is eligible for the subsidy and … Read more »
Proclamation 7750, Diplomatic Immunity and Corruption
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act only applies to those making bribes. It does not apply to the recipients of bribes. Since the recipient must be a “foreign official” you run into the issue of “diplomatic immunity.” The concept is that officials should only be held accountable to the laws in their home state. We would … Read more »
Extranets for Law Firm and Client Collaboration – Moving Beyond Email
One of the problems with collaboration between law firms and their clients is that too much of it happens through email. Email is fast, allows you to send the same message to lots of people, and is inexpensive. But it is still a set of messages sent back and forth, much like the Pony Express. … Read more »
Bits and Pieces on Compliance
Here are a few stories and items that caught my eye this week, but I have not had time to build-out to a full post: The FCPA Enforcement Report of the First Quarter of 2009 from The FCPA Blog We count seven Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions since the start of the year, including … Read more »
Diplomatic Immunity, Corruption and Parking Tickets
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act only applies to those making bribes. It does not apply to the recipients of bribes. Since the recipient must be a “foreign official” you run into the issue of “diplomatic immunity.” Richard Cassin looked at one of the approaches to taking actions against the kleptocrats in Proclamation 7750 Unwrapped on … Read more »
Compliance Policies and Email
You should take a look at your computer use and email policies to see how they address three recent cases involving email in the workplace. The first case involves unauthorized acces: (Van Alstyne v. Electronic Scriptorium, Inc.). The president of the company had broken into an employee’s personal AOL email account. The employee had occasionally … Read more »
Conducting Investigations of Wrongful Workplace Conduct
Roy A. Ginsburg, of Dorsey & Whitney LLP and the blog Quirky Employment Questions, penned an article in the May/June 2008 edition of Business Law Today: Conducting Investigations of Wrongful Workplace Conduct. The first issue he tackles is whether employees are obligated to participate in a company investigation. He says the answer is yes. That … Read more »
FCPA Compliance & Investigative Due Diligence
EthicsPoint sponsored a webinar with Ellen Zimiles of Daylight Forensic and Advisory LLC, talking about FCPA Compliance & Investigative Due Diligence. This presentation is supposed to provide an overview of current FCPA trends and highlight elements to implement an effective FCPA compliance policy. These are my notes. Ellen started off with a summary of current … Read more »
Martindale- Hubbell Connected Opens Its Barn Door
LexisNexis has opened the doors to Martindale-Hubbell Connected, their professional networking site for lawyers. The site has been in beta for many months and still has the beta label. If you are a lawyer you can now register and join the online community: http://www.martindale.com/connected. If you are not a lawyer, you are not invited yet. … Read more »
Does It Pay To Be Good?
Compliance is not just about complying with legal requirements. After all, legal requirements are just a minimum standard of behavior. Your company can (and probably should) operate at a higher level. Sustainability and ethically produced products are are areas that some companies are spending extra resources. At some point you run into a business ethics … Read more »