My friend and nationally-known ethics maven Eric Cooperstein is chairing a 1/2 day seminar on Friday, December 4, 2009 at the Minnesota CLE center in Minneapolis. More details and registration here.
My session will feature videos and audience participation. Topics will include dealing with clients who lie, and collecting fees. Since my clients never lie and always [...]
Legal Ethics is not Oxymoronic!
My famous brother-in-law
This has nothing to do with employment law, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to highlight this article from the Chicago Tribune about my brother-in-law, Dave Taiclet (a/k/a The Candy Man).
I am sure that the fact that I am not mentioned as one of his sources of inspiration was merely an editing oversight by [...]
Sexual Favoritism
I ran across this interesting post in the Workplace Prof Blog on sexual favoritism. It reminded me that the EEOC treats sexual favoritism as a subset of sexual harassment. According to the EEOC, sexual favoritism can constitute a Title VII violation, but only if it is “widespread.” The EEOC Policy Guidance on Employer Liability under Title VII [...]
Is the internet merely a wicked temptation for employees?
Great article in Sunday’s NYT Magazine by Peggy Orenstein about the lures of the internet. Comparing herself to Ulysses lashing himself to his ship’s mast to avoid succumbing to the Siren’s song, she looks for ways to free herself from the internet. Her thesis: knowledge and information are two different things.
“The trap is more of a [...]
Minnesota lawyers are a bargain!
Seth Leventhal, in his excellent blog Minnesota Litigator, points out what many of us have known for a long time: Minnesota lawyers are a “bargain” compared to their brethern from Chicago and the coasts. While the blended hourly rate charged by Minnesota lawyers representing one of the Petters defendants was $309, their Chicago counterparts were [...]
More on Flu Preparation
I don’t like the headline of this article in today’s Star Tribune because it suggests that we lawyers are getting rich on other people’s illnesses, but its worth pointing out because it quotes my friend Beth Papacek, and because it revisits a topic I wrote about a month ago here.
Non-Compete Agreements and Trade Secrets: where there’s smoke there’s fire?
A federal Court of Appeals in Boston yesterday affirmed a jury’s decision awarding $1.1 million against an employee and his new employer for breaching a non-competition agreement and misappropriating trade secrets. The decision should serve as a reminder of the risks involved in these types of situations.
First, some background. Astro-Med and Nihon Kohden are rivals in [...]
Mindfulness in work
Very interesting article here on practicing mindfulness in medicine. The concept of being mindful – being present in the moment purposefully and without judgment – has obvious implications for all of us who are bombarded by voicemails, emails, etc., etc.
As one of the surgeons quoted in the article put it, “Time in the operating room is [...]
Tax advice for employment lawyers and their clients
Over the weekend I read a terrific article in Litigation, the Journal of the ABA’s Section of Litigation, called “Top Ten Tax Tenants for Trial Lawyers.“ (No, I usually don’t spend my weekends reading about tax policy, but I was out-of-town and had the magazine with me.) The author, Robert W. Wood of Wood & [...]
Should social networking be allowed at work? Most CIO’s say no.
According to a survey from Robert Half Technology, 54 percent of chief information officers interviewed recently said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work. The survey included more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees.
CIOs were asked, “Which of [...]
