04 March 2010
Legislation, Privacy issues, Tj's Blog, workplace policies
This morning there are a couple of interesting privacy stories that serve as good reminders of best practices in this area. The first arises in connection with a union arbitration over discipline meted out to an employee of a municipal liquor store in Paynesville, Minnesota. As you know, these types of arbitrations usually depend largely [...]
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audio recordings, credit checks
27 January 2010
Tj's Blog
This article from yesterday’s NY Times on the continued importance of business travel contains some great advice from Don Lents, chairman of the Bryan Cave firm:
“You should never engage in a disagreement electronically. If you are going to disagree with somebody, you certainly don’t want to do it by e-mail, and if possible you don’t [...]
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11 January 2010
Tj's Blog, humor
Reading this motion – To compel defense counsel to wear shoes without holes at trial – has got me thinking about all sorts of other motions that I’ve overlooked in the past. To wit:
Motion to require counsel to use mouthwash;
Motion to prohibit counsel from wearing that hideous tie (you know which one I mean);
Motion to [...]
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humor
05 January 2010
Tj's Blog
U.S. marshals last week seized a black 1992 corvette at the home of the president of Brocon Petroleum after the company failed to pay $7,500 in back wages to a former employee. The back wages were the result of a consent judgment filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to resolve a [...]
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19 December 2009
Tj's Blog
A recent survey suggests that pay for corporate General Counsel will be flat at best this year, and that GCs are working harder because they have lost internal resources.
The silver lining is that for some in-house lawyers deferred compensation is higher. As companies’ bottom lines increase, deferred comp should grown. As one consultant described it: “What you [...]
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13 December 2009
Tj's Blog
Authors and publishers are arguingover who owns the rights to publish electronic versions of backlist book titles. In the old days, before digital books were ever thought possible, the standard contract between author and publisher gave publishers the right to all works “in book form.” The question now is whether e-books are “in book form.”
In [...]
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e-books, publishing
13 December 2009
Discrimination and Harassment, Interesting articles, Tj's Blog
This week’s New York Times Magazine contains its annual Year in Ideas, which always makes for fascinating reading.
Two of the articles touched on employment law topics. The first, called “The Myth of the Deficient Older Worker”, describes a study by three economists who pitted “seniors” (those over 50) against “juniors” (those under 30) in three decision-making [...]
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cognitive illiberalism
11 December 2009
Tj's Blog
Attention lawyers and Judges in Florida: You can no longer be Facebook friends. As reported in the NYT, the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee decided that when judges “friend” lawyers who may appear before them, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest since “it reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer ‘friends’ [...]
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10 December 2009
Tj's Blog
Faxes are outdated!
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09 December 2009
Tj's Blog
Minnesota CLE is planning a really impressive-looking CLE for the experienced employment law practitioner on January 29, 2010 in Minneapolis. It includes sessions on the intersection between employment law and
executive compensation
employee benefits
OSHA
bankruptcy
taxation of settlements and awards, and
intellectual property.
It will also include insights from corporate attorneys on contract negotiation, data privacy, and handling government enforcement.
(It is true [...]
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CLE