From the Idaho Women Lawyers website:

Idaho Women Lawyers is pleased to host Governor Butch Otter for lunch on Tuesday, July 13, 2010. Governor Otter is campaigning for re-election for Governor in 2010 and he has agreed to join us for lunch to discuss his candidacy.

Get details here.

by Allison Shields of The Lawyerist

Lawyers who feel overwhelmed by all that needs to be accomplished on a daily basis can become paralyzed and unable to take action. These stress management techniques can help you break out of that paralysis and regain your productivity.

(Read more here.)

By Elie Mystal from abovethelaw.com

In the movie The Untouchables, Sean Connery counsels Kevin Costner: “If you don’t want to get a rotten apple, pick one fresh off the tree.” Apparently, Hewlett-Packard is taking the same advice; instead of hiring in-house attorneys seasoned in Biglaw firms, HP is getting its next crop of legal help directly from the nation’s top law schools.

Read the whole article here.

By Elie Mystal from abovethelaw.com

This story is pretty funny:

No, this isn’t about a lawsuit arising out of the writing of Animal Farm II: Sharks on Retainer — but who knows, my original thought for a post title might be subject to trademark infringement.

More on that later; for now, let’s turn our attention to this delicious product offered by ThinkGeek (which went on sale April 1, 2010):

Read the whole article here: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/06/misadventures-in-trademark-law-faegre-benson-helps-pigs-fight-unicorns/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+abovethelaw+(Above+the+Law)&utm_content=Google+Reader

by Laura Bergus

Many states have adopted rules of professional conduct relating to multijurisdictional practice. These rules provide attorneys leeway in some circumstances when they are acting as lawyers outside of the state where they are licensed to practice.

Read the rest of the article here: http://lawyerist.com/unauthorized-practice-of-law-rules/#more-11207

By Steph Kimbro of lawyerist.com

How do you market a law firm as a provider of unbundled legal services?

Read the whole article here: http://lawyerist.com/marketing-unbundled-legal-services/#more-11089

By Sam Brown, Bernie Thiel and Susan Buddenbaum from legalmarketingreader.com

A recent survey by the Alterra Group found that despite the sour economy, a number of professional services firms actually held their revenue steady or even increased it in the past 12 months. What separates the firms that thrive? Our research found that these more successful companies had distinctly different marketing practices and priorities than those whose revenues declined in the past year. Here’s a summary of the findings.

Read the article here: http://legalmarketingreader.com/marketing-in-a-recession.html

By John O. Cunningham

In a business environment buzzing with a constant stream of e-messaging, one way to demand the attention of your target audience is a good old-fashioned direct mail campaign. Learn how the authority and permanence of “print” might be just the hot new medium for your law firm’s business development plans.

Read the article here: #mce_temp_url#

(From The Idaho Statesman, written by Edward Lotterman)

The Supreme Court cast a unanimous vote in favor of economic sanity this past week, even if news of the oil spill and economic woes in Europe kept the media from paying much attention.
Its 9-0 vote against the National Football League, which had been joined by all other major sports leagues, they demonstrated that for at least one branch of government the idea that government should curb monopolistic abuses is not completely dead.
The case dealt with a specific product sold by the NFL, the right to use its logos and other images in producing caps, T-shirts, and other sports memorabilia sold to fans. The courts said that the league’s decision to award the right to produce such articles to a single vendor was not exempt from U.S. antitrust law. The suit, brought by a memorabilia manufacturer that had produced these products for decades for sundry individual teams but was frozen out by the NFL’s one-supplier policy, has been sent back to a lower court.
While the case dealt with one professional sports product – apparel and souvenirs – the decision has implications for other products, such as the right to televise games and ticket prices for games themselves. It also may bear on what role leagues can play in salary negotiations with players and perhaps even on the power of teams to whipsaw cities into providing publicly funded stadiums.
The economics are clear. Whenever some business or group of businesses is able to exercise monopoly power, economic efficiency suffers.
The public focuses on the fact that consumers have to pay higher prices. Economists focus on the broader waste of resources monopolies entail. When monopolies are free to make output and pricing decisions at will, society as a whole gets fewer goods and services for a given use of resources. This ultimately is far broader than the simple gouging of consumers.
In this case, the NFL was able to extract a hefty fee for the exclusive right to produce memorabilia. Since the winner of the right had extreme monopoly power, it was able to raise prices and recoup its cost. The league gets more money for its member teams and the exclusive producer still can earn higher profits, but the public pays more. And companies that formerly dealt with individual teams saw their business evaporate.
Since 1890, U.S. law has prohibited “combinations in restraint of trade” including mergers or acquisitions that create monopolies or simple collusion between independent firms to fix prices.
Historically, we have done less to curb firms that achieve monopoly power through their own growth than to prevent mergers and overt collusion between independent firms. Sports leagues’ monopoly licensing agreements, such as the one in this case, fall into the last category, and the court was clear in stating that antitrust law applies.
But professional sports is a special case with considerations that don’t apply to oil companies or paving contractors. Competing steel companies that might fix prices don’t have to do business with each other as an inherent part of their normal business.
Subject to limitations imposed by freight costs, steel from one company can be sold anywhere, even in a competitor’s backyard. But most sports teams have local monopolies for live games.
Steel companies have no legal means to keep new competitors from starting up. But established sports leagues have nearly absolute power to control establishment of new teams.
All leagues use this power of excluding new teams to collectively maintain the profits and asset values of individually owned member teams. This constitutes a “barrier to entry,” the key precondition for monopoly power.
The Supreme Court ruling is a step in the right direction and further lawsuits may be forthcoming.

(From The Idaho Statesman, written by Edward Lotterman)

A securities lawsuit in my home town is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, that will eventually be filed in the wake of the ongoing financial debacle. But it illustrates eternal issues in financial markets, ones that are present even during booms, even though they lead to litigation more frequently during busts.
At issue: the level of detail that sellers of investments must use in informing the buyers of any risks involved; and what role, if any, government or the courts should play to ensure that the buyers understand what they are getting into.
This particular lawsuit involves “structured investment vehicles” holding subprime mortgages that eventually went bust. They were sold by Wells Fargo Bank to local philanthropic foundations. The situation resembles disputes around nonprofits such as hospitals and local governments that borrowed money via “auction rate securities.” The common thread is how much disclosure of risk is necessary
What role one thinks government or the courts should play in these situations depends on one’s beliefs about how perfectly markets operate.
To individuals like Milton Friedman or Alan Greenspan, who believe unregulated markets nearly always result in better outcomes, the answer is that government should stay out.
Yes, perhaps there should be some criminal statutes governing deliberate fraud, but otherwise, the old principle of “buyer beware” should rule. Any government action will increase costs for society and waste resources, this group argues.
At the other end of the scale, those who are skeptical that free markets ever result in good outcomes want extensive disclosures of risks, combined with broad bans on selling specific categories of investments to certain potential buyers.
In between are pragmatists like me who are convinced that disparities of information between sellers and buyers of financial securities can lead to outcomes that not only hurt individual investors but also can harm society as a whole. At the same time, not all such problems can be fixed easily by regulation. And regulation inevitably uses up some resources.
So it is necessary to find a middle ground.
One long-established policy is to ban putting money held for vulnerable third parties into investments deemed risky. Thus, laws long have specified that inheritances held in trust for minors can be put only in well-rated bonds or stocks. State insurance regulators often imposed similar rules on life insurance companies and pension funds.
One problem is that this depends on the competency and honesty of ratings firms, an assumption that has been shot full of holes in the past three years.
The larger problem is that lower risk means lower returns. Large pension funds, in particular, eventually demanded the right to invest in higher-yielding assets, even if this involved taking on more risk. Restrictions on government and private pension fund portfolios were progressively eased in recent decades.
When markets are booming and most securities provide satisfactory returns, no one complains. But whenever a bubble pops, some investors get hurt and are convinced that they were tricked by whoever sold them the investment. Lawsuits are inevitable.
From the point of view of society, it is important that the law be written as clearly as possible to minimize such litigation, which inevitably consumes resources.
In the meantime, we are stuck in a familiar cycle where investors want freedom to deploy their money freely when the horizon is clear but demand protection when it starts to rain. And financial firms want freedom to sell any product they can dream up and not bear any of the consequences as long as they furnish enough small-print boilerplate disclosures.
It all means securities attorneys will always have work.