From the category archives:

Management

Breaking Down The Silos That Separate Business People And Lawyers

by Doug Park March 3, 2010

In many companies, business and legal operate as separate silos. On the business side, there is business development, corporate development, marketing, finance, and human resources. On the legal side, there are in-house attorneys and outside counsel. Business sees legal as a cost center, not as a value driver.  Unfortunately, this separation of business and legal [...]

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Why Strategy, Law, And Organization?

by Doug Park February 18, 2010

Good business lawyers understand that legal problems are necessarily business problems. Yet, understanding the law, by itself, is insufficient to understand and solve complex business problems.
In this short post, I advance a simple argument: A combined Strategy, Law, and Organization lens provides superior solutions to difficult business and legal problems. Examples include mergers [...]

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Intellectual Property Rights, Merger And Acquisition Strategy, And Transaction Costs

by Doug Park January 21, 2010

Do the transaction costs of allocating intellectual property rights in collaborative R&D influence merger and acquisition strategy? When it is difficult to write intellectual property agreements, does it makes sense for managers to turn to a merger or acquisition as the solution? The answers have consequences for how business strategy and legal strategy interact.
What [...]

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Compensation and Reputation Risk Under New SEC Disclosure Rules

by Doug Park January 11, 2010

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new disclosure rules mandate disclosure of material adverse risks created by compensation policies. A prominent corporate attorney’s recent analysis of compensation program design and risk focuses on process, but completely ignores reputation risk.
Reputation risk based on the amount of compensation, regardless of adherence to established procedures, is “reasonably likely” [...]

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Apple Acquires The “i-phone” Trademark In China

by Doug Park January 7, 2010

Apple has finally ended its iPhone trademark problem in China by acquiring the rights to the “i-phone” mark from Hanwang Technology. The acquisition ends a dangerous intellectual property and marketing situation for Apple.
As I wrote in an earlier post, because of an apparent oversight in coordinating its marketing strategy and trademark strategy, Apple faced the [...]

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Survey Says: Lawyers Don’t Get Business

by Doug Park December 11, 2009

My last post asked whether greater value add would accompany higher hourly rates in 2010. It appears lawyers were not listening.
Today’s TexParte Blog summarized the results of a LexisNexis survey. And the results do not instill confidence that lawyers fully grasp the problems with their business model.
The following findings suggest a problem for law firm [...]

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Law Firms And Higher Hourly Rates: Where Is The Value Add?

by Doug Park December 3, 2009

An article in today’s American Lawyer outlines a tug of war between law firms and legal departments over higher hourly rates in 2010.  While law firms want to increase their hourly rates, corporate legal departments are pushing back. They want discounts up to 15% from 2009 rates, which were discounted from 2008 rates by about [...]

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Themes Ahead, Starting with Leadership

by Soyeun Choi October 14, 2009

Serving as President of the Palo Alto Area Bar Association involves all sorts of varied and persistent responsibilities.  Every aspect of the organization is under my review: every event, member, operational detail, meeting, administrative requirement, planning logistic, certification and reporting requirement etc., all issues outward facing and inward, cross my desk.
This is just an illustration of [...]

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How To Make High Tech Mergers Work

by Doug Park October 4, 2009

Mergers are difficult to make work.  Many large mergers have failed to meet expectations for a variety of reasons. What can companies do to make high tech mergers work?
Jon Schwarz, a member of the Executive Board of SAP with extensive merger and acquisition experience, addressed this question at a recent Wharton Club of Northern California event.
The [...]

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How Directors Can Link Risk Oversight To Corporate Strategy

by Doug Park September 17, 2009

In 2008, the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) published a white paper recommending that boards pay close attention to the connection between risk oversight and corporate strategy. What is the relationship between risk oversight and corporate strategy, and why does it matter?
Recommendation 1: Mitigate The Risks Of Strategy Implementation
NACD contends that the overarching goal [...]

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