Ashurst’s Rachel Barnes speaks to The Lawyer about creating a collaborative mindset, getting the buy-in and maneuvering obstacles in the way of working with other firms in our latest interview in the Business Leadership Series. How do you shift the dial from a competitive to a collaborative mindset? I see the future as being a collaborative ecosystem of multi-disciplinary stakeholders in the legal sector all working towards common goals. There are so many non-proprietary areas where we could all collaborate for the greater good – to create sector-wide process efficiencies or to make clients’ lives easier. It is just a matter of identifying those initiatives and pulling a...
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The Anti-Terror Bill in the Philippines Violates Human Rights and Due Process of Law The Confederation of Lawyers in Asia and the Pacific or COLAP, an organization of human rights lawyers and jurists in the region, views with grave concern the proposed Anti-Terror Bill in the Philippines as violative of human rights and the due process of law. The Anti-Terror Bill, known as House Bill 6875 and Senate Bill 1093, was approved by both houses of Congress and submitted to President Duterte to be signed into law. COLAP underscores that the bill is a bill of attainder that punishes suspected individuals or organizations who are proscribed as terrorists and that the very broad and vague definition...
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ZKTeco SpeedFace+ Are Medical Devices, Per FDA Definition, Contrary Claims Are False By: John Honovich and Charles Rollet, Published on Jun 12, 2020 ZKTeco SpeedFace+ series products are medical devices as defined by the US FDA. Contrary claims made by ZKTeco are false. ZKTeco's attorney objected to our questioning and reporting, calling this "a fine legal distinction that your [IPVM] audience would not understand." As far as ZKTeco is concerned, our SpeedFace+ series is not comprised of medical devices and we make no claims having any health related benefits. Therefore our SpeedFace+ is currently exempt from FDA compliance. If FDA informs us otherwise, we will do whatever is necessary to...
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The Straits Times and German research firm Statista have launched a survey on the best law firms in Singapore. Believed to be the first of its kind undertaken by a home-grown organisation, the survey will allow lawyers and clients to rate the firms in 15 legal practice categories. These include banking and finance, shipping and family and property law. The renowned Statista Group, which has its headquarters in the German city of Hamburg, does not only run tailor-made research projects but also operates one of the biggest portals on statistics and forecasts, statista.com Statista has taken part in similar surveys elsewhere, including in Germany, France, Britain and Switzerland, where more...
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A group of seven Manitoba couples is challenging the province to update how it legally defines a parent. On Thursday, the group filed legal proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench against the Manitoba government’s Family Maintenance Act and its definition of a legal parent. The act, which hasn’t been updated since 1987, doesn’t recognize contemporary assisted reproductive technologies and those implications on parents. The group said this means lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents face discrimination by not being recognized as legal parents to their child without a court order or adoption. According to the group, if a child is conceived through assisted reproduction in Manitoba to a...
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I need to get a bookcase for the background of my Zoom I need to get a bookcase for an intellectual room I can’t appear in court with this background that I’ve got That washing horse is far too close the Judge will see the lot. That acute sensitivity about exposing domestic lives through remote working is one of the recurring themes in an anthology of legal lyrics published this week. The frustrations of our confined lives have inspired a chorus of confessions, drawing on the sense that although lockdown is only 10 weeks old it feels like an eternity. Some courts have adapted rapidly to remote working or have simply closed, but others still require lawyers, defendants, court staff and...
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More than 40 million people — roughly one out of every four American workers — have filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses nationwide to close to prevent the spread of COVID -19. “ People are going from ‘furlough’ to being told they’re not going back. We’re getting the reductions in force, coming down now.” — Marla Linderman, employment lawyer This unprecedented economic upheaval has left workers with a lot of questions about what it means to be furloughed, what rights they have when they’re terminated and what happens next for those who find themselves suddenly out of work....
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We hear the word “murder” used in a lot of situations: “This job is murder!” Environmental activists sometimes refer to the “murder” of animals or even trees. But, under the law, it is not murder to kill an animal, a tree, or any living thing except a human being. A person cannot murder a kitten, no matter how cute the kitten nor how mean the human. Meat is not murder (unless it's served up by Hannibal Lecter.) The word “homicide,” which includes murder, expressly refers to the human victim. And, only a human being can commit homicide or murder—it’s not murder when a grizzly bear kills a person. Although the killing of a human by a...
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The attorney general, Suella Braverman, is facing calls to resign after she joined the chorus of Downing Street loyalists defending Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during lockdown. Lawyers expressed astonishment that Braverman should have joined in what opponents described as an “orchestrated political” action. Her intervention, it is alleged, undermines the independence of her office as the government’s chief legal adviser and puts her in an impossible position in relation to any subsequent police inquiry. The calls follow Braverman’s tweet on Saturday in which she quoted the full text of the No 10 statement on Boris Johnson’s chief aide in which the prime minister said he had behaved “...
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Most law firms in Canada are small to medium sized enterprises that just do not have the resources to implement and monitor a retirement arrangement, let alone take on the extra cost of administration and fiduciary governance. It is simply unrealistic to expect individual law firms, regardless of their size, to assume the financial, fiduciary and administrative burdens of a defined benefit plan. In fact, most law firms have no pension arrangements at all - Defined Contribution (DC) or (Defined Benefit (DB). Finally. A defined benefit pension plan for law firms In 2016, a Lawyers Financial task force, comprised of leading pension and actuarial experts began investigating pension options....
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