Legal insights
Analysis from the front lines of IP & technology law.
Our attorneys write about the developments shaping intellectual property—from the PTAB and the Federal Circuit to the practical realities of protecting fast-moving technology.
Fintech Licensing and Money Transmission Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Whether a payments or lending product requires licensing is determined by the flow of funds and by who owes an obligation to whom, not by what the product is called, and the analysis has to be run before anything is built. A company that discovers the answer after launching has customer balances in states where it is not licensed, which is a problem with no cheap solution. This checklist runs the analysis in order: map the flow of funds, identify whether the company ever holds or controls funds it owes to someone else, test the available exemptions, choose among direct licensing, a bank partnership, and a restructured model, and then work through the registrations, program requirements, and consumer protection obligations that attach regardless of the licensing answer. The organizing point is that the flow-of-funds analysis must precede any engineering, because a company that launches first has customer balances in states where it is not licensed and no cheap way to unwind them.
Commercial Driving and Motor Carrier Compliance: CDLs, Hours of Service, and Disqualification
A commercial driver's license is a livelihood held on terms that almost no other worker faces, and the rules that govern it operate very differently from ordinary traffic law. This article explains the disqualification structure—the major offenses that end a career, the serious traffic violations that accumulate, and the prohibition on masking that removes the diversion and deferred adjudication options available to everyone else. It covers hours of service and electronic logging, the driver qualification file and medical certification, and the drug and alcohol testing regime including the clearinghouse and the return-to-duty process that a driver cannot navigate alone. It then turns to the carrier side: roadside inspections, out-of-service orders, safety measurement scores and the DataQs process for challenging bad data, and the whistleblower and coercion protections that exist and are rarely invoked.
Customs and Trade Compliance Toolkit: Rulings, Protests, Penalties, and Duty Savings
This toolkit supplies the working documents of an import compliance program. It contains a classification worksheet with the General Rules of Interpretation applied in order, a landed cost model, an assist identification form routed through accounts payable and engineering, a supplier origin declaration, a binding ruling request outline, protest and prior disclosure templates, a penalty mitigation framework, a drawback and duty savings analysis, first sale documentation requirements, a broker instruction letter, a recordkeeping matrix, and the audit response file that demonstrates reasonable care.
Public and Subsidized Housing: Vouchers, Public Housing, and the Rules That Govern Your Tenancy
Subsidized housing runs on a body of federal law that most tenants and many lawyers never encounter, and its most important feature is that a tenant facing termination usually gets a hearing that private-market tenants do not. This article explains the difference between tenant-based vouchers, project-based assistance, and public housing, and why the difference decides almost everything else. It covers how rent is calculated, what an interim recertification is and why failing to report a change is the most common cause of a repayment demand, and what the grievance procedure and informal hearing actually provide. It works through the one-strike rule and Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, the good cause standard that applies in subsidized housing but frequently not in private tenancies, the reasonable accommodation duty that changes outcomes more often than any other tool, and the appeals available at every stage.
Director and Officer Fiduciary Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Directors are judged on process rather than outcome, and the record of that process is built in ordinary meetings long before anyone is sued. This checklist converts the substantive law of fiduciary duty into the operational practices that actually protect a board: how materials are distributed, how conflicts are surfaced and handled, how oversight of the company's genuinely existential risks is structured and documented, and how the protective stack of exculpation, indemnification, advancement, and insurance is assembled and maintained. Work through it once to establish the baseline, then use the annual section as a recurring calendar item for the general counsel or the corporate secretary. It closes with the indemnification, advancement, and insurance architecture that determines who pays when the process is later challenged anyway.
Requesting and Resisting Document Production in International Arbitration: A Practical Guide
This guide takes counsel for both the requesting and the responding party through document production in an international arbitration, from the first procedural conference to the adverse inference argument at the hearing. It begins with the decisions to make before the case starts, including which rules will govern, how the privilege question will be resolved, and how the client's own documents will be preserved. Eleven numbered steps then cover shaping the production provisions of Procedural Order No. 1, drafting Requests to Produce that satisfy Article 3.3 of the IBA Rules, answering them with targeted objections under Article 9, the tribunal's ruling, searching and producing, policing compliance, obtaining documents from nonparties, and preserving objections for annulment and enforcement. Each step explains what to do, why, the governing authority, pitfalls, timing, and cost. A timeline and cost table, a worked example involving a terminated distribution agreement in an LCIA arbitration, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the guide.
Arranging a Funeral and Handling Final Affairs: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through the days after a death in the order the work actually has to be done, beginning with the first twenty-four hours and the four things to find before making any arrangements. It explains how to get comparable prices in twenty minutes using the telephone disclosure requirement, what a general price list contains, and the specific things a funeral provider may never require you to buy. It covers who holds the legal right to decide, what to do when a family disagrees, and the authorization requirements for cremation. It then moves to the administrative work: how many death certificates to order and who needs them, the benefits that go unclaimed including veterans burial benefits and employer coverage, and what to do when there is no money. It ends with the afternoon of preparation that prevents nearly all of it.
Government Transparency Toolkit: Records Requests, Open Meetings, and Litigation
This toolkit assembles the documents used on both sides of government transparency law. For requesters it supplies a request template with the clauses that prevent the most common denials, a preservation demand, fee waiver and expedited processing language, a tracking log, a response review matrix, an administrative appeal template with exemption specific rebuttal language, and a litigation complaint outline. For agencies it supplies an open meetings compliance checklist, an executive session announcement script, agenda drafting guidance, a serial meeting policy, a submitter notice process, and a records retention framework.
Filing and Appealing an Unemployment Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide takes an unemployment claim from the day of separation through a hearing and, if necessary, an appeal of an overpayment. It covers what to do in the first forty-eight hours, how to write the separation statement that a claims examiner reads first, how to ask for the alternative base period, how to prepare for the fact-finding interview, the weekly certification habits that prevent fraud findings, how to prepare and try a telephone hearing including the two cross-examination questions that decide most cases, and how to contest an overpayment and a fraud label separately.
Business Continuity and Crisis Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
The difference between a business continuity plan and a business continuity capability is testing, and the difference is discovered at the worst possible moment. Most plans are written to satisfy a customer questionnaire, describe a structure nobody has rehearsed, and live on the network that goes down. This checklist builds the capability instead. It works through the business impact analysis that determines what must be recovered and how fast, the dependency map that surfaces single points of failure, the crisis structure that names who decides and with what authority, the communications that must be prepared in advance including the contractual notice obligations most companies have never extracted, the recovery procedures for technology and facilities and people, the insurance that responds, and the exercise regime that finds the gaps.
SAFEs: An Overview of Simple Agreements for Future Equity
The Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) is the dominant instrument for raising startup seed capital, but its "simplicity" hides mechanics that routinely surprise founders and investors alike. This guide explains what a SAFE is, how it converts to equity at a priced round, and the crucial 2018 shift from pre-money to post-money SAFEs and why that change reallocated dilution risk from investors to founders. It works through valuation caps, discounts, step-up discounts, and most-favored-nation clauses with concrete math, compares SAFEs to convertible notes, and dissects two failure modes founders rarely see coming: the "SAFE pileup" and the "phantom" liquidation preference. It covers the securities-law reality that a SAFE is a security sold under Section 4(a)(2) and Regulation D, the role of pro-rata side letters, the unsettled tax treatment, and the distinct risks each side carries. The goal is to make a judge, a lawyer, and a first-time founder all comfortable with how these agreements actually behave.
Employment Discrimination Toolkit: Charges, Position Statements, and Litigation
This toolkit supplies the worksheets, letters, and records that build an employment discrimination case, ordered by urgency. It opens with a deadline calculator, because that single question ends more claims than any argument, followed by an incident log and evidence inventory built to be kept contemporaneously. It provides a comparator worksheet keyed to the factors that make a comparator useful, an internal complaint and an accommodation request drafted to name what must be named, and a retaliation log that captures the timeline proximity that proves these claims. It includes a charge drafting worksheet covering the boxes people forget, a dual filing confirmation letter, a position statement response organized around the five kinds of pretext evidence, a mediation preparation sheet, a damages worksheet, a severance review checklist, and a records request.