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.
Social Security Retirement Toolkit: Earnings Records, Claiming Strategies, and Appeals
This toolkit assembles the working papers of a Social Security retirement matter: the earnings record correction request, the benefit comparison and household claiming worksheets, the survivor benefit projection, the protective filing request, the application preparation list, the overpayment reconsideration and waiver letters, a repayment rate proposal, the appeal request and hearing file index, and a deadline calendar. Each template is annotated with the rule it invokes and the failure it prevents. Amounts and thresholds change annually and rules on non-covered pensions have been amended, so verify before filing.
Short-Term Rental Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers a short-term rental from the research that should precede a purchase through daily operation, complaints, and renewal. It sets out the five documents to read and five calls to make before listing, and why answering the city does not answer the HOA, the lender, or the insurer. It covers the permit conditions that get violated, the insurance conversation that prevents the largest exposure in the field, the tax registration that survives platform collection, and the hour-long safety walkthrough that becomes a premises liability defense. It ends with the operational disciplines—the local contact who actually answers, the neighbors who have your number, the occupancy limits enforced, and the long-stay threshold that can accidentally create a tenancy.
Medical Billing Toolkit: Itemized Bill Requests, Financial Assistance Applications, and Dispute Letters
This toolkit provides the letters, worksheets, and language that resolve medical billing disputes, with commentary on what each accomplishes and the mistake it prevents. It includes an itemized bill and financial assistance request, a billing error dispute keyed to line numbers, a financial assistance cover letter, a surprise billing letter citing the correct protection, an insurance appeal letter built around the denial reason, a debt validation letter and a separate time-barred debt letter with the acknowledgment disclaimer people leave out, settlement agreement language that must appear before any payment, a credit bureau dispute, a skeleton answer to a debt lawsuit with the affirmative defenses that are waived if unpleaded, and a bill audit worksheet.
Student Loans: Repayment Plans, Forgiveness, Default, and Discharge
Student loan law is unusual in nearly every direction: the debt survives bankruptcy in most cases, has no statute of limitations, can be collected without a lawsuit, and yet offers repayment terms and forgiveness programs no private lender would ever match. This article explains the difference between federal and private loans and why it governs everything, the repayment plan architecture including income-driven plans, the forgiveness programs and their notorious paperwork traps, what default actually triggers and how to escape it through rehabilitation or consolidation, the discharge categories for closed schools, school misconduct, disability, and death, the undue hardship standard in bankruptcy, and how to handle a servicer that gets it wrong.
Wage Theft and Unpaid Wages: Overtime, Misclassification, and Getting Paid
Wage theft is the largest category of theft in the United States by dollar value, and almost none of it is prosecuted. This article explains what the Fair Labor Standards Act actually requires—minimum wage, overtime at one and one-half times the regular rate, and a recordkeeping obligation that falls on the employer rather than the worker—and then the four ways employers most often avoid paying: misclassifying employees as exempt, misclassifying them as independent contractors, requiring work off the clock, and manipulating the regular rate. It covers the tip credit and tip pooling rules, meal and rest break law which is largely a state matter, and final paycheck requirements that carry penalties in many states. It closes with the remedies—liquidated damages doubling the recovery, a three-year limitations period for willful violations, fee shifting, and the anti-retaliation provision that is frequently the stronger claim.
Crime Victims' Rights: Notice, Participation, Restitution, and Compensation
Victims of crime hold a set of rights that exist on paper in every jurisdiction and are honored unevenly in practice, largely because nobody tells victims what they are or how to assert them. This article explains the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act and the state constitutional amendments that parallel it, the eight rights they confer and how they are enforced, the victim impact statement and the constitutional decision permitting it, mandatory restitution and the collection problem that follows a restitution order, state compensation funds and the eligibility rules that exclude people who need them, the specific protections for sexual assault survivors, address confidentiality and employment protections, and the separate civil remedies that exist alongside the criminal case.
Arbitration: A Comprehensive Guide to Alternative Dispute Resolution
Arbitration is a consensual, private method of dispute resolution in which parties agree to submit their conflicts to one or more impartial arbitrators for a final and binding decision enforceable across most of the world. This guide examines every stage of the arbitral process—from drafting the arbitration agreement through the rendering and enforcement of the award—and the strategic considerations that separate effective practice from mere procedural compliance. It treats both the domestic U.S. regime under the Federal Arbitration Act (separability, delegation, preemption, class-waiver enforcement, and the limited grounds for vacatur) and the international regime under the New York Convention and the UNCITRAL Model Law. It explains where arbitration sits on the broader ADR spectrum alongside mediation, and it reflects developments through early 2026, including the UK Arbitration Act 2025 and the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. Written for legal professionals, executives, and in-house counsel, it follows a single cross-border dispute to make the doctrine concrete.
Prior Art Toolkit: Search Protocols, Invalidity Charts, and On-Sale Bar Investigations
This toolkit collects the working documents for proving, or defeating, prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102: a critical-date worksheet, a search plan and contemporaneous search log, a reference register, a protocol for capturing and authenticating archived web pages, and a chain-of-custody and teardown record for physical products. It then provides anticipation and obviousness chart templates built to the requirements of local patent rules and the PTAB's petition rules, followed by an on-sale and public use investigation kit: a patent owner history timeline, written discovery, Rule 30(b)(6) topics, a third-party subpoena rider, and a witness interview outline with a corroboration matrix. Litigation templates for invalidity contentions, the § 282(c) pretrial notice, and an expert declaration outline follow. The patent owner's side is covered with a priority support chart, an experimental use evidence file, and an accessibility rebuttal outline, and the inventor's side with a disclosure calendar, evaluation agreement clauses, an IDS log, and a Rule 130 declaration outline. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing and is followed by drafting notes tied to the controlling statutes and cases, using one invented irrigation-controller dispute throughout.
IEP, Evaluation, and Dispute Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A checklist for the whole special education sequence. It runs the written evaluation request that starts the legal clock, what to do when a district refuses, the records to demand before every meeting, the four tests every goal must pass and the four elements every service must specify, the predetermination warning signs, the follow up email that becomes the record, the independent evaluation request, the service log audit that produces the most provable violation in the field, the disciplinary day count and manifestation determination, extended school year and transition, and a forum selection guide matching each type of problem to the right dispute path.
Social Security Disability Toolkit: Evidence, Hearings, and Federal Court Review
This toolkit supplies the operative documents of a Social Security disability practice. It includes the medical source statement request that produces vocationally usable answers, a records request letter, a function report drafting guide with paired weak and strong answers, a listing analysis worksheet, a grid rule analysis table, a pre-hearing brief template, a vocational expert cross examination outline built around the two questions that decide most hearings, an Appeals Council issue checklist, a federal court error inventory, and the fee, waiver, and expedite requests that surround the merits. It is written for representatives, attorneys, and organized claimants.
Wage and Hour Self-Audit Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Most wage and hour exposure is created by a system configured once and never tested, not by a decision anyone made to underpay. The classifications were set when the roles were created, the payroll system was configured at implementation, and the rounding rule has run untouched for six years. This checklist tests each of them. It works through exempt classification against the duties test rather than the job description, the regular rate calculation that catches employers who pay overtime diligently and still get it wrong, timekeeping practices including rounding and automatic meal deductions and remote work, the compensability of travel and on-call and training time, contractor classification, deductions, and recordkeeping. It closes with quantifying an exposure and the choices available for remediation.
Running a Short-Term Rental Legally: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a short-term rental from the research a prospective host should do before buying or listing through the daily operation and the problems that end permits. It sets out the five documents to read and the five calls to make first, and why answering the city's question does not answer the HOA's, the lender's, or the insurer's. It covers the permit application and the conditions attached to it, the insurance conversation that prevents the single largest exposure in this field, and the tax registration that survives platform collection. It then covers operation: the safety inspection that is a defense, the house rules that are enforceable, the local contact requirement that revokes more permits than anything else, and the long-stay threshold that can accidentally create a tenancy. It closes on complaints, claims, and renewal.