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.

LitigationDiscovery

Responding to a Third-Party Subpoena: A Practical Guide for Businesses

A subpoena arriving at a company that is not a party to the lawsuit is an operational problem before it is a legal one, and the choices made in the first two weeks determine what the response costs. The recipient has rights that most companies never exercise: a written objection alone shifts the burden of going forward to the party that issued the subpoena, significant expenses must be shifted on any order compelling production, and the issuing lawyer carries an affirmative duty to avoid imposing undue burden. This guide walks the response from the moment the envelope opens: validating service and the compliance geography, issuing a preservation hold, identifying whose confidentiality and privilege are implicated, drafting an objection that preserves everything while offering a path, negotiating scope and cost, and producing in a form that is defensible years later. It also covers government demands and testimony.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 20, 202526 min read

CommercialGovernment Contracts

Government Contracting Toolkit

Federal contracting is not commercial contracting with extra paperwork. It is a distinct body of law in which terms are incorporated by regulation whether or not anyone negotiated them, the buyer may change the work and terminate for its own convenience, deadlines are jurisdictional, and the contractor must report itself. This toolkit runs the full arc for a company entering or growing in the market: registration and positioning, the size and affiliation analysis that determines eligibility, proposal preparation and pricing, the accounting and timekeeping systems that must exist before a cost-reimbursement award, performance including changes and claims, protests and their unforgiving clocks, the compliance obligations that create the most exposure, and the suspension and debarment risk that governs everything else. It closes with the internal functions a company must build — the accounting system, the timekeeping discipline, the change control, and the disclosure evaluation process — before any of the rest is sustainable.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 18, 202514 min read

LitigationDiscovery

Discovery Toolkit: A Roadmap and Resource Guide for Federal Discovery

This toolkit is a high-level roadmap through civil discovery in federal court, from the Rule 26(f) planning conference to motions to compel and sanctions. It is built for litigators and the legal teams who run discovery day to day, and it walks each phase—planning, initial disclosures, written discovery, ESI and e-discovery, privilege, depositions, expert discovery, and enforcement—linking at every step to detailed mclaw.io checklists and articles plus the governing Federal Rules and the recognized authorities practitioners rely on, including the Sedona Conference and the Zubulake e-discovery line. Proportionality and the duty to preserve and disclose run through the whole process; the toolkit flags where missteps trigger preclusion or sanctions. It is a navigation guide, not case-specific advice.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 18, 202513 min read

LitigationCivil Procedure

Building a Damages Case: A Practical Guide from Pleading to Verdict

This guide runs a damages case in order, from the first client interview to the day the money arrives. It covers the damages intake that most lawyers skip, the litigation hold that preserves the proof, how to plead damages so consequential losses survive, the discovery that builds a but-for world, choosing and controlling an expert, surviving and bringing motions to exclude, valuing the case for settlement, presenting numbers a jury will accept, drafting a verdict form that protects the award, and post-trial work on interest, costs, remittitur, and collection. Each stage lists what to do, what to avoid, and what the record needs to show.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 17, 202528 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Fair Use Analysis Checklist: A Practical Checklist

Fair use is an affirmative defense you raise after being sued, which means the time to analyze it is before you copy. This checklist walks the analysis in the order courts actually apply it, starting with the threshold questions most people skip: whether the material is protected at all, and whether a specific statutory exemption applies before you reach section 107. It then works through each of the four factors with the questions that decide them, incorporating the reframing of the first factor in Warhol v. Goldsmith, which asks about the specific use rather than the new work as a whole. Later phases cover design mitigations that improve every factor, documentation and privilege, the decision whether to license anyway, and what to do if a demand letter arrives. Each phase is paired with the reason it matters and the primary authority behind it.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 12, 202512 min read

Labor and EmploymentRecruitment and Hiring

Setting Up Payroll and Employment Compliance for a First Hire

Hiring the first employee converts a business into an employer, and the obligations attach immediately, in full, and in every state where the person works. Most of them are administrative and inexpensive; the expensive ones are the classification decision, the overtime exemption decision, and the failure to register in a state before the first paycheck. This guide walks the sequence a founder or small business owner actually needs: deciding whether the person is an employee at all, the federal and state registrations to complete before the first payday, the forms to collect on day one, the insurance to buy, the pay practices to get right, the documents to issue, the benefits questions that arrive sooner than expected, and the records to keep. It closes with the compliance calendar and what changes at each headcount threshold.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 11, 202525 min read

CorporateExecutive Compensation

Equity Compensation: Stock Options, RSUs, Profits Interests, and Section 409A

Equity compensation is the most common way private companies pay people they cannot afford, and it is also the area where well-intentioned founders create the most expensive tax problems. This article explains the instruments and the rules that govern them. It covers stock options and the ISO-versus-NSO divide, restricted stock and the thirty-day Section 83(b) election that cannot be extended, RSUs and why private companies use double-trigger vesting, and profits interests, which are the LLC answer to options and work quite differently. A long section explains Section 409A: what it covers, why a discounted option is a violation, what a 409A valuation actually buys, and what the penalties are. Later sections address vesting and acceleration, repurchase and transfer restrictions, dilution and cap table hygiene, qualified small business stock, and the mechanics companies get wrong at exit, with a worked example, a design checklist, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 11, 202525 min read

Family LawDivorce

Divorce Financial Disclosure and Settlement Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A working checklist for the financial and settlement side of a divorce. It runs the pre filing document sweep, the automatic orders that bind you at filing, the temporary orders hearing package, the sworn financial affidavit, the review of the other side's affidavit against the tax returns, when to escalate to discovery and where hidden assets are actually found, valuation of the house, retirement, and a business, the after tax balance sheet, the property and support terms every agreement must settle, the parenting plan elements that prevent future motions, and the post decree follow through without which a settlement divides nothing.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 10, 202510 min read

CorporateSecurities

Venture Financing Toolkit: From SAFE to Series A and Beyond

A venture-backed company's legal history is a chain in which every link constrains the next, and the mistakes that surface at a Series B were nearly always made at formation. This toolkit walks the whole arc: forming the right entity in the right state with vested founder stock and filed 83(b) elections, raising on convertible instruments while understanding how they will convert, negotiating the priced round terms that determine economics and control, closing it, and then living with the covenants, valuations, and reporting the round created. It closes with later rounds, bridge and down-round mechanics, secondary liquidity, and the waterfall that translates every term above into what each holder actually receives at exit. It ends with the diligence and cleanup work that a later round or an acquisition will require, which is far cheaper to do continuously than retroactively.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 9, 202513 min read

Intellectual PropertyPatent

Responding to Patent Office Actions: Strategies for Overcoming Rejections

An office action is not a rejection of you--it is an invitation to negotiate, and the patent system is built to give applicants the second, third, and fourth word. This guide teaches you to read an office action the way an examiner reads your claims: by statutory basis (anticipation under Section 102, obviousness under Section 103, eligibility under Section 101, and the disclosure and clarity demands of Section 112), and then to choose among argument, amendment, declaration evidence, the examiner interview, and the appeal. It covers the full procedural toolkit through 2026--restriction and rejoinder practice, Rule 1.130 declarations that knock out prior art, requests for continued examination, after-final practice in a world without AFCP 2.0, and the complete appeal track to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and beyond--with worked examples, an annotated sample response, and the 2025 fee changes that reshaped post-final strategy. The aim is to turn rejections into granted patents whose claims are still worth owning. Written for patent attorneys handling their first prosecution, inventors trying to understand what their counsel is doing, and in-house professionals stewarding a portfolio.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 7, 202563 min read

FinanceEquipment Finance

Negotiating an Equipment Lease: A Practical Guide

An equipment lease looks like a rental and frequently functions as a secured loan, and the difference determines the parties' rights on default, in bankruptcy, and at the end of the term. Whether a transaction is a true lease or a disguised security interest is decided by a statutory test that turns on economic reality rather than the document's label, and the answer drives the accounting, the tax treatment, and whether the lessor must file to protect itself. Beyond that threshold, the negotiation runs through a small set of provisions that carry nearly all of the economic risk: the hell-or-high-water covenant, the stipulated loss schedule, the end-of-term options, and the return conditions. This guide covers the classification analysis, the structures in use, the terms worth negotiating and the ones that are not, and the diligence a lessee should complete before signing.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 6, 202526 min read

Labor and EmploymentWorkers Compensation

Filing and Litigating a Workers Compensation Claim: A Practical Guide

This guide walks a workers compensation claim from the moment of injury through hearing, appeal, and settlement, from both sides of the table. It explains what to say and to whom in the first forty-eight hours, how the average weekly wage is calculated and why it is worth auditing, how medical control and utilization review actually determine the course of treatment, what happens at a compensation hearing and how it differs from civil court, and how to evaluate a settlement offer against the future medical exposure it extinguishes. It covers the parallel obligations under the FMLA and the ADA that employers routinely miss, the retaliation exposure that dwarfs the claim itself, and the coordination of a third-party case with the compensation lien.

Casey Scott McKayMarch 6, 202528 min read