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.
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.
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.
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.
Party Joinder and Third-Party Practice Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns every federal party-structuring decision into a sequence of specific tasks, each tied to the governing rule, statute, or case. It is organized in nine phases: mapping the parties and their citizenship, the plaintiff's joinder decisions, the defendant's responses to joinder problems, third-party practice under Rule 14, the third-party defendant's response, interpleader, intervention, removal and post-removal joinder, and changes in the party lineup during the case. Red-flag boxes mark the errors that most often destroy jurisdiction or forfeit claims, and a deadlines table collects the time limits in one place. A short worked example involving a commercial roofing failure and a list of common failure points close the checklist. It is written for litigators on both sides and for in-house counsel supervising them.
Domain Recovery Toolkit: Registrar Demands, Transfer Dispute Filings, and In Rem Complaints
This toolkit collects the working papers for recovering a hijacked domain name and for preventing the next theft, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and each followed by drafting commentary tied to authority. The recovery templates cover a triage worksheet, a demand letter to the losing registrar, an abuse report to the gaining registrar, an evidence-of-ownership declaration, an evidence log, and an outline for a Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy request. The litigation and dispute templates supply UDRP complaint sections written for stolen-domain cases, an in rem ACPA complaint skeleton for the registry's district, and a temporary restraining order motion outline with a proposed order directed at the registry. The prevention templates are a domain portfolio security policy, a web developer domain control clause, a demand letter to a developer holding a client's name, and a buy-back decision record. A running example follows one software company through every paper.
The Post-Mortem Right of Publicity: Who Controls a Deceased Person's Name, Image, and Voice
This article explains whether a person's right to control the commercial use of their name, image, voice, and likeness survives death, who owns it afterward, and what it does and does not allow heirs to stop. It traces the doctrine from the Bela Lugosi and Martin Luther King Jr. cases through the statutes that California, Tennessee, Indiana, Washington, and New York enacted in response, and it maps the state patchwork of durations, registration rules, and domicile requirements. The center of the analysis is choice of law: courts usually ask where the person was domiciled at death, which is why Marilyn Monroe's heirs, Princess Diana's estate, and Albert Einstein's beneficiary lost claims that looked valuable. The article then covers the limits that protect biographies, films, and art, the new digital replica rules for AI voices and synthetic performances, federal fallbacks under the Lanham Act, and the estate tax consequences shown by the Michael Jackson valuation case. It closes with an extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways for estates, users, and planners.
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.
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.
Handling Objections, Coaching, and Misconduct at a Deposition: A Practical Guide
This guide takes the defending lawyer and the questioning lawyer through a deposition in the order problems actually arise, from choosing the rulebook and the opening record through the moment a dispute breaks out and the motion that may follow. It gives sample language for objecting, instructing, challenging an instruction, describing conduct the transcript cannot show, and calling chambers. It explains when a call to the judge makes sense, how to handle suspected coaching on both sides of the table, and what changes on a video platform. A plain-English section tells the witness what to expect and what to do. Separate sections address nonparty witnesses and self-represented parties. Worked hypotheticals and a table of common mistakes show how the choices play out, including what they cost.
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.
Trade Secret Defense Toolkit: Independent Development Records, Public Domain Charts, and Bad Faith Fee Motions
This toolkit gives an accused company, employee, and their counsel working papers for defending a trade secret claim, ready to adapt with bracketed placeholders. It includes a defense decision matrix, letter responses to a demand, a quarantine notice, and a complete independent development record with a feature ledger, provenance sheets, evidence anchors, a repository collection runbook, and a declaration skeleton. It also provides a public domain mapping chart, a combination worksheet, a similarity triage chart, and a limitations worksheet. For motion practice, there is an identification motion outline with proposed orders, a clean team protocol, Rule 30(b)(6) topics and examination modules, a defect letter, and a bad-faith fee motion outline. Every form states its purpose, owner, and timing, followed by drafting notes tied to authority.
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.