South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

By JAMES A. THOMAS, Special to Lawyers Weekly [email protected]   Trademark selection and clearance for pharmaceutical trademarks provides the trademark attorney with a plethora of challenges and potential pitfalls unique to these marks. When advising the pharmaceutical company regarding its ...

Tagged with: Intellectual Property Trademark

"It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A . . . " As the theme of the song goes, the YMCA has long been a leader in youth and adult recreation. The YMCA is a globally recognized nonprofit with a presence in over 3,000 communities. According to a 2009 study, the brand value of those four letters is over $6 billion and will only continue to grow as time goes on. Nonprofit organizations are an integral part of South Carolina's and the nation's economy. But how can these groups protect the goodwill that they strive so arduously to achieve?

Tagged with: Intellectual Property Trademark Trademark Infringement

By GARY S. WILLIAMS, Dolan Media Newswires [email protected]management.com   One of the biggest lessons of the recent economy is that many people who thought they were financially ready for retirement … weren’t. The amount of money, investments and government support ...

Tagged with: Retirement

A business plan can be simple or complex. Simple is better. Years ago, my dad and I created a business plan for our food-processing company. In essence, it was a set of goals, what we thought farmers could grow for us (raw material) and what we thought we could sell (finished product). We did this informally and used it as a basis for creating contracts with the farmers.

Tagged with: Business of Law Coach's Corner Practice Management

By RICHARD H. WILLIS, Special to Lawyers Weekly [email protected]   Thirty-five years ago, I was sitting in an English class in Sewanee, Tenn., wondering what “The Second Shepherd’s Play” had to do with anything I really needed to know.  Until recently, ...

Among the Monday-morning quarterbacking from the Super Bowl was the inevitable critique of commercials aired during the event. This time, however, an issue of lawyer advertising was raised by one of the ads. In legal ethics circles, a quiet, under-the-radar debate has been simmering about the use of Groupon.com by lawyers for advertising their legal services.

Tagged with: Advertising Ethics Fees

The recent Supreme Court case Crossmannn Communities v. Harleysville Mutual Insurance has created a stir in the construction litigation world. Crossmann appears to be an attempt to finally settle the issue of coverage under a CGL policy for damages resulting from faulty workmanship. In addition to explaining the basic holding and reasoning of the court, this article examines the connection between the court's coverage determination and the legal doctrine that separates tort and contract recovery in construction defect litigation.

Tagged with: CGL Insurance

In a recent conversation with two lawyer friends, we each commiserated that, despite the differences in each of our practices, clients often use us as a sounding board to vent their frustrations. (A not so cheap sounding board, I might add.) Recounting the meeting that had made him late to our gathering, one friend explained that he had come from an engagement that ran long due to a client just wanting to have his problem heard by someone who wasn't related to him and hadn't heard his gripe several times before.

Many lawyers and law firm marketers have sounded alarms that the American Bar Association's Commission on Ethics 20/20 is examining legal ethics issues arising from lawyers' use of Internet-based client development tools. Those tools encompass a wide range of now common marketing tactics: online social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), blogging, discussion forums (listservs) and websites.

Tagged with: American Bar Association

Law firm managing partners are talent agents. They spend most of their day managing the talent they have and recruiting new talent. In my time in law firm management, I was constantly trying to create a template for a successful lawyer, and for me "successful" meant those who create, develop and nurture long-term client relationships. A strong understanding of the law itself was a baseline requirement, but not in any way a determinant of success. After all, how many really "good" lawyers can you think of who are not successful?

Tagged with: Attorneys Practice Management