The sun has risen and set on yet another week in the legal industry, which means, you guessed it, another shining beacon of weekend-nearness: the Top 10 in Law Blogs. This week’s best includes a powerful guest post from an anonymous attorney about their journey to sobriety, as part of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series; a report on Stone Brewing’s suit against MillerCoors in a David and Goliath-style beer battle; and an interview with the CEO of CuroLegal about their new studio venture, CuroStudio. May your weekend be happy, healthy, and restful.
Hong Kong: Toto, We’re Not in Mainland China Anymore – By Steve Dickinson of China Law Blog: In an effort to reduce the challenge of manufacturing in Mainland China, many foreign companies decide not to go direct. They instead make use of intermediary companies that act as the sellers in the transaction. These intermediaries deal with the buyer, but the messy business of manufacturing is done in the PRC. These intermediary companies are often located in Hong Kong. We have seen that most foreign buyers do not understand the risks involved in dealing with Hong Kong companies and this too often causes them to unknowingly take on significant risks. One of those significant risks arises in the area of intellectual property protection. View Full Post
Stories of Recovery: In Law School, I Partied My Way to Notoriety; Now I’m Building a Foundation for Sobriety – By a Guest Blogger as part of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series: My first experience with alcohol at age 13 should have been as good a deterrent as any. A friend and I consumed three quarters of a bottle of 40-proof liquor in about an hour. It wasn’t long before we were both sick. I didn’t drink for years after that. Alcohol re-entered my life at age 18 or 19, when my buddies and I would run around the music clubs trying not to get discovered for being under 21. Drinking and driving never seemed like much of a problem and I am thankful I never hurt anyone. View Full Post
Stone Brewing Fires the Shot Heard Round the Brewing World – By Josh H. Escovedo of the IP Law Blog: The fight between craft brewers and Big Beer (i.e. MillerCoors & Budweiser) has been ongoing for years. Ever since craft beer came to prominence in the late ‘90s, it has been stealing Big Beer’s share of the marketplace. In fact, craft beer has celebrated double-digit growth each year since then. In response, Big Beer has embarked on a course of action to recapture its share of the market. View Full Post
Cryptojacking – A Real Cyber Threat, Even If You Don’t Have to Tell Anyone – By Avi Gesser, Will Schildknecht, and Zachary B. Shapiro of Cyber Breach Center: Cryptojacking is the newest cyber threat that companies are facing. It involves hackers accessing company servers in order to steal processing power, which is then used to mine cryptocurrencies. With the recent increase in value of digital assets such as bitcoin, Ether, and Monero, it is not surprising that criminal hackers and rogue states are looking for ways to acquire these currencies, which they can use anonymously for various legal and illegal purposes. One way to accomplish this is to steal them. In the Summer of 2017, for example, North Korean hackers breached a server at a South Korean company to steal 70 Monero tokens. View Full Post
A Playlist for When You’re Going Through a Divorce on Valentine’s Day – By Jessica C. Diamond of NJ Family Legal Blog: It may seem counter-intuitive, but the month of Saint Valentine is also generally the month that sees the highest volume of filing for divorce. For some people, getting divorced may be their New Years Resolution. Others wait until the start of the new year so that they can have one last holiday season with their families as usual. Whatever the reason, many people find themselves at the beginning of the divorce process on Valentines Day. View Full Post
CFPB Introduces New Strategic Plan under Acting Director Mulvaney – By Eric Mogilnicki and Eitan Levisohn of Cov Financial Services: Yesterday, the CFPB released a new Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2018 to 2022. The new Plan is a further demonstration of Acting Director Mulvaney’s efforts to reshape the Bureau. As the Acting Director says in the message that prefaces the Plan, “if there is one way to summarize the strategic changes occurring at the Bureau, it is this: we have committed to fulfill the Bureau’s statutory responsibilities, but go no further.” View Full Post
Assault on Iowa Courts Should Worry Everyone – By Rush Nigut of Rush on Business: A year ago I joked that I didn’t know the governor (Branstad at the time) and the legislature could cut another $7.7 million from our judiciary. While my comment was tongue-in-cheek, my worries were not. Our Iowa judiciary is facing challenges like we have never seen before. And it’s showing. The US Institute for Legal Reform had Iowa ranked number 4 among the US states for its judiciary in 2015. In just two short years, we have fallen to number 13. And there is reason to expect us to continue to fall as the Iowa legislature is set to cut another $50 million from state agencies in 2017, including another $4.8 million from our judicial branch. View Full Post
New CuroStudio Aims to Develop Tech to Address Access to Justice – By Robert Ambrogi of Law Sites Blog: In recent years, so-called venture studios have become increasingly popular vehicles for launching startups. The idea is to not only provide venture funding to a startup, but to actually play a role in creating and launching new businesses. Now, CuroLegal, a company that designs and develops technology for the legal industry, has launched CuroStudio, a venture studio with a special focus on developing tools and services to address the access-to-justice gap and improve the delivery of legal services. The goal is to create an environment to facilitate evaluating new product concepts and then, as warranted, spin them off into new startups, CruoLegal founder and CEO Chad Burton told me. View Full Post
Red Herring Alert: Should California Have a Public Cannabis Bank? – By Hilary Bricken of Canna Law Blog: It seems like every state in its own way has tried to grapple with a state-legislated solution to the notorious banking issue across the cannabis industry. And now California is going to study its own banking solution that, in all reality, probably isn’t going to go anywhere. California is predicted to take in $7 billion by 2020 because of adult-use legalization. Its licensed operators have nowhere reliable to put all of that cash, and you can be sure that the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration doesn’t want those operators trucking hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to Sacramento. View Full Post
Indigenous Interests in Focus – Impact Assessment Act introduces substantive measures for a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples – By Stephanie Axmann, Bryn Gray, and Madeleine Hawkins of Canadian ERA Perspectives: On February 8, 2018, the federal government introduced Bill C-69, Part 1 of which tables the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), proposed federal legislation to replace Canada’s current environmental assessment legislation, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 (CEAA 2012), as we outline here. An overarching theme of Bill C-69 and the IAA is the federal government’s clearly-stated intention to pursue reconciliation and renewed relationships with Indigenous peoples “based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation and partnership.”[1] In particular, the IAA sets out to achieve the government’s stated commitments towards Indigenous peoples through a number of substantive measures. View Full Post