The #MeToo movement has made us more aware of pervasive sexual harassment, but harassment based on every protected characteristic—including race, religion, age, and national origin—is pervasive and persistent. Former EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, now a director of workplace culture consulting at Morgan Lewis, says companies must take a more proactive approach to tackling cultural problems that lead to harassment and sap productivity. She explains that, for many years, employers thought that the way to stop harassment was to have a policy that says you can't harass people. But because haras ..read more

Cannabis is illegal under current federal law. But with attitudes—and state laws—changing, we could see federal legalization very soon. If that does happen, regulations will dictate how growers, makers, dispensers, and consumers comply with the resulting framework. What would those regulations look like? In this episode, Joanne Caceres, a senior managing associate at Dentons, explains that the federal government's current regulation of hemp already gives us a lot of information about the regulatory landscape that awaits cannabis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Admini ..read more

Artificial intelligence tools are now thoroughly embedded in the practice of law. Lawyers are using these tools to search, sort, predict, and guide many traditional legal tasks. But there are complex concerns at work: lawyers need to keep on top of new technologies, protect client confidentiality, comply with ethical constraints, and at the end of the day, be confident in what the computer spits out. In this episode, law professor and legal tech expert Dan Linna argues that lawyers should think bigger about how we use these technologies in the profession. Where we are still focused on tools a ..read more

Biotech firms have trouble getting reliable access to capital throughout the long, unpredictable development, testing, and approval process. While it’s in some ways a typical high risk, potentially high reward business, biotech can provide life-saving innovations when the success finally materializes.   J.W. Verret, GMU law school professor and member of the SEC’s investor advisory committee, has ideas to help biotech and other small-cap companies access the public and exempt markets more efficiently. Verret talks about why current securities regulations, like Reg A and Reg FD, hamper sma ..read more

A simple complaint against Facebook’s privacy practices, submitted to an Irish agency by an Austrian law student, has snowballed into a seven-year legal battle that continues to disrupt the global privacy landscape. The European Union’s highest court will soon issue a ruling that Bloomberg Law analyst Mark Smith says may have major implications for U.S. lawyers and businesses.   In this episode, Smith details the legal carve-outs Facebook has relied upon to justify the transfer of data from the EU to the U.S., and he discusses how those measures have fared under the scrutiny of the Europe ..read more

The #MeToo movement is changing how M&A deals are written. Statements designed to protect deal parties from liability for C-suite sexual harassment are showing up in mergers and acquisitions of every size and across many sectors of the market. This type of statement is known as a “#MeToo rep” or “Weinstein clause” and, according to Bloomberg Law legal analyst Grace Burnett, it is a “provision going viral.” In this episode, Burnett discusses the emergence of #MeToo Reps (short for “representations and warranties”) in M&A deals, shares what she found when she analyzed publicly available ..read more

Office housework might make an office run more efficiently, but it can hold back an employee’s career and lead to expensive lawsuits for employers. Dori Goldstein, employment law Legal Analyst, and Cindy-Ann Thomas, principal at Littler Mendelson, explain the problems with tasks like planning the office holiday party or scheduling a meeting, and why so many of those tasks fall to women. They discuss the changing legal risks surrounding office housework, and explain how to prevent it from sparking lawsuits and eroding retention.  Co-hosts Dori Goldstein and Meg McEvoy also share the resu ..read more

Erich Spangenberg, CEO and co-founder of IPwe, is trying to give a technology-driven makeover to the $200 billion patent licensing and acquisition market. Spangenberg talks with Dori Goldstein and Meg McEvoy about leaving behind his patent troll past to create IPwe, a platform that connects transacting parties and provides AI-driven analytics on patent transactions. IPwe is aiming to bring in data from the world’s approximately 200 patent offices and create transparency around the pricing of patent licensing and sale transactions. Spangenberg discusses the opportunities for small and medium-s ..read more

In this third and final episode in a series on cryptocurrency, New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Linda Lacewell discusses BitLicenses, which enable virtual currency projects, including those that touch the state’s mammoth banking sector. Initially unpopular among the Fintech and crypto communities, BitLicenses are lending legitimacy to virtual currency projects. 2019 was the busiest year yet, with eight crypto projects getting licensed by NYDFS. Lacewell discusses how her department is ramping up its cryptocurrency reviews, recent approval of stablecoin projects, an ..read more

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, also known as “crypto-mom,” has strong views on how her agency can facilitate the growth of cryptocurrencies. The sole dissenting commissioner in the SEC’s denial of the Winkelvoss Bitcoin Exchange Traded product, Peirce thinks the agency needs to provide more guidance to the crypto-sphere. Peirce discusses potential adjustments to the SEC regulatory framework for crypto to allow projects to get up and running and let the market realize its potential. In 2020, the SEC will continue to focus its enforcement efforts on fraud in the crypto space, according to Peirc ..read more