The Estrin Report

"These women can buy or sell you"

Hmm, sounds like it might be a good time for women to explore new careers beyond legal in the corporate world. See this Small Business Times article:

"In recent years, many women have successfully climbed corporate ladders to become chief financial officers, commercial lenders, accountants and senior managers of financial companies.

"For the most part, however, the world of investment banking and mergers and acquisitions has remained a man’s game.

"That may finally be changing.

"In southeastern Wisconsin, a small circle of women who help buy and sell companies in Wisconsin, around the country and internationally is stepping to the forefront."

The "Meet the players" list at the end of the piece includes very interesting bios.

Former Paralegal Now GC

This "New at the Top" profile of attorney Arleigh V. Closser will inspire those paralegals thinking about law school:

"Position: Vice president, general counsel and secretary, Multimax, a Herndon company that provides enterprise information technology, communications services and solutions to support federal military and civilian agencies and state and local government.

[snip]

"How did you get to where you are?

"I grew up near a small town south of Pittsburgh, as the sixth of seven children. My father passed away while I was young. So I have my mother, Sarah, to thank for somehow successfully raising seven children, all of whom are college graduates. I followed two brothers to Princeton. As a freshman, I made the varsity wrestling team and we won two Ivy League championships. This experience of having to succeed in an extremely demanding academic environment while competing in a Division I sport gave me the confidence to know that one can make and achieve demanding goals with hard work.

"My first job out of college was as a paralegal with the law firm of McKenna & Cuneo. This was fortuitous because the firm was the birthplace of the practice of government contracts law in 1939. So it was only a matter of time before I was assigned to work with a government contracts case -- the A-12, the stealth Navy aircraft that was never built -- which turned out to be the largest default termination of a government contract in history. The case is still in litigation today."

"Too Many Laws, Not Enough Lawyers"

I'm thinking this article means it might be a good time for SOX paralegals to seek raises:

"With business booming at the nation's law firms, the fees they charge will climb steadily. Expect the cost of corporate legal services to continue to increase an average of one and a half times the rate of inflation in coming years. The trend will vary widely by region, with the largest jumps likely in major metropolitan areas.

"What's fueling demand? The explosion of new corporate compliance regulations, spawned in large part by the Sarbanes-Oxley reform law, means businesses have a lot more legal paperwork. Merger mania is also keeping lawyers busy as companies buy and sell one another at a fast clip. Every corporate deal generates a raft of necessary legal documents. Finally, plain old economic growth is underpinning a natural expansion in the market for legal services. As a result, law firms are averaging a comfortable 10% rate of profit growth [emphasis added] per partner per year."

"Corporate Groups Enjoy the Boom but Plan for the Bust"

Corporate lawyer hiring directly affects corporate paralegal hiring. Tighten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy ride!

"It has been a bull market for corporate lawyers, with multimillion- and billion-dollar M&A deals galore. But the recent stock market plunge sent a little chill down the backs of some, a reminder that the high times won't last forever. A day after trouble in the China market dropped the Dow more than 400 points, Fenwick & West corporate group Chairman Daniel Winnike said he was relieved Wall Street had stabilized.

"'If it had dropped another 300 points,' he said, 'then some of the companies might have had second thoughts about some of the M&A deals we're working on.'

"Corporate law leaders like Winnike remember well the dot-com bust that forced layoffs at such star Silicon Valley firms as Fenwick & West, Cooley Godward, Venture Law Group (now with Heller Ehrman) and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich (now DLA Piper) five years ago. As they have built up their departments in this economic upturn, they're applying two key lessons: Diversify your practices [PDF] and hire smarter."

New career opportunities for corporate paralegals!

And most new jobs were made possible by changes in technology:

"Throughout the past two decades, corporate law offices have undergone a quiet revolution. Increasingly sophisticated technology and a much more stringent legal and regulatory environment now provide paralegals with some wonderful opportunities. Many new job prospects involve employment in a section of corporate legal departments that goes by many names, including the office of the corporate secretary, legal entity management [PDF link], the corporate secretaries group and corporate compliance management.

"Like the names of their departments, the corporate paralegals who help run these offices have a variety of titles: corporate records administrator, financial analyst, senior corporate government specialist and manager of corporate information. But the diversity of names and titles doesn’t alter these offices’ and experts’ functions — the total management of their companies’ legal entity information."

VP promotion for securities paralegal

Congrats for this career news!

"Crosshair Exploration & Mining Corp. (TSXV:CXX) has made two executive changes. Greg Davis has been promoted to VP of business development. He has been with the company since December 2004. Julie Bolden has been appointed VP of corporate affairs and corporate secretary. She has worked at a number of Vancouver law firms as a securities paralegal since 1989. Vancouver-based Crosshair is a uranium and gold exploration and development company with projects in Newfoundland and Labrador."

"SEC Pilot Program Gets 17 Test Subjects"

Sounds smart, but what do corporate paralegals think?

"The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has convinced 17 companies to participate in a new pilot program to use interactive data in their financial statement filings—compared to nine under an initiative launched last year. The companies will help the agency explore how new Internet-based reporting technologies can improve the financial reporting process for investors, financial intermediaries, the SEC and the companies themselves.

"The pilot program will simultaneously enable the participant companies to determine the benefits of using interactive data, provide feedback to the Commission, and enable investors and analysts to assess new techniques for analyzing interactive data reports submitted to the SEC in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format."

Baker & McKenzie Partner & Paralegal to Address SuperConference

Regine W. Corrado, partner, & Viswapriya Senthilkumar, senior corporate paralegal, both members of the Chicago office of the prestigious firm, Baker & McKenzie, will address the Paralegal SuperConference in Orlando, Florida, on April 6th.

[Read much more about this conference here!]

Their 2-hour workshop, "Going Global: Formation & Maintenance of Non-U.S. Entities, Branches, & Other Presences," is packed with information. You'll learn about the paralegal's role in the choice of structure, formation, maintenance, & corporate compliance of international subsidiaries, branches, & other presences. Attendees will also learn how to maintain corporate documents & filings, including board consents, minutes, annual meetings, annual reports, delegations of powers, proxies, & other corporate documents for non-U.S. entities.

"Improper SEC and DOJ Cooperation Can Get Charges Dismissed"

For those involved in SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley, & representing public corporations, this is a very interesting article from the Legal Times....

"The aggressive expansion of white-collar prosecutions to areas regulated by civil enforcement agencies sometimes leads to unintended results -- including significant defeats -- for prosecutors.

"In two recent cases trial courts ruled that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to conduct independent investigations. If these decisions are representative of a new trend, the result may impose meaningfully new constraints on white-collar prosecutions.

[snip]

"...two district court opinions, from last year's HealthSouth criminal case in the Northern District of Alabama (United States v. Scrushy) and from last month in the District of Oregon (United States v. Stringer), imposed significant sanctions on the government because of findings of improper coordination between civil and criminal agencies."