Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
Wrongful deaths are one of the most common causes of death today. CDC reports show that there were 173,040 unintentional deaths in 2020. An unintentional injury death can subject you to a double tragedy of both losing a loved one and landing an inexperienced wrongful death attorney. Hiring the right lawyer is the first step to winning your death suit. If you’re struggling to find such a lawyer, the following tips will help you make the best decision for you and your family.
Adequate research is essential when searching for the right person to handle your case. If you’re having a difficult time, don’t let grief impair your judgment. Investigate the backgrounds of the few attorneys in your area. Ask them if they’ve handled cases similar to yours, and check if they’re properly licensed. If possible, choose an attorney who specializes in wrongful death cases.
The best way to get the right attorney for your case is by asking questions regarding their expertise. Tailor your questions towards the following areas:
Before choosing a wrongful death lawyer, it’s important to check their standing. Are they members of the bar association? Check the local bar association website to see if the attorney you’re considering is a member. If they’re not, look for someone else. Lawyers with leadership roles are the most suitable to handle wrongful death cases. Being a leader means that the lawyer has a goodreputation and has earned the respect of other lawyers.
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A good wrongful death attorney must possess good communication skills. Effective communication is a critical trait that can easily determine whether you win or lose a case. Hire a lawyer who listens to your concerns, understands your fears and answers your questions. Avoid any attorney who doesn’t return your calls promptly. Hiring such a lawyer is just the starting point of inevitable frustration.
Look for opinions from friends and family members. If one of them had a similar case to yours, ask them to refer you to the attorney who represented them. Alternatively, you can ask the lawyer you’re considering if they have any references. If they have you speak to some of their happy clients, consider hiring them. References always provide unbiased answers.
Wrongful death attorneys charge differently depending on the situation. Before you decide on whom to hire, compare their costs. Some lawyers are amenable to working on a contingency fee basis while others aren't.
Choose the wrongful death lawyer to represent your case wisely. These tips will help you find a lawyer with the best experience and clients’ interests in mind. A good lawyer will fight your wrongful death battle and help you win your case.
Syed Rahman, partner at financial crime specialists Rahman Ravelli, outlines why he expects more investigations into wrongdoing relating to COVID-19 loans – and the responsibilities facing businesses.
COVID-19 has now been the main news item for a solid year. So it was perhaps inevitable that the arrest of three financiers as part of an investigation into fraudulent coronavirus loans totalling £6 million would generate its own headlines.
Officers from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA’s) Complex Financial Crime Team apprehended the three men, then released them after searches and interviews and enquiries are continuing. While nothing has yet been proved, the NCA is believed to be looking into allegations relating to the use of false data and documents and trying to determine who – and how many – were actually involved in what went on.
At the time of writing, nobody has been charged with any offence in relation to the allegations. Decisions on whether to charge anybody will depend on how the NCA investigation progresses. But while we wait to see how this most newsworthy of NCA cases is concluded, it would be a huge surprise if we do not see many other similar ones commenced.
Even a senior NCA officer who was involved in the arrest of the three men has warned that the emergency COVID-19 schemes are being subjected to an “eye-watering” level of fraud. Coming from someone who is familiar with financial crime on a large scale, that is quite a comment. But even the briefest of glances at the statistics tends to back up the possibility that the assessment may be worryingly accurate.
Lending under the Bounce Back Loan (BBL) Scheme for small businesses rose to £44.74 billion as of January 24, from £43.54 billion in mid-December. Those who have had the time and opportunity to assess the movements of money involved have predicted that up to £26 billion could be lost, due to either defaults on the loans or through fraud.
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Introduced in May 2020, the government’s loan scheme was devised to give small and medium-sized firms swift access to low-interest finance:
The conditions of a BBL scheme application are:
Given the immense sums of money involved, there will be many who saw the potential to make fraudulent gains, just as there is now an appetite among the authorities to investigate potential abuses of the scheme. It is a set of circumstances that makes it extremely likely that we will be reading about more arrests. The situation that has prompted the large-scale government lending is certainly unique. But the offences that those suspected of coronavirus loan fraud could be charged with were on the statute books long before any of us had ever heard of COVID-19. The Fraud Act 2006 contains a number of offences that may be relevant in relation to fraudulent applications for BBL. Section 2, which creates an offence of making false representations, and section 3, which creates an offence of fraud by abuse of position, are the most likely contenders.
Yet even if fraud was not the intention of businesses that have made a genuine mistake in making an incorrect claim, they may still face investigation. The UK government introduced the Finance Act 2020 in a bid to define the schemes and the support available to businesses during the pandemic. Schedule 16 of this act imposes a burden on businesses to notify HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) of any awards that have been wrongly claimed. It is important to note that these wrongly-awarded sums do not have to be fraudulent. Any business, therefore, that may have made a claim for a BBL in error could still face the full force of the law if HMRC is not notified of the wrongly-made claim.
The offences that those suspected of coronavirus loan fraud could be charged with were on the statute books long before any of us had ever heard of COVID-19.
It is vitally important that all businesses understand that if they have made applications under any of the schemes then there is the strong possibility that they could come under an unprecedented amount of scrutiny. Businesses have to review all their applications and ensure that any mistakes are rectified. If concerns are raised as a result of such reviews – or an investigation is commenced - those involved have to seek immediate legal advice from those with the relevant expertise.
Australia has passed a world-first law that will compel Google and Facebook to pay media companies for content on their platforms.
The News Media Bargaining Code makes Australia the first nation where the government is able to set the price tech companies pay domestic media for hosting content on their platforms if private negotiations break down.
The code was fiercely opposed by US tech giants, with Facebook blocking news content from Australian users on its platform in response to its passage through the lower house of Australia’s parliament.
Facebook has now said it will restore the visibility of these pages, as well as other government- and charity-run pages that were mistakenly blocked. Its reversal follows talks with the Australian government in which it was able to negotiate four key amendments to the new code.
Aside from encouraging tech companies and media organisations to negotiate payment deals between themselves, the New Media Bargaining Code will also compel Facebook and Google to invest tens of millions of dollars in local digital content to ensure access.
In a joint statement, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the code will “ensure news media businesses are fairly remunerated for the content they generate, helping to sustain public interest journalism.”
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Both the Australian government and the US tech giants the new code targets have claimed victory after the completion of negotiations. Among the amendments secured by Facebook si a provision that the government may release tech giants from arbitration if they are able to prove a “significant contribution” to the domestic news industry.
The media code’s signing into law has global significance as other governments weigh the feasibility of similar laws curbing the influence of tech giants in how media is distributed online. Lawmakers in Britain, Canada and the US have expressed interest in the progress of the new Australian legislation.
Simon Farthing, Commercial and Marketing Director at LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions, shows Lawyer Monthly how law firms can properly enhance their business using automation.
A recent survey of C-level executives and Heads of IT and Innovation shows that nearly 80% believe that of all their priorities, automation of business processes and workflows can deliver the greatest benefit to their firms. I wholeheartedly agree.
An opening word of caution: automation and workflow can have varied interpretations. For some they could be a set of simple linear steps for payment approval, for others a complex, multi-threaded legal process flow designed to drive hours out of a matter. So, a good starting point is answering these simple questions:
Without such clarity, you may find yourself with the wrong solution, insufficient resource to achieve the ambition and a lack of significant ROI.
Historically, legal process automation has been focused on taking transactional areas of work and using workflow to minimise human touchpoints. This has been as much due to work type specific cost pressures and restrictions as an exclusive technology fit. Now client expectations of greater efficiency, transparency and swifter turnaround have focused the spotlight on workflow even more.
Historically, legal process automation has been focused on taking transactional areas of work and using workflow to minimise human touchpoints.
Many technology providers will suggest you start your automation journey with something simple. A second word of caution: when selecting a target for automation, start with something difficult. Starting with a straightforward workflow in a lower volume department offers no guarantee of business efficiencies in more complex requirements later.
A mistake when automating processes is to create legal workflows focusing on how the firm typically delivers service – rather than building processes that reflect the way the clients demand that the firm works with them. This is important when selecting the type of workflow tool you need.
Clients are increasingly aware of what they want you from you. There might be common needs across clients such as for management information, targeted SLAs, charging expectations and collaboration objectives – but there will also be unique demands, which may be why they selected your firm in the first place. So, your options for approaching automation are:
Clients are increasingly aware of what they want you from you.
Understand the customer journey – end-to-end – to deliver the best outcomes in the most efficient manner. These outcomes must be more than legal process. For example, if you’re trying to help a client acquire a business, think about the things you need to consider. Say the answer is, “we need instant access to information”. When designing the workflow, you need to determine what’s the information that’s needed, how can it be made available at the point of need in the transaction and so on, right until you’re able to deliver the desired outcome to the client.
Ensure you have the right set of tools at your command so that you can customise those journeys for clients. A law firm wanted to expand its debt management portfolio, but realised that to win the business, they needed to be sharp and tight on costs. In preparation, they categorised the workflows involved in their customer journeys – common processes across all types of clients, and workflows that were unique for specific sub-categories of clients. Thereafter, what other adaptations would be required to win the new debt management portfolio? Within that portfolio, would there be further unique requirements of some of the clients? Finally, how could the current technology enable the firm to establish all these different types of workflows and yet glue the various components together to create a seamless work environment across the business?
In short, look for exceptions at every level and then use technology to build processes and workflows to reflect them. Come up to the highest denominator – i.e., what workflows can you reuse, what workflows do you need to build for a future platform that is suitable for the entire firm and finally, what is that 20% niche requirement that will make a substantial difference for the balance 80%?
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Management information reporting is critical, but a common oversight is not to analyse and determine the data to report on when you’re building the processes. So, when reporting is required, lawyers end up stepping outside of their routine business processes to go to different systems to access the relevant reporting data. If you’re a litigation lawyer, having to record information around ‘reserve value’, key dates and changes in steps, it becomes a nuisance because this data isn’t part of your regular transaction process.
When creating workflows for automation, think about the elements that’ll require reporting on across the transaction journey. By doing so, data will be captured routinely as part of the natural workflow process. This is perhaps why often lawyers become disenfranchised by workflow – firms don’t take a client journey-led end-to-end approach.
Frequently, firms automate what they have already got – leaving them with an old process that has been digitised, not the ideal solution you desire. Remember that you are the master of the technology that your firm deploys – not the other way around. The technology must never take away your control. It must provide a flexible toolset that delivers real ROI on your ambitions.
During a hearing on the SolarWinds breach, which led to hackers compromising several government and business networks, the Senate Intelligence Committee raised the potential benefits of Congress mandating a notification requirement for victims of cyberattacks.
Both ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee – Chairman Mark Warner and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio – stated that Congress should consider enacting such a law. "We must improve the information sharing, of that there is no doubt, between the federal government and private sector,” Rubio said.
While testifying at the hearing, Microsoft President Brad Smith agreed that the government should impose a "notification obligation on entities in the private sector."
He acknowledged that a company asking to be regulated more tightly was unusual but told lawmakers: "I think it's the only way we are going to protect the country."
However, both Smith and FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia suggested that any future law of this kind draw a distinction between “notification” and “disclosure”, requiring victims to notify authorities after suffering cyberattacks likely to affect other consumers or companies, but not requiring the to disclose these incidents to the public until later, once more information has come to light.
"You can have threat data today and have your arms around the incident three months from now," Mandia said.
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The historic SolarWinds breach was discovered in December by FireEye. The firm found that hackers, suspected of being Russian agents, hid malicious software inside security updates that SolarWinds sent out to as many as 18,000 of its client organisations between March and June, including the US Department of Homeland Security. Other government agencies and an unknown number of private companies were also affected.
Also testifying at the hearing on Tuesday were SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz. Ramakrishna did not provide new information on how many of SolarWinds’ clients were affected by the breach.
Jessica Heagren, CEO at That Works For Me, shares her thoughts with Lawyer Monthly on how a commitment to flexible working could empower law firms and their staff.
A common theme from our discussions with law firms is that flexible working is a phase, and one that will pass, as it doesn’t work within the legal industry. But, in my experience, this isn’t true. It’s a positive development and one that deserves the same level of commitment as any other change.
The demand for flexible working is growing, particularly after the year we have just had. It is the future, not least because it benefits firms in so many different valuable ways. The legal sector has so much to gain from offering employees flexible working opportunities: improved diversity, improved culture and in turn, improved performance.
Here’s how:
Not only does flexible working provide flexibility for the employee, but it also provides flexibility for the employer.
A common misconception is that flexible working means no one is in the same place at the same time or that client expectations cannot be met. But at That Works For Me, we have seen every industry make flexible working work from engineering through to accountancy. A more flexible workforce enables a more flexible response to customers. Skills can be imported when they are needed driving cost efficiency and away from the commitment of a full-time salary.
Not only does flexible working provide flexibility for the employee, but it also provides flexibility for the employer.
Flexible working opens the legal sector up to such a wider range of people. This is critical not only for perception but for access to new clients. There is a long-standing issue in the legal sector with the loss of women after they have children. This has led to a significant gender diversity issue, particularly at partner level.
Flexible working makes continuing in law a viable career for them. Parents aren’t expected to choose a life revolving around work or home but can instead have one that encompasses both. We’ve seen it work successfully in banking and finance, so why not law?
As well as more women staying in the legal sector, law firms then don’t have to choose the candidate with the most time over the most skilled candidate to fulfil a role. Offering flexible working options such as remote working or flexible hours widens your recruitment pool massively (such as no location restrictions or restrictions on times available to work). This allows you access to the best possible talent out there and will almost certainly improve diversity over time.
Flexible working leads to more satisfied and productive employees. A study carried out by Stanford University economics professor Nicholas Bloom found that in surveying 16,000 workers at a Chinese firm over ten months, those allowed to work flexibly from home increased their productivity by 13%. This has been proven time and time again by businesses across the world.
There are countless other more tangible benefits. Employees are likely to take less sick leave as they are able to have a more equal work-life balance. Their ability to pursue other interests and hobbies outside of work does wonders for team morale and engagement. People are happier, and happier employees means more loyal employees. Flexible working reduces employee turnover massively, allowing you to keep hold of valuable people in whom you have invested.
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Increased diversity is also a positive attribute to company culture and allows a wider range of opinions, perspectives and experiences to be drawn upon when it comes to problem solving and innovation.
Customers are also more likely to choose companies to work with where they can see themselves in the employees. Diversity therefore directly contributes to new business acquisition.
Demand for increased flexibility by employees is growing exponentially and the talent race already seen in many other industries will shortly be seen in law. 40% of lawyers consider flexible working to be the biggest benefit when choosing a new employer and therefore it’s vital that law firms are representative of the desires and needs of its employees.
Times have moved beyond consideration of flexible working requests as fulfilling a legal obligation. The conversation has moved towards a default position of flexible working options meaning employers need to robustly justify why a flexible working request is refused.
The employers that are winning in today’s market are those who genuinely prioritise employee wellbeing and invest in retention techniques – often by offering flexible working. It’s time to decide which camp you’re in. As an employer, you have a responsibility to your employees to provide them with flexible working opportunities, and with the list of benefits for both employer and employee ever growing, why would you choose not to?
Facebook has announced that it will restore news content to its users in Australia after a standoff with the country’s government last week.
"Facebook has re-friended Australia,” Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reports in Canberra on Tuesday, saying that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had told him that the ban would be lifted “in the coming days”.
Last Thursday, Facebook blocked Australian news sites from posting on the platform, and Australian users were prevented from viewing or sharing content from news outlets of any nationality. Also caught in the ban were various pages run by charitable organisations and government health agencies, disrupting coordination one week ahead of the country’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Facebook claimed that it had been forced to block news in Australia in response to legislation currently being debated in the Senate after passing the lower house last week. The law is intended to create a “fairer” negotiation process between tech giants and news companies and is being observed internationally as a litmus test for further regulation of tech and social media.
Now, Facebook says it has negotiated a change to the proposed media code.
"Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation," said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s Vice President of Global News Partnerships, in a statement online.
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The Australian government will offer four amendments to the media code, including a change to the proposed mandatory arbitration mechanism to be used when tech companies cannot reach a fair payment deal with publishers for displaying news content.
The media code has also been challenged by Google, which threatened to shut down its search engine in Australia if it was instated.
Lawyer Monthly hears more from Alex Smith, Global Product Management Lead for iManage RAVN, on how lawyers can use technology to thrive in their careers.
To build a successful legal career, all you need to do is study law and then apply it, right?
In previous decades, that might’ve been true. But with rapidly growing adoption of digitised processes, it’s essential for legal professionals to embrace technology.
As a lawyer, your ability to understand the way various technological systems work, what data they hold, and what techniques to use to discover important information, patterns, and connections in that data provides an important differentiator.
Put another way: whilst you may have a specific area of expertise in law, the real value of your expertise will lie in your capability to tailor and leverage the information to your clients’ unique situation. Those professionals and those firms that are best able to leverage technology to take a data-driven approach will secure a powerful competitive advantage.
It’s helpful here to provide some examples of how exactly this embrace of technology and data might prove useful in the course of one’s legal career.
Imagine a massive repapering project undertaken for a financial services client in advance of the LIBOR transition that requires reviewing thousands of contracts to see which ones need to be updated. Examining those contracts manually would require a small army of humans and would result in an extravagant bill for the client.
Whilst you may have a specific area of expertise in law, the real value of your expertise will lie in your capability to tailor and leverage the information to your clients’ unique situation.
Technologies like AI can provide an assist here, quickly reviewing huge volumes of digitised documents, and extracting key clauses and relevant data points. This helps these institutions to better assess where the potential liabilities around LIBOR exist, and which documents need to be updated to mitigate risk.
Having gone through this LIBOR exercise, however, financial services institutions will now have a pool of structured data at their disposal, because they’ve already identified and extracted key pieces of information from their documents.
The tech-savvy lawyer will realise that this very same data can be used as a foundation for the next time that the institution has to go through a repapering exercise in response to new evolutions in the regulatory environment or some seismic event with an industry-wide impact, like Brexit. There will be no need to start from scratch or to reinvent the wheel when tackling these events – they will already have data to build upon and leverage, enabling them to nimbly adjust to changes as they arise.
The tech- and data-friendly lawyer can even look at data and spot trends, allowing clients to make proactive moves. Let’s take the case of a firm that specialises in leases and property portfolio work and is under mounting cost pressure. The natural next step is to find a way to do leases more efficiently.
This might involve some process mapping and automation that can wring out some of the inefficiencies; for example, they might encourage basing a lease off of a knowledge asset that is a best practice document for how to do a lease.
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Being more efficient about that process, however, presents an opportunity to be more analytical and provide greater value to the client. Using AI, the firm can really take a close look at the data and identify opportunities within the property portfolio. For example, if the client holds leases in a large high-rise building and 80 of those leases are up for renewal in the next three months, the firm can take a proactive role in either continuing or discontinuing those leases, based on what sort of trends or insights the data is showing.
If there’s a lesson from the above examples, it’s that firms are awash with data. Finding innovative and practical ways to handle increasing volumes of unstructured data is a necessity – and the more structured the data is, and the more standardised the data collection mechanisms are that have been put in place, the better. For firms, this is the path towards optimal results.
And what about our individual lawyer – how best for them to proceed?
In a world where data-driven decision making is becoming the norm, a ‘data curiosity-led’ disposition will give them broad capabilities that sit outside of the traditional sphere of law. Combined with their traditional legal expertise, these will grant them the distinction of being a ‘data-enabled lawyer’ while simultaneously earning a position as a ‘Trusted Business Advisor’. With data in hand, they will be able to creatively design new ways to solve clients’ problems, proactively stay ahead of the curve, and – in the process – genuinely affect positive business outcomes.
The US Department of Labor’s worker safety agency will now be responsible for investigating individual complaints of retaliation for whistleblowers reporting suspected criminal antitrust violations or violations related to money laundering.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will oversee allegations of retaliation against employees under the provisions enforced in is Whistleblower Protection Program, the DOL announced on Friday.
"Until OSHA issues interim final rules, the agency will process whistleblower complaints related to these statutes using procedures under the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century," the agency said.
OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program already enforces the provisions of 20 different whistleblower statutes related to shielding employees from retaliation for reporting violations of various commercial practices.
This new move from the DOL follows the passing of the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act in December, which heightens protections for whistleblowers reporting antitrust violations and offers safeguards to those who provide relevant information on violations of sections 1 or 3 of the Sherman Act.
Under the act, if an employer faces retaliation for whistleblowing, they can file a grievance with the DOL – which, if successful, will force the employer to reinstate the employee with full back pay, interest and special damages compensation.
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New tools specifically designed for tackling money laundering were introduced by Congress in the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, giving prosecutors greater scope for detecting and stopping the movement of dirty money.
Legal sector insiders expect the DOL to shift its focus towards money laundering and antitrust violations once the nomination of attorney general Merrick Garland is confirmed.
Being arrested is an incredibly stressful event that can end in your emotions getting the best of you. Experiencing stressful situations can lead to irrational thinking like telling white lies to avoid confrontation or resisting arrest. While it’s understandable to feel scared and stressed during an arrest, it’s critical that you stay calm and collected to avoid further complications. If you’re unable to remain composed during an arrest, opt for the silent method to sidestep incriminating yourself further.
If you end up facing charges, you’ll need to understand the impact a criminal record will have on your day-to-day life. When convicted of a crime, charges—even minor ones—stay with you. Having a criminal record can restrict you from obtaining a job, living in certain places, and finishing your schooling. To avoid further complications, consider attorney services for expert legal advice and potential record erasures.
Often, guilty subjects fail to hire criminal defence attorneys because they think they can talk their way out of criminal violations. However, refusing representation when guilty is a critical mistake, as experienced criminal defence attorneys help reduce charges and, in some cases, dismiss them altogether.
Make sure to hire a lawyer quickly if your crime penalty involves jail time. The prosecution will be more willing to work with you early on, which means your attorney may be able to get you better case results. In addition, hiring an attorney sooner rather than later gives them time to prepare your case and uncover evidence that can exonerate you.
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If you simply witnessed a crime take place, you’re probably safe to talk with the police. However, if you’re being investigated as a suspect, refuse to speak until you’ve hired a lawyer. Law enforcement can use any personal statements against you in court, which means you should keep discrepancies or other incriminating content to a minimum. By hiring a legal confidant, you’ll have access to guidance to ensure the process works in your favor.
Unless you are a crime scene witness, do not sign anything the police give you without a lawyer present. Signing documentation could further incriminate you, as law enforcement can use it as a confession or incriminating evidence.
Countless individuals in jail are serving time for a crime they did not commit. If you’re innocent, hire an experienced criminal defence attorney to assist you with your case. Often, innocent people accused of illegal activity struggle to free themselves from legal trouble without help from an expert lawyer. When you hire an attorney, they can argue your innocence and ensure exoneration for crimes you didn’t commit.
Finding yourself in the back of a cop car bogged down in handcuffs is a universally unpleasant experience. However, you can free yourself from unwanted bonds and fees by hiring expert attorneys to help you through the legal process.
