Blog: Thought Leadership

A young employee walks into this manager’s office and says, “I think the project might do better if we went in this direction.”

In the U.S., a manager may view this as taking initiative and even make the suggested change. In Japan, a junior (known as kohai) would rarely approach a senior (senpai) so directly. If they were to make a suggestion, it would either be subtle or made through someone more senior (but closer in hierarchy). Why?

Legal writing is full of phrases we use often without always thinking about their weight. If you’ve ever spent time drafting pleadings, you’ve probably used (or at least seen) the phrase “on information and belief.” It sounds harmless enough, even lawyerly, but the more you dig into it, the more questions arise. When is it appropriate to use? What does it really mean?

When a business’s close collaborators begin spreading negative statements about it or revealing its confidential information, raising defamation claims might not be an adequate solution. Instead, a business can mitigate these issues before they occur by entering into non-disparagement agreements with its contractors or associates. This article explores the reasons a traditional defamation claim can be less than ideal in these situations and the ways in which non-disparagement agreements can help overcome those problems.

Finding what courts and legislatures and agencies have written about the law is one thing (databases and AI no doubt help with that). But understanding the law is often complicated, because the law is often complicated.