Category: News

Do You Need In-House Counsel?

The law is mysterious, even to the most sophisticated CEO’s. It is sometimes illogical. It is often frustrating. It is always expensive.

When a company reaches a certain size, sooner or later the CEO is going to consider whether or not hiring an in-house lawyer makes sense. Sometimes it is prompted by concerns over the cost of outside legal service. More often it is triggered by frustration at artificial limitations imposed by law and the unpredictability of the legal system. Companies sometimes fall victim to frivolous lawsuits, suffering the apprehension of the threat they represent. This is compounded by the expense of having to defend when they should not have to. The company’s officers do not understand why it is so difficult to get rid of what is so obviously wrong as the ongoing expense continues to eat into the bottom line.
At some point, frustration at the law intersects with frustration at the cost of lawyers. That is when companies begin to wonder if they can get more personalized legal service at the same cost and start to think it might be a good idea to hire in house counsel.

These are the factors that often drive the decision to hire in-house counsel.
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In Full Howl

Last week, the Supreme Court eloquently reaffirmed the continuing vitality of the First Amendment. In doing so, it confirmed again our commitment to freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas as the critical engine of American liberty.

In its opinion, the Court wrote:
“The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech.”
“The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.”
“The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
“If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens for simply engaging in political speech.”
One might have thought such ideas quite uncontroversial.


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Bold Plan Seeks to Wrest Control of Federal Land

New York Times By Keith Schneider – April 8, 1995

When it comes to outsiders, especially those wearing military uniforms and suits, the ranching and logging families of Otero County have always been a little suspicious.

But one newcomer, a Los Angeles lawyer whose monogrammed white shirts and splashy ties contrast with his clients’ dusty boots and jeans, has become something of a hero.
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TAMING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
1st Amendment Rights Coming Back On Campus

Investor’s Business Daily – May 16, 1994

At Occidental College in Los Angeles, “unwelcome jokes, invitations, comments and looks” no longer put a student at risk of suspension or expul­sion.

For John Howard, counsel and founder of a new Los Angeles-based nonprofit group, the Individual Rights Foundation, the mystery is that they ever did.

Howard, through IRF, last year persuaded the college not to expel fraternity Alpha Tau Omega for pub­lishing a ribald limerick in its newslet­ter.

That case is among some two dozen similar pro bono suits he has filed on behalf of students facing punishment by colleges and universities for crimes of expression.

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Campus Speech Wars: Waving the Tacky Shirt

Insight Article By Richard Miniter January 24, 1994

Summary: In the mid-1980s, collegians suddenly had to worry about being “politically correct:’ Since then, this ideal has wrapped its tentacles around campus debate, smothering free speech in the name of sensitivity. Now someone’s fighting back.

In 1991, Rep. Henry Hyde, an Il­linois Republican, sponsored leg­islation that would have made it easier for students at both public and private colleges to sue over First Amendment issues. The bill was in­tended to help students who felt their right to free speech had been stifled by “PC” crusaders – liberal activists who have managed to make “political correctness” the most pressing issue on American campuses. But Hyde could find only 25 cosponsors and the bill languished. The “PC backlash” went nowhere.
Indeed, since the PC wars began in the mid-1980s with skirmishes on the canon – should Plato or Sappho be required reading – college ad­ministrators have become hypersen­sitive to the needs of women and mi­norities. Perhaps as a consequence, arguments over what should be taught in the classroom have given way to acrimonious debate on civility – how to make students get along on campus.
Pressured by vocal groups espous­ing multiculturalism, both public and private universities have adopted speech codes directed at students and faculty. Intended at first to cur­tail incidents of “hate speech;’ usu­ally racial slurs, such codes have been extended to regulate all aspects of campus life – students have been asked to remove Confederate flags from their dorm rooms and forbidden from talking with outside journalists without permission.
Howard takes on speech codes.

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Sombrero Scrap

The Washington Post by Nat Hentoff January 1, 1994

At the Riverside campus of the University of California, a fraternity recently created and distributed a T-shirt that has unexpectedly made First Amendment history.

On the shirt is a drawing of a man watching the sunset. He is wearing a serape and a sombrero and holds a bottle. Also shown is a bare-chested man with a six-pack of beer in one hand and a bottle ·in the other. At the front of the drawing is a bar, Papas & Beer, much frequented by America.n college students crossing the border.

An inscription circling the drawing was taken from an anti-racist song by Bob Marley: “It doesn’t matter where you come from, as long as you know where you are going.”

Demanding that the fraternity, Phi Kappa Sigma, be punished was MEChA (the Movimienlo Estudiantil Chicano de Azllan). A spokesman charged that the shirt “dehumanizes- and promotes racist views of-Mexican people.” Not only was the shirt impermissibly offensive but, said MEChA, it was the very model of “fighting words” under the university’s code of community values because it could provoke’ violent reaction.
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Campus Speech Codes Are Being Shot Down As Opponents Pipe Up
A Fraternity Sues and Wins Over a T-Shirt; Alliances Target ‘PC’ Universities


Thought-Cops Get a Lesson

Wall Street Journal Article By SARAH LUBMAN December 22, 1993

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -Is the party over for the “PC” movement -shorthand for “politically correctness” -on college cam­puses?

Growing evidence indicates it just could be. A swelling student backlash, litigious-minded public-interest groups and a rash of unfavorable court decisions are beginning to sweep aside or challenge the movement’s most controversial icons: campus speech codes, and anti-harassment­ policies that sometimes impinge on free-speech rights.

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Free-speech ‘vigilante’ nemesis of campus PC

The Washington Post by Valerie Richardson March 29, 1993

SAN FRANCISCO –, John Howard had watched it happen many times before. A campus group -· usually a fraternity -runs afoul of the college speech code with a crude song, limerick or chant. Protests follow, the administration is pressured to act, and the group is eventually disciplined, suspended or thrown off campus. This time the group was the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at California State University at Northridge (CSUN). The Greek society had been slapped with a 14-month suspension and was on the brink of losing its charter after posting a flier for a Mexican-theme party “in honor of Lupe; apparently referring to an ob· scene drinking song about a Mexican· can prostitute.
Enter Mr: Howard, San Diego lawyer, constitutional law expert and self-described “First Amendment vigilante.” Working with the Crater· attorney, he filed a lawsuit against the university for damages arising from what he claimed were violations of the Zetas’ right to freedom of speech.

It worked. Earlier this month, the administration agreed to drop the suspension after just two months, despite an outcry from women’s groups and the university’s chapter of the ” Movimiento Estudiuntil Chicano de Aztlan. In return, the fraternity· agreed to apologize publicly and participate in “dispute resolution” seminars.

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