Author: Doug Cornelius

You can find out more about Doug on the About Doug page

Corporate Responsibility Weathering the Economic Storm

State of Corporate Citizenship in the United States

The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship released their findings in the 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship in the United States.

Despite the upheaval in the economy, a majority of U.S. companies are not making major changes in their corporate citizenship practices. Of those who made changes: 38% reduced philanthropy/giving, 27% increased layoffs, and 19% reduced R&D for sustainable products.

The State of Corporate Citizenship in the United States 2009 is a joint project of the Boston College Center and The Hitachi Foundation. The report is free, but requires registration.

Social Networking for Legal Administrators

ALA

I am giving two presentations today to the Boston Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators at their 5th Annual One Day Educational Conference. In the morning, my presentation is Social Networking 101 and the afternoon is Social Networking 201.

Social Networking 101

This session is for those who don’t know about social networking and want to find out what it is and how it is used.

Here is the slidedeck on the basics of how law firms and legal administrators can use these tools:

Social Networking 101

Social Networking 201

The afternoon session is with Henry Chace and Scott Katz of Burns & Levinson LLP. We will focus on the potential benefits, which tools are appropriate, and useful, in a professional environment, and the pitfalls to be aware of as you deal with the social networking tools.

Join Me at Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 SF

On November 4, I will be out in San Francisco at the West Coast Enterprise 2.0 Conference on this panel:

Social Media: Policy Formation and Risk Management

Policy formation, risk management, media relations, and governance programs become a critical requirement as organizations assess implications to the enterprise arising from employee participation in social networking sites and use of media. Issues related to security, confidentiality, intellectual property, data loss protection, brand image, compliance, and human resources (i.e., ethics/conduct) are critical to address before problems arise. In this panel session, Principal Analyst Mike Gotta of Burton Group will moderate a discussion with practitioners involved in social media strategies.

I will be on a panel with these folks:

  • Mike Gotta of Burton Group
  • Christopher Burgess, Cisco – Senior Security Advisor
  • Scott Mark, Medtronic – Enterprise Application Architect

Redefining Risk

risk

Maybe we should define risk as what needs to go right, instead of what could go wrong.

Although I would like to claim credit for this view of risk, it came from James Bone of Global Compliance Advisors, LLC. I met James at a Compliance Week round table last week discussing risk management and regulatory developments for the financial services industry.

By changing the definition, you are now looking at risk through the operations of your company and its business plan. You are no longer the doomsayer, worrying about the myriad of things that could go wrong, some of which are likely to highly unlikely. You are now focusing on implementing your company’s business plan.

Compliance and risk professionals need to keep an eye on what may go wrong. But, as James points out, it is just as important to make sure things are going right.

Image is by anarchosyn: RISK AWR WC T7L LosAngeles Graffiti Art
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24293932@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

IDC Task Force Report Identifies Key Characteristics for Strong Compliance Programs

IDC

Independent Directors Council published a new task force report on the characteristics of a strong mutual fund compliance program. These include an ethical, compliance-focused “tone at the top;” a collaborative approach by the fund’s chief compliance officer; a risk-based program tailored to the fund and the adviser’s business; transparency and candor among the CCO, fund board, and adviser; and knowledgeable staff armed with appropriate resources.

The adoption of the fund compliance program rule (Rule 38a-1 under the Investment Company Act of 1940) in 2003 presented mutual fund boards with the required addition of a chief compliance officer to administer the fund’s compliance program.

The report does not break any new ground or propose radical changes. But it does provide some resources to think about and evaluate compliance.

One of interesting structural issues with mutual funds is whether the CCO should serve as the fund’s and adviser’s CCO or only as the fund CCO. By separating the role, you remove potential conflicts. Plus, the fund CCO could serve as a useful complement or counterpoint to the adviser’s CCO. But the fund-only CCO may feel like an outsider and a threat since most of the employees will be working for the adviser.

Intellectual Property and Social Media

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This afternoon I am at the Harvard Club in New York City participating in Social Media: Risks & Rewards, an Incisive Media event. These are my notes from this session. Now that you are in social media, how do you deal with trademark and copyright issues? How do you protect them?

Speakers:

  • Valerie L. Boccadoro, Senior Intellectual Property Counsel of Toys R Us
  • Lesley Rosenthal, Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.
  • Robert Ambrogi, Attorney of Law Office of Robert Ambrogi

Bob started off with a 12 part copyright quiz.

  1. Linking is not copyright infringement
  2. If it does not say it’s copyrighted, it’s not protected. False.
  3. As long as someone uses only uses an except they are free to republish it as fair use? False.
  4. If a material is copied for non-commercial use, it okay? No.
  5. A tweet is not protected by copyright law? False.
  6. If it’s old, I am free to use it. False.
  7. I am not liable for copyright infringement committed by others on my site. False (There are protections to the site owner, but you need to meet the specific requirements.)
  8. As the publisher I am free to grant permission to use material posted on my site. False. The writer holds the copyright.
  9. If I paid for it to be created, I own the copyright. False. This is subject to the “work for hire rules.”
  10. The copyright owner retains control of material posted to a social networking. False. (Although it may depend on the site and its term of service.)
  11. If it’s under a creative commons license, it is free to reuse. False. Creative commons is just a licensing structure.
  12. If material is posted anonymously, it is not copyright protected. False. The creator still holds the copyright.

Valerie was up next. Social media does not create any new rights. But things do move faster. There are things that they should do. First, you should do site sweeps, checking out sites and see how people are using your trademarks. The second step is to consider whether to enforce the trademark against the third party. Valerie provided a series of legal issues to consider and business issues to consider. The third step is report problems to the sites. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have procedures for dealing with these issues. The fourth step is the traditional enforcement. Start with asking before bringing in the lawyers. The reality is that you cannot stop all infringement.

Last up was Lesley. She pointed out that non-profits have many of the same issues as businesses. She focuses on educating the people in her organization. Lincoln Center has several Facebok pages and Twitter handles. They are experiencing astronomic growth in fans and followers. They have lots of focus on clearing rights in their publications. You need to enforce or you risk abandonment of the mark.

Social Media Best Practices

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This afternoon I am at the Harvard Club in New York City participating in Social Media: Risks & Rewards, an Incisive Media event. My second panel presentation is Social Media Best Practices. (My morning presentation was Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media.)

I was joined on the panel by:

  • John Lipsey, Vice President Corporate Counsel Services of LexisNexis, acting as the moderator
  • Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks
  • Eugene Weitz, soon to be former Corporate Counsel of Alcatel-Lucent
  • Daniel Goldman, Legal Counsel of Mayo Clinic

Unlike the earlier presentations which focused on what the company should be doing, this panel is focusing on how the individual lawyers in the audience could use social media to help them.

Here is the slide deck we are using:

Social Media Best Practices

Vanessa will be starting off with some highlights from her 2009 Networks for Counsel Studypdf-icon. (A Global Study of the Legal Industry’s Adoption of Online Professional Networking, Preferences, Usage and Future Predictions.)

Then Dan spends some time leading the discussion about Twitter.

I take over and talking about blogging as a personal knowledge management tool. You can get some sense of what I am going to say if you read Why I Blog.

Eugene then focuses on online professional networking. (He hates the term social networking.) He makes a case why it is particularly useful for in-house counsel.

We end with a discrete set of takeaways for the audience.

I plan to present two takeaways. First, listen to what people are saying about you and your company. Set up a Google news search and a Google blog search for your name and your company’s name. Second, use a blog as a personal knowledge management tool.

Vanessa has a great 20 minute action plan.

Your Business and the Social Media Sensation

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This morning I am at the Harvard Club at the Social Media: Risks & Rewards conference. The line-up for this panel:

  • Moderator: Monica Bay, Editor-in-Chief of Law Technology News
  • Michele Mitchell, VP of Audience Development and Retention of NBC Universal
  • Cheryl Givner, Managing Counsel Worldwide Marketing & Core Products of MasterCard Worldwide
  • Nicole Black, Of Counsel Fiandach & Fiandach
  • Andy Mitchell, VP Digital Marketing and Marketing Development of CNN Worldwide

Cheryl started off look at corporate brands in social media. Her first point was the United Breaks Guitars video complaint. Over 5.5 million people saw this and created a viral backlash against United. MasterCard runs a lot of analytics on what people are saying about the company. They just launched a Twitter feed: @MasterCardNews.

Niki emphasized the need for goals. But at the minimum, you need to know the basics of how these tools work. Then she moved on to the benefits of some of the major social media tools. She emphasized that professional networking and personal/social networking overlap. (Aren’t some of your professional colleagues also your friends?) People want to connect with a person when dealing with legal services.

Niki also pointed out that if you”lawyer-up” when you are subject to negative social media attention you are likely to increase the negative publicity. Demanding that someone remove criticism of your company is more likely to backfire.

Andy took the microphone to discuss how CNN has been using social media and how they involve their audience. There was the first presidential Twitter debate last year. CNN moved on to Facebook and took advantage of the Facebook Connect tool. The first test of their use of Facebook was one of the vice-presidential debate (“Debate the Debate”). CNN was out on the cutting edge of these tools for a mainstream media company. They generate tremendous traffic, updates and views. He made a strong case for how much consumers want to engage with brands. “Give up some control of your brand (But not so much that you risk harming your brand)”

Michele focused on social media trends. She emphasized the importance of a feedback loop. After all the ability to easily connect with consumers is a key way to leverage social media.

There was a question from the audience that emphasized the need to engage the legal department in developing the tools. An example was a marketing promotion for a hashtags sweepstakes and free shipping special. It ended up with a complaint from a state attorney general.

My first presentation is scheduled right after this one. I already published the outline and materials for the event: Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media.

Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media

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This morning I am at the Harvard Club in New York City participating in Social Media: Risks & Rewards an Incisive Media event. My first presentation is Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media with David Morris, Group Counsel of TripAdvisor Media Group and Howard Greenstein, President of The Harbrooke Group.

The approach we took in creating a policy is to first decide the company’s position on using social media: Deter and block, Neutral or Actively Engage. Since are three of us on the panel, we each plan to take one of these positions and discuss a variety of topics that should be considered in a social media policy.

Here are the introductory slides and topic slides:

Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media

Here are some sample social media policies that we shared with audience:

I also keep a ragtag collection of good policies and good articles on drafting policies using Delicious bookmarks: http://delicious.com/dougcornelius/blogging_policy.