Lawyer
decries lack of access to justice - 27 October
A Gaborone lawyer has charged that lack of access to the
judicial system for all remains a challenge that should be
continuously addressed. Speaking at the Law Society of Botswana
cocktail party to honour senior legal practitioners in Gaborone
last Saturday, Doreen Khama said access to justice is a
fundamental right, just like education and healthcare. She urged
legal brains in the country to issue an urgent call to
government, lawyers and judges for action to find solutions to
the access to justice 'crisis'. - Mmegi
Online website
Pitfalls
of cross-border investigations - 28 October
Against the backdrop of the recent banking and financial markets
crisis, enforcement agencies around the world are increasingly
collaborating to investigate allegations of accounting and
financial fraud, insider trading, Ponzi schemes, bribery of
foreign government officials, other securities law violations,
tax evasion, money laundering and antitrust violations.
Accordingly, multinational and domestic companies with
substantial overseas footprints are conducting more
multijurisdictional and cross-border internal investigations in
an effort to respond to the enforcement agencies'
investigations.
These
multijurisdictional and cross-border investigations tend to
multiply the magnitude of complex investigatory issues that a
company faces in government investigations by the Department of
Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York
State Attorney General or other US federal or state enforcement
agencies. Among many others, these issues include data privacy
laws or other blocking statutes (eg, state secret laws),
employee-friendly labor laws, attorney-client privilege issues,
language and cultural barriers, conflicting information
technology platforms, document retention policies and practices
that fall short of US standards, and improper application by US
government agencies of Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal
Matters Treaties or Memoranda of Understanding. - law.com
website
See also
:
South Africa.
Ponzi haul was
R12bn
Wal-Mart
to require outside law firms to have flextime policies - 27
October
Law firms must have flextime policies if they want to do legal
work for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Wal-Mart associate general counsel
Joseph West said his company will add the flextime requirement
to its current list of criteria used to evaluate outside law
firms, the National Law Journal reports. The retailer
also decides whether to hire law firms based on
cost-effectiveness, performance and diversity. - ABA
Journal website
Survey
says : women lag far behind as rainmakers - 26 October
In its fourth annual report on how women are faring in
the profession, the National Association of Women Lawyers has,
for the first time, zeroed in on women as rainmakers. The
conclusion: Women are "surprisingly weak" in bringing
in new business. The group found that at 46% of law firms
surveyed this year there weren't any women among the top 10
rainmakers, while 32% had one, 15% had two, and 6% had three or
four. - The National Law
Journal website
Zimbabwe's
lawyers withdraw from justice conference - 28 October
Zimbabwe's main professional associations, including the law
society and "Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights", will
not attend a conference organized by the ZANU-PF-controlled
justice ministry. The withdrawal of the professional groups
represents a serious blow to the fragile unity government. A
government-sponsored conference, scheduled to get underway
Thursday in Victoria Falls, was to be the first of its kind
since the unity government came to power in February. Delegates
were to discuss access to justice for all Zimbabweans and the
systems through which justice is delivered in Zimbabwe. VOA
News website