Within a generation, Ireland has experienced two extremes of economic fortune. ‘The Celtic Tiger’ (a term referring to unprecedented and uninterrupted growth from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) sickened before 2008, when Ireland faced a deep economic crisis after the property bubble – which the growth was predicated on – burst and consumer spending collapsed.
Since the early ‘80s, Canadian author, think tank CEO and academic Don Tapscott has been exploring innovation, media, and the economic and social impact of technology. As far back as 1995, in his book The Digital Economy, Tapscott was isolating the themes that would define the ‘new economy’. He’s often described as a futurist and, from a position 20 years later, we can see the prescience of many of his predictions: a knowledge economy peopled by knowledge workers, digitisation, virtualisation, ‘internetworking’ and outsourcing, globalisation, and the expectation that workers be more entrepreneurial and innovative as automation replaces many roles. These are all aspects of today’s workplace that many in-house counsel will recognise.
Continue reading “Joining forces: Don Tapscott: and the case for collaboration”
When the global financial crisis (GFC) loomed over the West, multinationals turned their attentions to emerging markets, including many in Asia Pacific. Fast forward to 2015, and jurisdictions like China, Hong Kong and Singapore are key locations for global business, with a huge amount of foreign investment and a driving seat in the world markets. Continue reading “Green shoots: the growth of newlaw in Asia Pacific”
Catherine McGregor (CM): What are the challenges for in-house legal departments when you’re traversing a large number of geographies and trying to communicate across a dispersed department or business?
Richard Nohe: We look at things from a number of different matrix perspectives. You have the geography or the jurisdiction, you have the line of business, then you have the subject matter expert or centres of expertise. Continue reading “Dinner with GC: New York”
After joining the old Aramco [the Arabian American Oil Company] in New York after graduation from law school in 1973, I lived in Saudi Arabia from 1974 to 1980, London from 1980 to 1982, Houston from 1982 to 1989 and then back to the Kingdom just before the First Gulf War. The experience has been a professionally and personally rewarding one. Continue reading “In-house life: David Kultgen Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco)”
In common with in-house lawyers everywhere, our guests have found anti-corruption, bribery and investigations to be an increasing and more compelling part of their workload, notwithstanding the fact that the burden is often shared by compliance and risk departments.
Continue reading “GC Roundtable: Anti-corruption, bribery and investigations, Hong Kong”
GC: Was law your first career?
Maksim Arefiev (MA): My first profession was as a military translator and I served as an officer in the Russian military forces. I participated in several peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia. While on these missions I not only worked as a translator, but also performed the function of civil observer. I worked on a wide variety of challenging tasks, such as resolving conflicts between the Serbian police and Kosovo Albanians, participating in humanitarian missions, and participating in the investigation of various military crimes. Upon my return from Kosovo, I decided to go to law school and become a lawyer. Continue reading “Shopping around”
NYU School of Law professor Kenji Yoshino’s Covering makes the impassioned argument that despite the enshrinement of equality in the American justice system, the right of the individual not to have to ‘cover’ or mute aspects of their difference that are perceived as a ‘choice’ remain unprotected to a large degree – in everyday life as well as the courtroom.
Continue reading “GC reads… Covering – The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights”
Along the way, RPC has taken on an increasingly international focus, making strategic headway into Asia and beyond, building on its existing membership of international network TerraLex.
The Middle East is never boring. The West has long been fascinated by its geo-strategic importance and abundant oil and gas reserves, and frustrated by its variable codification of commercial laws and (in some cases) capricious political stability.