Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an online resource for employment law needs (see article below), a desktop search utility, software for making image-only documents searchable, an extranet add-on for Time Matters, and an iOS reading app. Don't miss the next issue.
Add a Team of Employment Lawyers to Your Firm With One Click
If your law firm represents businesses, you probably field lots of questions about employment law even if that's not your primary specialty. In the old days, a client would call you up, ask about an employment law issue, and gladly pay to have your firm research the answer. Or draft an agreement. Etc. Nowadays, they still ask such questions, but don't want to pay for time spent on ramp-up research or drafting a document from scratch. Small firms have it especially tough as they don't have the resources to write off research and lack a large library of "routine" model documents.
PLCLabor & Employment … in One Sentence
Practical Law Company's PLCLabor & Employment is an online service that provides employment law practice guides, model documents, state surveys, and more.
The Killer Feature
No request makes lawyers feel as conflicted as the multi-state survey. They're lucrative but involve a lot of mind-numbing research. And as noted above, clients no longer want to pay law firms to invent a wheel that they feel must already exist.
And in this case the wheel does indeed exist in the form of PLCLabor & Employment's State Q&A Tool. This database summarizes state laws on various topics such as anti-discrimination laws, background check laws, drug testing laws, hiring requirements, leave laws, non-compete laws, wage and hour laws, etc.
"PLC's State Q&A Tool, like all of our other resources, helps lawyers work efficiently so that they can focus more time on the higher-level advising that clients value most," Practical Law Company CEO Jeroen Plink told us.
Other Notable Features
PLCLabor & Employment also includes downloadable model documents in Microsoft Word format. You'll also find Practice Notes, which are how-to guides written in plain English. Think of them as roadmaps for practice. Topics include corporate transactions and bankruptcy, cross-border and immigration and employee data, and monitoring and privacy among others.
The service also saves you time on executive employment agreements with its What's Market tool that consists of data culled from agreements filed with the SEC. You can create custom trend reports using filters such as industry, market capitalization, and governing law. You can also browse agreements and compare provisions within agreements (280G, clawback, base salary, etc.).
What Else Should You Know?
A team of lawyers who previously worked at employment law powerhouses such as Jackson Lewis and Littler Mendelson create these materials. They also serve as your reference librarians. Tell them what you're working on and they will email you links to the applicable resources. You can try PLCLabor & Employment for free. The annual subscription provides unlimited use. Learn more about PLCLabor & Employment.
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