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Our series recapping the Epstein Becker & Green webinar on the Supreme Court’s Decision regarding Obamacare continues! Today, we’ll be talking about the impact of the upcoming election on the plan, as well as the implications for employers. 

Impact of the Upcoming Election

Lynn asked the panelists to comment on the Presidential election and the swing states, saying that there wasn’t even agreement among the panelists as to which states are the swing states. Bill agreed, and said that both political parties count different states as swing states. He thinks that the six states that both parties agree on as swing states are Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

Some Republicans think other swing states include Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, while Democrats think Arizona and North Carolina are swing states. Bill said that if you look at the six, and you look at what the various parties and independent organizations are doing, they’ve centered on these states, and that’s where almost all of the money is currently being spent. Continue Reading SCOTUS Decision on the PPACA – Impact of the Upcoming Election & Implications for Employers

Yesterday, we talked about the overview and analysis of the SCOTUS decision about the PPACA, and today, we’ll begin with talking about the implications for the states.

Lynn said that she wanted to build off of Stuart’s point about federalism, and discuss what’s going to happen at the state level. The state is going to have to decide whether to expand its Medicaid program, whether to do an exchange or not. States, like the federal government, also have an executive and legislative branch. The ACA requires the establishment of exchanges in each state, and if a state does not do it, there will be a federal exchange. Lynn said we’ve seen movement by the Obama administration for perhaps a hybrid exchange, where the feds come in where the states need extra capabilities. Continue Reading PPACA – Implications for the States – A Recap

In my last post, I talked about using Twitter as a broadcast tool, and Nancy Myrland added some valuable comments to the discussion about making sure to incorporate as much personality as possible.

Today, we’re going to talk about what many people consider to be the most important use of Twitter – engagement. As Nancy always says "Twitter is a contact sport." 

So how do you engage with your Twitter followers? It’s the same as you would in real life – share others’ posts and tweets, comment on their tweets, start conversations and periodically reach out to them. Then, take these relationships offline – meet people for lunch who are in the same city as you are, or when you’re traveling or at a conference. Continue Reading Twitter: Effectively Leveraging Twitter as a Business Development and Marketing Tool – Part III

Following yesterday’s interlude about settings, we’re back to Part II of LinkedIn’s applications! I’ll focus on a few important ones, and briefly talk about the ones that might not be as meaningful for you. 

We’ll start with Company Buzz.

Company Buzz

We’re going to be talking more about Twitter in a later series of posts, but I’ll give you a very quick overview. Since Twitter says it best, here’s what they say about themselves: 

Twitter is a "real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting." You "simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations." 

"At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you – you can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context, and embedded media.  You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos, and other media content." 

Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – Is there an App for That? Part II

So you’ve got your profile almost complete and you’ve started to connect with people in your network…now what? 

There’s so much more you can do with LinkedIn, but we’re going to start with what I think is the most important – engaging.  There are a few ways you can do this, including answering questions and joining and participating in groups, but today, we’re just going to focus on how you can engage with people through your home page and profile.

I recently suggested to some of our lawyers at our Annual Conference that they set LinkedIn to open when they log into their web browser, so that they can spend five minutes a day connecting to someone.  A number of them thought this wasn’t reasonable, but even five minutes a week can make a difference.Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – You’re Connected…Now What?

Yesterday’s tutorial covered how to export your contacts from Outlook and upload them into LinkedIn.  But this is limiting – although it cuts down on the investment of time you need to make in order to connect with people, it doesn’t give you the flexibility of personalizing the invitations to make engaging more likely – and that’s the goal with social media: engagement!

So today, we’re going to go into more depth about adding contacts manually.  I’m the first to admit that manually adding contacts is a pain, and can be time consuming.  But if you take the time to send a personal note to those you add, they’ll be more willing to accept your invitation and subsequently engage with you.  You don’t have to take a whole afternoon to work on this – I know everyone is busy!  Instead, when you first come in to the office in the morning and are having your cup of coffee, log into LinkedIn and add five people.  It won’t take you very long at all, and soon you’ll have a nice list of connections built up.  Even if you do this once a week, it will make a difference.Continue Reading LinkedIn Tutorials – Let’s Get Connected! Part II

On the first morning of our 2010 ILN Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston, we had a fascinating presentation from Beirne Maynard & Parsons’ Brit Brown and Ben Escobar on "Deepwater Gulf Oil Spill – An Energy Update." 

A Little Oil History…

Brown started by saying that it used to be incredibly easy to find oil in Texas – it would just bubble up.  The first oil well was actually the Drake Oil Well in Pennsylvania and it produced about 400 barrels a day.  About the same time, they figured out how to distill oil into kerosene, and that became the cheap alternative to well oil.

The well oil industry started to boom, and the first gusher was Spindletop, which started on January 10, 1901.  Brown said that it was a phenomenal gusher by any standards, taking nine days to control. It only went to 1,100 feet, which is a relatively shallow well by today’s standards.

Spindletop was outside of Beaumont, Texas and produced, during the gushing stage, about 100,000 barrels of oil a day.  To compare, Brown said that the government estimate for the Macondo well was a high of 63,000 barrels a day when it was gushing into the Gulf.

Brown said when that well came through, they started drilling "like it was going out of style," and within a year, they had about 300 producing wells.  This started to go down after a time, but in 1927, it hit peak production.  The field had a peak production of 21 million barrels a year, which was incredible for this period. 

However, things have changed. Brown said that in Texas, the railroad commission used to be like OPEC.  Even in the 50’s and 60’s, the railroad commission controlled all of the oil and gas production in the state of Texas.  They acted like OPEC and could actually control price.  They started to lose that edge going into the 1970’s, when the US hit peak production.  Ever since, production has been going down.

Where Are We Now?

Brown said that the greatest oil production (based on barrels of proven reserves) is in the Middle East, followed by South and Central America, Europe and Eurasia.  The US proven reserves is right about 28 billion barrels, which is not a lot when you consider that the US consumes about seven billion barrels of oil each year and was once the largest producers of oil in the world.  

Brown compared US consumption of oil (7 billion barrels a year) to production, which is about 2.6 billion.  He said that oil provides about 90% of our motor fuel, and 40% for total power.  He commented that the demand for oil has increased, resulting in the US having to import 75% of its oil and added that at the current rate of consumption, it would take the world 45.7 years, approximately, to exhaust the world’s current proven reserves.  Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Deepwater Gulf Oil Spill – An Energy Update

Yesterday, part I discussed the Chinese and Hong Kong perspectives on the global financial crisis and its effect on their business. Part II will talk about the Vietnamese perspective and the justice systems in China and Vietnam.

Peter asked Phan Nguyen Toan from LEADCO what he was seeing in Vietnam, saying that a number of US companies are looking to Vietnam as an alternative for production and manufacturing. Phan agreed that Vietnam is similar to China, in that they didn’t suffer much from the economic downturn. He cited their recent entry into the international community as one reason for this. He said they are struggling in some ways, saying that a company recently opened a big factory, where they were planning to recruit 10,000 workers. After two years, they had only been able to hire twenty percent of the qualified workers. He added that they were also facing additional issues of poor infrastructure, particularly the seaport, airport, and transportation systems. 

However, Phan noted that they have some distinct advantages in Vietnam as well, such as the lower costs for good resources. Secondly, he said that the Vietnamese people tend to be very hardworking and eager to learn. The country is rich in natural resources. Phan added that the population of Vietnam is very young, with about 50% being under 35.Continue Reading How Has the 2009 World Economic Downturn Affected the Asia Pacific Region? A Re-cap from 2010 Annual Meeting (Part II)

In addition to our regular Annual Meeting, we also had a special session for our Asia Pacific delegates to discuss the strengths of the firms in the region, recent cases they had been handling, and the interesting and important question of "How has the 2009 world economic downturn affected the Asia Pacific Region?" This question prompted a discussion of the current marketplace that may be of greater value than just to the attendees.

Scott Guan from Jade & Fountain in Shanghai kicked off the discussion with an update from China, saying that they hadn’t been hit as hard by the global financial crisis as some of the other markets. The effects that they’d seen were mostly in the areas of cross-border work, as well as foreign-related financing, M&A, and capital markets work. He’d seen a greater impact of the crisis on multinational law firms in China, who have had to lay off a lot of lawyers.  

But this has turned out to be an opportunity for a local law firm with international expertise, such as Jade & Fountain.  The firm was recently ranked as one of the top 10 fastest growing Chinese firms by the Asian Legal Business journal. Scott said that because there are so many qualified lawyers on the market from these multinational firms, who his firm wouldn’t have had access to in a more prosperous economic situation, they have been able to actively recruit these attorneys. Because of the firm’s well-designed partner incubation system, the firm has brought in attorneys from Allen & Overy, Freshfields, Allens Arthur Robinson, Baker & McKenzie and Jones Day.Continue Reading How Has the 2009 World Economic Downturn Affected the Asia Pacific Region? A Re-cap from 2010 Annual Meeting (Part I)