Hillary Smith

I have reviewed hundreds if not thousands of job postings for legal counsel in my almost 25 years of practice, and so many of those postings continue to expect the applicant to be both extremely detail oriented, and to manage a large volume of agreements within very short deadlines. There simply is no such beast - at least I have never met one. I highly recommend the job posters use "Smart enough to identify the risks involved, and experienced enough to know whether those risks are real." That nets realistic candidates with the right skills, in my opinion.

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There is finally a practical approach to supporting the legal needs of clients. Time to break from the traditional law firm model with excessive rates and often little practical in-house experience. Give OGC a try. You will not regret it.

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On September 16, 2024, partner Trent Norris will be leading an insightful session on "Greener and Cleaner: When Good Deeds Can Get You in Trouble" at the California Retail Law Summit 2024. The session will delve into the various challenges retailers face, from navigating longstanding state laws like California’s Proposition 65 to adapting to the innovative Extended Producer Responsibility regimes now adopted in five states. These changes will significantly impact the packaging and presentation of products on retail shelves in the coming years. Details can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eyxTHQX5

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Consumer privacy concepts and rules do not always translate well in the employment context (at least in the US). In CA, the CCPA and regulations issued by the CPPA use language that sometimes literally makes no sense when it comes to employees and job applicants. Employers are left wondering how the hell do I comply (some would even throw in an expletive or two in this question)? Last Friday, for what I think is the first time, a member of the CPPA board seemed to acknowledge the need for guidelines specific to how employers subject to the CCPA should handle employee data. Whether that will result in more rules for / burdens on employers vs. just clarification of existing obligations is yet to be seen. Perhaps a glimmer of hope. Here is the #FisherPhillips brief recap of the key moments from the May 10 CPPA board meeting. With David Shannon. https://lnkd.in/gXjAr4CQ

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On September 16, 2024, partner Trent Norris is leading a session on "Greener and Cleaner: When Good Deeds Can Get You in Trouble" at the California Retail Law Summit 2024. The session will delve into the various challenges retailers face, from navigating longstanding state laws like California’s Proposition 65 to adapting to the innovative Extended Producer Responsibility regimes now adopted in five states. Details can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eyxTHQX5

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Thanks to Law360 for publishing our article on the new privacy litigation trend in California -- Song-Beverly Credit Card Act claims based on online transactions. And thanks to Desirée Hunter-Reay for helping write it. Hopefully, we can nip this trend in the bud before it turns into another CIPA Pen-Trap situation. https://lnkd.in/gvgyrFMz

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Whether you subscribe to multiple streaming services or multiple food delivery services (or likely both), if you live in CA, cancelling those subscriptions is getting easier. CA's already strict automatic renewal law just became even stricter and those offering subscription products will need to update their terms and practices. #subscriptions #autorenewallaws https://lnkd.in/etKzH8e3

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Enjoyed hearing investors at Thoma Bravo, Sapphire Ventures and Hg discuss how AI advancements are shaping PE funds' strategies. Predictions on services that will be enabled by generative AI are guiding investment decisions, helping funds to avoid certain investments. The panel anticipates a surge in PE interest in native generative AI companies as deployed software products transition from earning test revenue to recurring or consumption-based revenue. #AI #PrivateEquity #InvestmentStrategies #VentureCapital

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🏢 Big Moves in SF Commercial Real Estate! Intuit & Capital One 🏢 Two major financial firms are making strategic relocations within San Francisco: - Capital One is reducing its office space by two-thirds, moving from 201 3rd St. to 40,000 sq. ft. at 100 California St. This deal includes significant improvements to the new location, enhancing tenant experiences with new outdoor spaces and on-site amenities. - Intuit is downsizing from 200,000 sq. ft. at 22 4th St. to 36,500 sq. ft. at 505 Howard St. The move aims to leverage San Francisco's diverse talent pool while optimizing their workspace for future growth. These moves highlight the dynamic nature of SF's commercial real estate market and the need for adaptable, strategic office solutions. At Resource, we specialize in guiding companies through such transitions, ensuring seamless relocations and optimized space utilization. 🔗 Discover more about our tailored real estate services: yourresource.com #SFRealEstate #CommercialRealEstate #CapitalOne #Intuit #OfficeRelocation #RealEstateStrategy #ResourceCRE

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Very helpful overview of the current state of the patchwork of US #privacy laws. IAPP

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During YC S24, Herbert Turner and I have soaked in an incredible amount of advice from our partners as we scale &AI. One of the obvious, but highly effective points is simply “talk to your customers.” We’ve taken it to heart, and each week meet with as many lawyers, inventors, and patent agents as we can. From our 100+ conversations, we’ve discovered that people are spending tens of thousands of dollars and multiple days in lead time on incomplete prior art searches from outsourced search agents. These searches then have to be refined either directly by patent lawyers or through feedback to the search agents in an iterative loop, wasting even more time and resources. There are over two decades of research literature in using machine learning and other algorithms to automate prior art searching, but there have always been a few key problems: 1. 🧠 Proper semantic understanding: In spaces like IP litigation, you are not just looking for relevant prior art, but prior art that invalidates the subject patent’s claims. Even when broken down into subtasks, this requires a nuanced understanding of patent text that previous models weren’t powerful enough to achieve. With the new wave of LLMs, we can now successfully create these subtasks and combine them into an automated solution with optional human feedback and intervention. 2. 🔍 Quality evaluation: Although patent data is all publicly-available, there are few resources for properly evaluating an invalidating prior art search. Our team has done the time-consuming, intensive legwork of converting office action citations and IPR decisions into evaluation datasets to tune and validate our systems. 3. 📈 Scale: The worldwide patent corpus is finite, but large and growing at an increasing rate. The NPL corpus is even larger. Hosting the raw data with our insights and analysis in an instantly searchable way requires robust, scalable systems. Over the past year, we’ve evaluated various software and built a tech stack we’re confident can handle over a billion publications. If you’re an attorney, inventor, or investor who struggles with getting high quality results from expensive prior art searches, we’d love to talk to you! #legaltech #yc #patents

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Thank you Claire Solot of the Legal Services Funders Network for bringing her ⭐️ #starpower to our Nixon Peabody LLP San Francisco #ProBono Celebration Lunch. Did you know? According to the State Bar of California •55 percent of Californians at all income levels experienced at least one civil legal problem in their household within the past year. · Californians sought legal help for fewer than one in three legal problems. · Californians received no or inadequate legal help for 85 percent of their problems. · The most common categories of civil legal problems affecting Californians at all income levels are health, finance, and employment. Claire’s organization is trying to bridge this #JusticeGap by bringing together funders from law firms, private foundations, individual donors, legal organizations, corporations, and others to fund solutions! https://lnkd.in/gcS9sTPs Matthew Richards Sharmaine Heng Emery Lewis #legalservices #lawfirm

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Join us as we discuss AI Strategies, Data Privacy and emerging trends in AI implementation

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California has amended its venture capital diversity reporting law through SB 164. Perkins Coie partner Arman Pahlavan highlights the main substantive changes, including extended deadlines and a focused scope, in this article. #VentureCapital #VentureCapitalCompanies #Diversity #SB164

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This Thursday, June 13th, I’ll be presenting on the topic of “Getting to 'Yes' in Contract Negotiations” for the @ContractNerds community alongside Olga V. Mack, Laura Frederick, and Nada Alnajafi. This is a topic that I love, and I'm excited to discuss it with my terrific co-panelists. What you'll learn: ✔️ Winning strategies to change a “no” to a “yes” during a complex or urgent negotiation, particularly where you don’t have as much leverage as your counterpart. ✔️ Strategic tactics to successfully respond to refusals to negotiate such as “we don’t accept any redlines” or “we cannot agree to that change.” ✔️ How to customize your negotiation strategy based on demographics, technology, benchmarking data, and other real-life variances. ✔️ Plus, panelists will answer questions submitted in the registration form so if you have a specific negotiation question, please be sure to include it in the form below! REGISTER HERE: https://lnkd.in/eV7i9b94

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Sharing one of the valuable things I learned from super-lawyer Brian Gordon in his webinar "Key Legal Issues for Early Stage Companies" today: I asked Brian during Q&A: "What are the biggest mistakes that early stage entrepreneurs make that lead to legal problems?" Brian's insights: "Having a founder who isn't committed. The founder group is like a marriage. And if it doesn't work out with one of the founders, it's basically like a founder divorce, and that can be hard. The biggest mistake is not building in procedures, such as for vesting. Make sure that in order to get X% each founder is worth if the company is successful, that they have to put in the right amount of time." Extending that, my best advice in choosing co-founders, based on my own experience in business: 1) Look for a good match. Choose wisely and your startup life can be blissful (I'm grateful that I've had good experiences in this regard). Choose poorly and it can be difficult and expensive to undo. 2) Practical and tactical: choose co-founders who not only have complementary technical/business skills, but who also have shared values and who have good conflict resolution skills. 3) Then communicate openly. Use good human relations in working with each other. Resolve conflicts in a constructive way, and early while they are small, before they become larger and more difficult. Finally, I've worked with Brian Gordon a couple of times. He's a business attorney who I respect. I've been impressed with how he's given back to the Atlanta startup community over the years. Enthusiastically recommend.

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Employee terminations: they're a topic no one wants to discuss but that every company has to navigate. Thankfully, Melanie Naranjo and wonderful Ethena advisor (& Gusto's former People Leader) Jess Yuen are tackling this tricky topic for the next Ethena webinar. Register if you want to learn more about these topics: How to pressure test whether or not termination is the right course of action Best practices for communicating termination decisions How to minimize risk and choose the best course of action when things get tricky Critical pitfalls to avoid

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