LAWYERSCHILE EL MUNDO INTERNACIONAL DEL ABOGADO

Rodrigo González Fernández y un grupo de egresados de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad la Republica en Chile ha decidido poner al alcance de todo el mundo de la profesion legal importantes materias en Ingles para ir practicando el trabajo en materia de Tratados internacionales y que nuestra profesión estará en primera linea. Invitamos a todos a opinar, debatir, participar activamente.Es el primer blog legal en inglés de latinoamerica.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

lawyerschile: Special Newsletter Article: How Global Are We?

Special Newsletter Article: How Global Are We?

With all the talk of globalization and internationalisation, I decided to take a look at just how global our industry is. Data, in other words, not anecdote.

To do so, I started with The Lawyer's 2008 "Global 100," its report on the 100 largest global firms. Interestingly enough, all but two are based in the US or the UK, but that's a topic for another day.

Conveniently, they provide the percentage of lawyers who are outside the home country, which is what I was looking for. What, after all, could be a better proxy for how "international" a firm is than the percentage of its lawyers who are not in the original home nation?

I decided to break down the firms as follows:

More than 50% of lawyers outside the home country
From 25% to 50%
From 15% to 25%
And, as a special bonus item, to look at New York-based firms separately.

First, to the results, then, to the discussion.

Quote of the month

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than on a mathematical expectation, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits — of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. Enterprise only pretends to itself to be mainly actuated by the statements in its own prospectus, however candid and sincere. Only a little more than an expedition to the South Pole, is it based on an exact calculation of benefits to come. Thus if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die; — though fears of loss may have a basis no more reasonable than hopes of profit had before.

--The State of Long-Term Expectation, John Maynard Keynes,
"The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)

So What Does This Mean?

Simply put, that we're a lot less international than we think we are.

But a note on methodology: The red bars are UK-based firms and the blue bars are US-based firms (The Lawyer defined DLA as US-based, so I simply followed suit.)

Firms with more than half their lawyers overseas are international by any measure. Interesting is that 7 of the 10 firms filling this category are UK-based, including all of the Magic Circle. Indeed, if your coin-flip on DLA came up the other way--and if Baker & McKenzie is tagged as a sort of one-off representative of very little--then you could argue that 8 of 9 are UK-based, with White & Case the only clearly US-origin, powerfully international firm.

Turning to the 25%--50% cohort, 5 of the 13 are still UK-based; but this is the last we'll see of UK firms. In other words, all UK firms in the Global 100 have at least 25% (it's actually more than 33%) of their lawyers outside the UK.

In the 15%--25% tier, all 14 of the firms are now US-based.

You will note that on that chart I also drew a red line across at the 20% level. Why?

My seat of the pants instinct is that firms with fewer than 1 in 5 of their lawyers abroad cannot lay serious claim to being "international." Yes, we could certainly debate whether the line should be drawn at 10%, 20%, or 25%, but I think we can all agree that line belongs on the chart somewhere.

And, if you agree with me that 20% is a sound cutoff, then only five of the 14 firms shown there remain "international"--the rest are below the 20% mark.

Finally, I couldn't resist taking a look at New York-based firms.

Only five of the 13 New York-based firms lie above the 20% cutoff, and two of them don't even clear 5% (Paul Weiss and Proskauer).

I stand second to none in my loyalty to New York, but this compels a troubling question: If the world is going more global (it is), then what plans do these firms have to adapt to that reality?

To be sure, heretofore (at least until, say, the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley), being focused on New York provided a powerful strategic base. In a way, what these firms have done is entirely understandable, if it might strike those with a more international orientation as suboptimal.

But, as they say, that was then and this is now.

Just this week, I was discussing what the contours of the post-Great Reset financial world order might look like with a UK-trained lawyer (Cambridge) who has spent a fair amount of his career in New York, and I found that I could not take issue with his belief that "on the other side" of this financial crisis the City of London would emerge stronger than ever. Consider:

Not only could the Legal Services Act permit and compel all sorts of fascinating innovation, but the Financial Services Act is a more consistent, comprehensive, and simply "lighter" regulatory framework than the US's current alphabet soup of turf-war battling state and federal regulators. (Sadly, so it appears as of just this morning's headlines, the Obama Administration has run up the white flag in the fight to change that before battle was even joined.)
If you want to do business in the span of one day with North America, Europe, and Asia, London occupies just about the perfect time-zone.
The infrastructure is already there. Do not underestimate this. Remember when Frankfurt was destined to be the next London, or at least the London of the EU? I believe one substantial reason that never happened is Frankfurt's relative lack of financial, legal, and "support" infrastructure--"support" including everything from black cars to IT specialists, caterers, and graphic designers.

Oh, and another thing about New York firms' relative lack of overseas presence: What might that do to their law student recruiting efforts in the long run? Not just foreign-born, but US-native law students are increasingly interested in a stint abroad. Judging by the chart above, that could be a challenge for some of these firms.

But one can always hope. Hope that Sarbanes-Oxley will be repealed, hope that the Members of Parliament will find a way to screw things up, hope that US financial market regulation might finally be rationalized and not just BandAid'ed over.

Or one could start laying plans to move to London.

Comments or thoughts on this article?

The editor is always in.

Fuente:

Adam Smith, Esq.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Little Black Book: Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days

Paula Black's Little Black Book For the next 48 hours Paula Black will be offering an impressive opportunity to anyone who purchases "The Little Black Book: A Lawyer's Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days." Readers who purchase the book will receive "The Smart Lawyer's Toolkit," a compilation of advice from more than 30 of the most sought-after experts in the legal arena (including myself!). Click here for details.

Tags: Marketing

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Larry Bodine

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Posted on June 17, 2009 by Larry Bodine

Blogger Not Surprised that Black Lawyer was Hired as "Marketing Tool"

Heather Milligan, law firm marketing, marketing director Former associate Venus Yvette Springs, an African-American lawyer at Mayer Brown's Charlotte, N.C., office has filed a Title VII discrimination suit that claims the law firm used her as a "marketing tool" before firing her in 2008.

So what? says Heather M. Milligan, Director of Marketing at Barger & Wolen in Los Angeles, and author of The Legal Watercooler. She derided the claims in the lawsuit, saying, "I hate to break the news to anyone reading this: EVERY lawyer in the firm is a potential "marketing tool" for the marketing department."

Springs, a magna cum laude graduate of Duke Law School, alleges that when she was hired in 2007 there were only two other African-Americans at the firm's Charlotte office and no others in the real estate practice group where she worked. (For a copy of the complaint, visit Above the Law).

"Springs was hired, in whole or in part, because the Charlotte office needed to increase its number of African-American attorneys," the suit says. "Upon information and belief, firm documents refer to the hiring of an African-American as a 'marketing tool.' Springs was used as a marketing tool, asked to attend on behalf of Mayer Brown bar and other functions where diversity would be perceived as a positive."

Springs says she was fired despite high marks from her superiors in part to make way for a white female employee hired to bring in business from Bank of America. Above the Law reported that there were significant layoffs at Mayer Brown in November. Charlotte and New York were hit hard when the firm let go of 33 attorneys just before Thanksgiving. Mayer Brown said in a statement that they believe her claims have no merit.

"Grow up," Milligan wrote. "We're all tools of the firm because we are part of the firm's success or lack thereof (yes, even I am a tool of the firm). "I hate to break the news to anyone reading this: EVERY lawyer in the firm is a potential "marketing tool" for the marketing department.

You write well? I'm making you editor of the blog. Tool.
You speak well? You are off to that conference. Tool.
You present well? You are representing the firm at the exhibit hall table at the industry conference. Tool.
You social?? I'm sending you to any and every cocktail party, table of ten I need to fill. Tool.

"We all have a role to play. Those who embrace these roles will find success within the firm's political structure, and through their business development efforts. Those who reject it ... well, good luck finding a new job once your lawsuit hits the Internet."

Tags: Current Affairs

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Larry Bodine

Green Shoots? Not So Fast...

Indicia:

Is This Bull Cyclical or Secular in the WSJ, which contains the following observations as well as the following chart:
- Many investors are now calling the rebound in stocks since early March the start of a new bull market. But it could be only a temporary respite from a longer-term bear market dating back to the beginning of this decade.[...]
  
  Historical data and the still struggling economy seem to point to the latter case, called a cyclical bull market in a secular bear market.
- In late 2001, Ned Davis Research, a market analysis and money-management firm, raised the idea that stocks had entered a secular bear market, a long period of flat or declining stocks. That idea gained traction last autumn as stocks fell below levels of a decade ago [and the firm now] considers this the fourth secular bear market since 1900. The last one, from 1966 to 1982, ended when the Federal Reserve moved to aggressively crush inflation.
  
  These "secular" cycles run for long periods; secular bull markets have lasted from six to 24 years and bear markets 13 to 16 years.
  
  [They also say] the rise in stocks since March 9 qualifies as a bull market, but [not] as marking a transition into a new secular rally. That is in part because, according to the firm's calculations, market valuations didn't fall far enough during the sell-off.
  
  [Based on Ned Davis' calculations], the S&P fell to a P/E of roughly 12 in early March and is now just shy of 16, which compares to a 40-year median of 16.5.
  
  "You compare that to the 1970s where we got down to P/Es below 10 and stayed there until 1982," says Tim Hayes, chief investment strategist at Ned Davis. The current secular bear market, he says, "is mature but it can go on for another several years." [...] For now, at least, those who think this is the beginning of a long-lasting bull market are few and far between.
The ever-verbal Paul Krugman (I refrain from characterizing him further, even though he's a Nobel Prize winner from the Princeton economics department, which alone should put me in the blindly celebratory camp), wrote in today's Times under the heading Stay the Course, that it's far too soon to declare victory over the economic downturn and that those who believe "the economy is already turning around" "should be ignored" because at best the recovery policies "have pulled us a few inches back from the edge of the abyss." He believes we're at profound risk of falling into the notorious "liquidity trap"--think Japan in the 1990's. ("Liquidity Trap 101:" When a country's nominal interest rate has been lowered to or nearly to zero without resulting in appreciable stimulus. Since interest rates cannot go into negative territory, monetary policy is thus exhausted and a deflationary mindset can set in. It ain't pretty.)
Far more impressively, Wharton Business School (Are Happy Days Here Again?) says, among other things:
- Several Wharton experts express fairly pessimistic views about the recovery -- predicting that positive growth may not be here yet, and that even when it does arrive, it will probably take several years for employment rates to return to so-called normal levels. Even if the U.S. gross domestic product turns positive by the end of 2009, they note, the American economy will remain close to the bottom of the large trough that began in late 2007, with a long way to climb for jobs, home prices and other key economic indicators just to get back to where they were.
  "Many of the underlying problems remain -- and we still haven't seen the worst in terms of consumer problems." It gets worse:
  - 12% of US homeowners are behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure
  - Consumer credit card debt may be the next shoe to drop
  - Commercial real estate hasn't even begun to come out of its swoon
  - The country as a whole is over-store'd and over-mall'd
  - Wharton finance professors tend to believe more banks need to fail. In this regard, it's interesting that the "stress test" assumed under the worst case that unemployment would hit 8.9% this year. Of course, it's already at 9.4% and (for my money) headed to double digits.
  - "Structural" joblessness may linger even when some leading indicators turn positive. According to the BLS, 27% of the country's 12.5-million unemployed have been jobless for more than six months. If sectors such as manufacturing, including the 800-pound gorilla in that sector, autos, don't recover to where they were, "many people in their late forties and early fifties may never get jobs again."
  - Consumer savings rates are now at 4.2% vs 0.9% in 2004 through 2007.
Then we have the enormous question of whether interest rates will rise as investors (see: China) decide that spiralling federal deficits as far as the eye can see demand higher returns. Higher interest rates are of course the worst of all possible worlds at the moment: Cyclically reinforcing higher deficits at the same time they tamp down what private sector investment may be left. US Treasuries yields are currently at a six-month high (the 30-year bond is above 4.5% whereas as recently as January it was at 2.5%--an 80% rise).
Finally, permit me to add my own favorite risk: That we are embracing "too big to fail," and that we will adopt such a super-precautionary regulatory structure that we will end up getting neither "destruction" nor "creativity" in our financial system. If we go down that politically tempting and incumbent-friendly path, we will delay our recovery by untold years and its vigor by the stunting or loss of unknowable innovations.

And yet.

As I talk to senior law firm leaders domestically and abroad--I am chastened to report--one of the most widespread sentiments I hear is, "We're coming out of the woods. Aren't we? Aren't we??"

To be sure, I understand the strong, almost desperate, desire to hope that a return to the good old days is just around the corner. Life was simple; life was good.

Yet the more I see first- and second-hand of organizations in distress, the more pivotal I believe is the power of collective denial.

Do we need to fundamentally re-examine our business model? Can leverage grow to the sky? Will clients huff and puff about rate increases but ultimately (and quickly, in fact) submit? We prefer the easy and familiar answers to these questions, not the clear-eyed and unblinking answers.

Medicine teaches that in the human body pain serves a purpose; it alerts us to something that needs to be attended to.

Perhaps our world is not so different. And fundamentally denying the message that pain may indicate the need for some change leads to the antithesis of a cure. The morphine drip, the third glass of wine, the wishing and hoping for a return to "normal," the espying of "green shoots" while the thunderheads are rising: None of these is healthy.

Have I become the anti-optimist, then? Au contraire. Few things are more certain in my mind than the long-run demand for sophisticated, bespoke, and yes, costly, legal services:

Globalization is not ending, it's accelerating.
Worldwide capital flows have not stopped, they're sluicing in new directions.
Cross-border projects will grow.
Regulatory regimes are not getting simpler, they're getting more complex.
And yes, financial innovation will--I promise you--return.

But I'm a worried optimist, and right now the emphasis is on "worried." I'm worried that we're not doing enough to remodel our firms for the post-Cravath System order. I'm worried that we will not get serious about re-inventing the seriously broken associate career path model. I'm worried that we will scurry back to the familiar dominance of the billable hour without thoughtful and heartfelt experimentation with alternative billing. I'm worried that we will embrace complacency. I'm worried that we will face the New Normal with a resolute stance of denial.

Joseph Schumpeter taught us that the genius of capitalism is creative destruction. Too many of us are focused exclusively, paralyzingly, on destruction. To accelerate the dawn, we need to focus on creativity.

Bernanke

MORE INFORMATION:

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Court Withdraws Ruling Over Judge's Conflict

The Washington Supreme Court has withdrawn a landmark ruling in a public records case in response to complaints that the opinion could benefit a separate lawsuit filed by one of the justices who decided the case. The court issued a one-page order withdrawing its earlier ruling and saying that the case will be scheduled for a new round of oral arguments "in due course."

According to the Seattle Times, Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders (pictured) wrote the majority opinion in a case that capped a 12-year quest by Armen Yousoufian to obtain documents from King County about public funding of Qwest Field. The opinion concluded that $124,000 in fines and $88,000 in attorneys' fees ordered against the county by a lower court were not nearly enough. Sanders said the fines against the county for withholding documents should have approached $100 a day, which could add up to as much as $900,000.

But the county's lawyers complained that Sanders had a conflict of interest... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 17, 2009

Fuente:
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Cloak-and-Dagger Justice

Perhaps it was a dark and stormy night when Scott W. Stucky was sworn in as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. It took place on a rain-slicked pier outside an abandoned warehouse. He wore a trenchcoat and a fedora with its brim turned down. A mysterious woman looked on, dressed all in black. The man who presided stood in a shadow, a diamond ear-stud reflecting a distant light.

Or perhaps not. But as Michael Doyle observes at the blog Suits & Sentences, Stucky is the latest federal judge to write an opinion in the hard-boiled noir style epitomized by authors such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. "There was something odd about the electric razor in the bathroom," the opinion begins. "[She] typically changed clothes in the bathroom and for the past year had felt that she was being watched, a feeling that she attributed to paranoia."

It is a style other judges have attempted, Doyle notes, with mixed results. The most notable judicial stab at noir came last year from Chief Justice John Roberts, in a dissent opposing a denial of writ of certiorari in Pennsylvania v. Dunlap. His dissent begins... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 17, 2009

The One in Which Sonia Sotomayor Reverses Herself

This is a tale of two class actions filed in one court, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the first, Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion that set a new standard for class certification. In the second, she joined the three-judge panel that expressly disavowed her first decision.

The first case, decided in 2001, was In re Visa Check/Mastermoney Antitrust Litigation. It was an antitrust case that sought certification of a class action on behalf of merchants against Visa and MasterCard. The trial court certified the class under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the credit card companies appealed.

The main issue on appeal was whether the report of the plaintiffs' expert was sufficient to support class certification. The defendants said the report was flawed and they objected to its use. Writing for the two-judge majority of the three-judge panel, Sotomayor affirmed the certification, holding that the standard of expert testimony for certification of a class is less than on the merits of a case. The testimony should be admitted, she said, as long as it is not "fatally flawed."

The district court correctly noted that its function at the class certification stage was not to determine whether plaintiffs had stated a cause of action or whether they would prevail on the merits, but rather whether they had shown, based on methodology that was not fatally flawed, that the requirements of Rule 23 were met.

Five years later, the 2nd Circuit again faced the question of the correct standard to apply in certifying a class action. This time, it was a securities case... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 17

CEP THE CHILEAN INFLATION TARGETING EXPERIENCE AND THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

THE CHILEAN INFLATION TARGETING EXPERIENCE AND THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

Vittorio Corbo (Presenter)
Otros Documentos: 5 June 2009

Content

Ver contenido en Español

Presentation at a Conference "Ten Years of Inflation Targeting in Poland Compare with the Experience of other Countries", Organized by the National Bank of Poland, June 5-6, 2009.

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vcorbo_Poland_Conference-eng.pdf Presentación en inglés realizada en el seminario

Other publications of the author

Vittorio Corbo

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Spence: I Am Famous Because I Am Selfish

Gerry Spence is nothing if not interesting -- other than sometimes too enamored of himself. We can deduce that much simply from his preference for suit coats made of fringed buckskin. But the latest blog post from this Wyoming trial lawyer is more interesting than most, if only for its ability to suggest so much about the man in so few words. I can't decide whether its title, "Next Post," is a mistake or a cryptic message, but here is the text of the post, in its entirety:

Some folks ask how did I become so well known, or "famous." That is mostly a matter of luck. I took cases that I thought were important, that turned me on. I was selfish. I wanted to satisfy my own needs, namely, to engage in something meaningful. I wanted to help, but that is because I needed to help, and in the end, that is taking care of one's self. Being selfish for the right reasons is the trick. I have not always been successful there.

Cases "that turned me on." We know what he means, but there is something about how he says it... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009 at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Fiancée Can Get You Fired

Your employer cannot fire you because you pursue your rights under Title VII. That is unlawful retaliation. But can you get fired because someone close to you -- to wit, your fiancée -- filed a Title VII claim? That is the unique issue decided this week by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Thompson v. North American Stainless.

The short answer, as decided by the court, is that Title VII does not protect the person who did not directly engage in protected activity. But as Ross Runkel recounts at LawMemo Employment Law Blog, it took a panel of 16 circuit judges to come up with that short answer, and they split 10 to 6, with three different dissenting opinions filed.

The plaintiff, Eric Thompson, claimed he was fired in retaliation for his fiancée's discrimination charge. Thompson met the woman, Miriam Regalado, at work in 2000. In 2002, Regalado filed a charge with the EEOC alleging that she was discriminated against because of her gender. Three weeks after the employer received notice of the charge, it fired Thompson.

The issue for the 6th Circuit was whether Title VII created a cause of action for third-party retaliation. Runkel explains how the court came down... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009 at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Minow Named Dean of Harvard Law

Harvard Law School announced today that it has named Martha Minow as dean to replace Elena Kagan, who left to join the Obama administration as solicitor general.

A member of the Harvard Law faculty since 1981, Minow is described in the announcement as a "distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from international human rights to equality and inequality, from religion and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation, from family law and education law to the privatization of military, schooling, and other governmental activities."

Minow chaired the law school's curricular reform efforts of recent years and was recognized with the School's Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence in 2005.

She is the author of five books... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009

Casting Call for Sotomayor

In the world of theater, to encourage someone to "break a leg" is to wish them good luck. Supporters of Sonia Sotomayor can only hope that proves true in the theater that is the Supreme Court confirmation process, after her stumble Monday at La Guardia airport in New York left her with a broken ankle, crutches and a cast.

Within hours of the mishap, Sotomayor was on her way back to Washington to continue her rounds of meetings with senators in advance of her nomination hearing in July. Given the lofty and solemn post to which she is nominated, she could hardly expect well-wishers on Capitol Hill to kneel at her feet and sign her cast. So the ever-resourceful Democratic Party has come up with an alternative... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009

Lawyer Tapped as First FOIA Ombudsman

An office created by Congress in 2007 to provide policy guidance and mediation services for Freedom of Information Act activities throughout the federal government finally has a director -- a lawyer with substantial experience in promoting open government. The National Archives and Records Administration announced that Miriam Nisbet has been named director of the Office of Government Information Services.

Since 2007, Nisbet has been in Paris, where she is director of the Information Society Division of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. She oversees two major programs that support libraries and archives in developing countries and that promote new communication technologies for education, science and culture.

Formerly, Nisbet was legislative counsel at the American Library Association responsible for... [MORE]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

lobby: Lobbyists boost D.C. spending

Lobbyists boost D.C. spending

By Casey Ross

Globe Staff / June 9, 2009

Text size – +

Despite the recession, Massachusetts companies and interest groups have sharply increased spending in Washington, D.C., to influence how federal officials distribute more than $1 trillion to revive the lagging economy.

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In the first three months of the year, local firms spent $14.4 million to lobby the US government, according to federal records, 21 percent more than in the first quarter of 2008. Also, the number of Massachusetts companies hiring lobbyists increased 14 percent this year, to 320.

"That spending is up this year is a telling reminder that lobbying is a very different kind of industry," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors the influence of money in politics. "It may seem counterintuitive during an economic decline, but many companies feel it's a good way to maximize their chances at shaping legislation that will affect them."

Industry specialists gave several reasons for the increased spending on lobbying, including a change in presidential administration that brought new faces to the seats of power and a new bounty of government spending initiatives, most prominently the $787 billion stimulus package.

Companies and other parties that lobby the US government are required to disclose their activities quarterly to the US Senate. But the disclosure forms provide few details on the filer's interests, other than to indicate generally which areas of federal policy or certain proposed laws or rules they are lobbying on.

Still the forms show that some firms have nearly doubled their spending over last year, while others were compelled to hire lobbyists for the first time because of conditions in their sector.

First Wind Energy LLC, a Newton-based firm that runs wind farms nationwide, hired Washington lobbyists after the market for tax credits that finance its projects collapsed during the larger credit crisis last year, according to the records. First Wind spent $120,000 to get access to US lawmakers who were working on a proposal to revive the use of tax credits for renewable-energy projects.

"This is absolutely critical both to our company and to the growth of renewable energy across the country," said Carol Grant, vice president of external affairs for the company, which is seeking funding to build four wind farms in New England.

Grant said First Wind representatives met with lawmakers to discuss problems with the financial markets and ways to restore credit. The Obama administration is still developing guidelines for the energy incentives approved in the legislation.

The top spender in the first three months of the year was Waltham-based Raytheon, which reported its lobbying costs increased to $1.36 million, 24 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2008, according to disclosure forms filed with the US Senate. The firm reported lobbying numerous agencies, from the Department of Defense to the Federal Aviation Administration to the CIA, on defense and transportation matters, as well as on the economic stimulus bill.Continued...

A Raytheon spokesman said the company would not comment on its lobbying spending.

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Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. reported one of the largest increases in lobbying costs: $790,000 in the first quarter, 41 percent higher than the $560,000 it spent a year earlier. MassMutual indicated it lobbied lawmakers, the Department of Labor, the Federal Reserve, and other agencies on economic stabilization proposals and issues related to pension reform and taxation.

A spokesman declined to discuss the firm's lobbying activities. A financial services powerhouse, MassMutual did not apply for or receive any of the funds the US government set aside to revive the ailing sector.

Lobbying activity typically increases with the arrival of a new president, as the incoming administration launches an array of policy initiatives and spending programs.

About 60 Massachusetts entities, ranging from energy companies to local governments to universities, reported lobbying officials on the stimulus program, although it is difficult to get an accurate count because of the vagueness of the information on the disclosure forms.

Sensitive to concerns that lobbyists would influence the course of the stimulus package, President Obama issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to post online their contacts with lobbyists over the $787 billion plan. He also created a federal oversight board to monitor how the money is spent.

Other matters Massachusetts firms lobbied on include healthcare reform and regulations affecting drug companies, the $700 billion financial industry bailout, and energy and environmental issues.

Among other firms that increased lobbying activity were:

Sepracor Inc., a pharmaceutical company based in Marlborough, spent $1.3 million, up from $20,000 in the first quarter of 2008. The firm indicated it lobbied members of Congress on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, according to federal disclosure forms.

Sepracor officials did not return a call seeking comment. The company makes drugs for the treatment of allergies and asthma. In 2008, the federal agency that oversees Medicare cut the reimbursement rate for Xopenex, its main asthma medication.

State Street Corp. reported spending $210,000 on lobbyists, a 24 percent increase, according to Senate records. State Street said its records indicate its lobbying expenses were flat.

The firm reported lobbying members of Congress on international tax policies, economic recovery legislation, and banking regulations. A spokeswoman said the firm also lobbied lawmakers on rules relating to pensions and investment funds. The company has applied to return the $2 billion it received from the US Treasury last fall as part of the government's program to inject capital into the financial system.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge increased lobbying by $80,000, to $180,000, citing interest in legislation related to drug safety and hepatitis C.

Casey Ross can be reached at cross@globe.com.

more information:

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/06/09/dc_sees_sharp_spike_in_lobbying_costs_by_mass_firms/?page=2
Fuente:boston.com
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Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU