http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Business-Communication/Legal A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Business Communication and Legal in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Business-Communication/Legal http://tc.eserver.org/31785.html http://tc.eserver.org/31785.html In 1992, the American Bar Association released the MacCrate Report, which listed the ten skills and four professional values that all attorneys need and critiqued law schools and state bars for not doing enough to teach and encourage the development of these skills and values. In response, law schools have significantly increased the skills-based components in their curricula, and most state bar exams now include a performance test. Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs already provide substantial instruction in all of the skills and values described in the MacCrate Report; further, an education in TPC prepares graduates to excel in law school and on the bar exam. This knowledge offers opportunities for growth if educators, administrators, and scholars take steps to encourage students to consider not only writing for but also joining in the legal profession. http://tc.eserver.org/31423.html http://tc.eserver.org/31423.html Professional communicators and attorneys have long stood side by side as both fought to win in court—one in the court of law, the other in the court of public opinion. These two sometimes wary compatriots, however, are now beginning to partner more frequently to garner the best results for the executive suite. http://tc.eserver.org/31466.html http://tc.eserver.org/31466.html Many employers have determined that there is a need to monitor employees' computer usage. According to a 2003 survey by the American Management Association, more than half of U.S. companies engage in some form of e-mail monitoring. Often, this is in addition to monitoring work-related communications and activities—including reviewing Internet usage, videotaping the work-site or recording employee telephone calls. More and more employers are engaging in some form of monitoring. Unfortunately, without a full understanding of the risks, employers may open themselves up to potential lawsuits. In addition, such techniques may result in low morale among employees who resent being told that they cannot use e-mail for personal messages and feel that their every move is being monitored. http://tc.eserver.org/31015.html http://tc.eserver.org/31015.html Explains how a leading global law firm manages its market and client research. Outlines the firm's divisions, business activities and client base. Explains in detail how the firm uses business research, covering use of market intelligence on the business issues that an individual client faces, and the gathering of intelligence about the client, to disclose the nature and extent of the firm's ambitions to advise the organization concerned. Discusses the staffing of a law firm's business research capability, pointing out that not only staff expertise but also confidentiality concerns mean that it is not always efficient for lawyers to access internal and external information sources directly. Suggests that defining the minimum business research necessary improves the usefulness of the information delivered and saves the firm time -- and that removing the uncertainty about what is required improves job satisfaction as well. http://tc.eserver.org/30843.html http://tc.eserver.org/30843.html The passage of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) spawned a series of compliance and ethics programs--the revised Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations known as the Thompson Memo (Thompson, 2003), the revised Federal Sentencing Guidelines that included the Effective Compliance and Ethics Program and the corporate 'culpability score' (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2004), and another revision of the Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations now known as the McNulty Memo (McNulty, 2006). These programs were meant to shift business toward an 'organizational culture that encourages ethical conduct and a commitment to compliance with the law' (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2007). These developments spurred human resource departments and legal counsel to draft new workplace policies to embrace, implement, and monitor compliance programs. Consequently, there was a dramatic increase in the number of businesses with some kind of ethics training: from 44% in pre-guideline 1987 up to 92% in post-guideline 2005 (Berenbeim, 2006). Because compliance with the McNulty Memo and Federal Sentencing Guidelines can substantially reduce an organization's sentence of improper conduct or cause the government not to prosecute (Berenbeim, 2006), an organization under investigation could turn to its newly minted compliance programs and its cooperation as a shield. But these federal guidelines lacked a clear definition of an organization's 'cooperation' and whether a lack of cooperation could be viewed as obstruction of justice and thereby increase punishment of that organization. http://tc.eserver.org/29755.html http://tc.eserver.org/29755.html This study utilizes the hegemonic model of crisis communication to critically analyze the ideological implications of Nike's sweatshop labor crisis that culminated in the Kasky v. Nike court case. This groundbreaking case merits further examination and, informed by Gramsci's notion of hegemony, reveals the underlying ideological struggle present in the Nike crisis: a struggle for voice, power, and free corporate speech. Activist voices opposing sweatshops, Nike's defenses, and eventually, the legal decisions of the U.S. court system constituted competing voices in these ideological struggles over what is acceptable or right corporate behavior. This hegemonic struggle influenced standards for international labor, public relations efforts that misrepresent facts, and consideration of corporate public relations as free or commercial speech. This hegemonic model of crisis communication, unlike previous theories, recognizes the dynamic struggle between voices with various levels of power and the important ideological implications resulting from competing voices in crisis communication. http://tc.eserver.org/29243.html http://tc.eserver.org/29243.html U.S. businesses wish to continue to profit by collecting personal information from their website visitors, yet they fear that the practice both alienates visitors and exposes them both to legal problems from U.S. authorities and business sanctions from data-privacy authorities in Europe and Canada. This dilemma is reflected in the typical corporate privacy-policy statement, which is full of misleading and deceptive rhetoric intended to cover up the gap between the company's privacy policy and the image it wishes to project. http://tc.eserver.org/21549.html http://tc.eserver.org/21549.html What, if anything, should technical communication programs teach their students about the nature of law and the production of legal discourse? When is technical writing also legal writing, and vice versa; when is legal writing (really) technical? Are there distinctions worth maintaining and dissolving here? Do lawyers' relationships to, and problems with, legal writing contexts and processes parallel in important ways technical writers' relationships to, and problems with, technical writing contexts and processes? If they do, is a conversation between the disciplines worth institutionalizing, at least experimentally, in each other's programs?