By: Killoran Long

Wake Forest Professor of Law, and a Wake Forest Law alumnus, José Vega (‘07) will be joining the Journal of Business & Intellectual Property Law at their annual spring symposium this Friday, March 8, 2019.

The Symposium will be held in Room 401 of the Benson University Center and will run from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM.  This year’s symposium, “Lawyering in the Future: The Impact of Technology on the Law,” will feature four panels covering a range of topics from legal design to practice management or new tips and tricks of the trade.

Professor Vega, along with fellow Wake Law Professors, Lateek Willie and David Levine will be presenting a panel “Data & Cybersecurity,” with Associate Dean Simone Rose moderating the discussion.  The “Data & Cybersecurity” panel is scheduled to run from 1:00 – 2:30 PM, and the speakers intend to provide an overview on key cybersecurity concepts, threats, legal issues, and then highlight how all of these concepts/issues have come together in recent data breaches.

Beyond the Symposium, Professor Vega and Professor Willie are team-teaching a course on Cybersecurity at the Law School this spring, and together, they hope to bring some of the topics addressed in the classroom to the symposium this Friday.  Professor Vega hopes to approach the “Data & Cybersecurity” panel from a pragmatic, or boots on the ground, perspective.  Professor Vega also aims to discuss cybersecurity issues and best practices from the viewpoint of a businessman and practitioner who deal with these issues as part of their daily routines. Professor Vega’s extensive background in litigation and compliance provides him with a unique perspective in advising clients in rapidly evolving areas of law such as data privacy and security.

Beyond the classroom and after his time at Wake, Professor Vega has developed an extensive background in litigation and compliance provides him with a unique perspective in advising clients in rapidly evolving areas of law such as data privacy and security. In his years after leaving Wake, he has accrued over a decade of experience representing commercial businesses and financial institutions in litigation matters throughout the country.

Having Professor Vega join us at the Symposium is particularly exciting, as while at Wake Forest, Professor Vega served as a Staff Editor to the Journal of Business & IP Law.

By: Nathaniel Reiff

On March 8, 2019, the Wake Forest Journal of  Business & Intellectual Property will have the privilege of hosting Professor David Levine at its Spring Symposium: “Lawyering in the Future: Impact of Technology on the Law.” Professor Levine will be part of a panel alongside Professor Jose Vega and Lateek Willie from Wake Forest University, to discuss various implications of data, collection, including new data and cyber concerns, evolving security standards, and what people should consider when permitting others to access or store their personal data. The panel will be moderated by Professor Simone Rose of the Wake Forest University School of Law.

Professor Levine is currently an “Associate Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.” Professor Levine’s scholarship primarily focuses on the relationship between intellectual property law, privacy, and public life. Specifically, Professor Levine spotlights how information impacts the lawmaking and regulatory process. Furthermore, the former Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy fellow entertains how intellectual property law affects secrecy and accountability in the privacy realm. Professor Levine’s personal education features a BS from Cornell University and a JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Outside of the classroom setting, Professor Levine has made presentations for Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiators and is a former member of the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission’s Protection of Trade Secret and Proprietary Information Study Group. Professor Levine’s broad expertise has been recognized by various media outlets, including NBC News, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, and Slate.

As an attendee and current student enrolled in Professor Levine’s Privacy Law course, I expect Professor Levine to incorporate much of his well-established scholarship into his commentary and perspectives. As made evident by recent events in the business community, effective cybersecurity and proper data protection can save companies hundreds of millions of dollars. I also expect Professor Levine to discuss the implications of legislating data broker clearinghouses and how this may affect commerce.

By: Daniel Norton

Jeff Ward is the Associate Dean for Technology & Innovation at Duke University School of Law as well as the Director of the University’s Center on Law & Technology (DCLT). As part of the DCLT, Jeff oversees the Duke Law Tech Lab, a program that advises legal technology start-up companies about legal topics including, but not limited to intellectual property protection and licensing, and commercialization’s strategies. Jeff’s goal for the DCLT is to bridge the access-to-justice gap by guiding legal technology entrepreneurs to address areas the law has typically underserved. To that end, Jeff has organized competitions for legal tech start-ups for the past two years whereby the start-ups compete for funding by participating in an acceleration program before presenting their business pitch to a panel of judges. The winner of the most recent competition was the start-up company Hello Divorce which aims to serve the 85%of people who do not have legal representation in divorce proceedings.

Jeff also oversees the Access Tech Tools initiative which encourages participants to utilize human centered design thinking concerning developing legal technologies. An example of this encouragement was Big Ideas: Designing Creative Legal Solutions for a Better Tomorrow. This was a class Jeff offered in October to the community encouraging participants to think of alternative billing models for lawyers than the traditional hourly rates. The class was attended by law school students, entrepreneurs, professors, and attorneys with decades of experience.

In addition to his other responsibilities, Jeff also teaches classes Law & Policy Lab: Blockchain and Frontier Robotics & AI: Law & Ethics at Duke University School of Law. Outside of his positions with Duke, Jeff continues to run his own law practice which counsels start-up companies.

Jeff will be speaking from 10:40 am to 12:10 pm on the Legal Design panel with Vanderbilt Professor Cat Moon and moderated by Raina Haque.

By: Samantha Moench

Professor Caitlin “Cat” Moon comes to us from Vanderbilt University School of Law and will be speaking on the Legal Design panel at our Spring Symposium: Lawyering in the Future: Impact of Technology on the Law. 

Professor Moon is scholar in the field of legal design. Her professional experience centers around bringing a “human-centered design perspective” into the legal profession. She serves as the Director of Innovation Designat Vanderbilt Law School. Professor Moon has developed an “interactive” curriculum to inspire innovation within the legal profession by focusing on helping lawyers and legal practitioners adapt to the rapid advance of both technology and design.

Vanderbilt actually has a special department called the Program on Law and Innovation, which is dedicated to informing both its students and the larger legal community about the impact the advancement of technology and design has had on the practice of law in America. Professor Moon serves as a Director of Vanderbilt’s Program on Law and Innovation Institute (PoLI), which is a smaller group under the umbrella of the larger PoLI program that goes out and teaches legal professionals and scholars about the importance of integrating technology into their law practices and studies. She also helped co-discover Vanderbilt’s Summit on Law and Innovation as a part of the program.  Continue reading »

By: Melissa Lawrence

As technology advances, attorneys face unprecedented issues in ethics and professional responsibility. From advertising on social media to protecting client information from cyberattacks, attorneys of the future will need to understand how new technologies raise new ethical issues and how available software, applications, and other solutions can help them avoid both old and new legal ethical dilemmas.

Stephanie Jenkins, an ethics and compliance professional, will discuss new and developing technology and its impact on the legal profession at the Wake Forest Journal of Business and Intellectual Property’s Spring Symposium: Lawyering in the Future: Impact of Technology on the Law.

Ms. Jenkins has worked in the governance, risk, and compliance field for over twelve years. She has managed and built Ethics and Compliance programs for major companies such as the Gap and Premier Healthcare Alliance. Ms. Jenkins holds a Masters of Business Administration from Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, a Master of Arts in Professional and Applied Ethics, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is also a graduate from both The Ethics & Compliance Initiative’s Managing Ethics in an Organization Program and the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association’s Executive Development Program. Ms. Jenkins also served in the United States Marine Corps Reserves and the North Carolina Air National Guard.

Currently, Ms. Jenkins serves as Chief Compliance Officer at Ethix360,a company that provides businesses with innovative software for creating and implementing compliance programs. With Ethix360, Ms. Jenkins helps generate solutions for investigating and resolving compliance and ethical issues, minimizing negative impacts on company reputations, and managing reporting concerns and workplace investigations. Many of these solutions were developed with the legal field in mind.

Ms. Jenkins is scheduled to speak on the “Practice Management and Incorporated Technology” panel from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM, in room 401 of the Benson Center on the WFU Main Campus.

By: Amber Razzano

Steve Lauer is a practicing attorney and a current adjunct professor at Wake Forest University School of Law. Lauer’s course is titled “Thinking Like an In-House Lawyer.” This course focuses on law firms that represent business entities must understand the needs and expectations of those entities in order to deliver a legal service that provides higher value to the business. Lauer has an extensive background in the corporate law environment. Lauer received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. Lauer has authored over 100 articles on topics relevant to corporate compliance and corporate legal service. Prior to becoming an in-house attorney, Lauer was in private practice for six years. He currently “consults with corporate compliance departments regarding the structure and operation of corporate compliance and ethics programs . . . and with law departments and law firms on the value of legal service.” Lauer has served over two years as Corporate Counsel for Global Compliance Services in Charlotte, North Carolina, improving the ability of business operations to comply with data protection rules in the European Union and other jurisdictions. Lauer also spent extensive time as an Assistant General Counsel for The Prudential Company of America increasing management of legal affairs in the real estate environment. Lauer’s panel at the Wake Forest Journal of Business and Intellectual Property’s Spring Symposium, Lawyering in the Future: Impact of Technology on the Law, will focus on developing legal software and technology’s impact on legal practices, client relations, and other similar issues.  Steve will be speaking on our first panel from 9:00 to 10:30 am. Continue reading »

By: Amber Razzano

The passage of the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) brings copyright law up to the speed of the modern era. The MMA consists of three parts: (1) Music Licensing Modernization; (2) Compensating Legacy Artists for Their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society (“CLASSICS”); and (3) Allocation for Music Producers (“AMP”). The first part of this Act, Music Licensing Modernization, “replaces the existing song-by-song compulsory licensing structure for making and distributing musical works with a blanket licensing system for digital music providers to make and distribute digital phonorecord deliveries.” This is meant to allow easier payment to “rights holders” whenever their music is streamed online.

Continue reading »

By: Daniel Norton

In the past, science fiction books and television shows toyed with the idea of “replicators” and “matter compilers.” The idea was that people would be able to produce the tools or objects they needed in any given situation from the comforts of their own homes or starships. Mere decades after this idea was considered a fantasy it has become a reality as Americans have increasingly begun using 3D printers to create tools and objects they need from the comfort of their own homes. But the advent of 3D printers has not brought about the utopian freedoms things like Star Trek indicated. Instead, 3D printing technology has created entirely new challenges for the US patent system to grapple with.

The creation of an object using 3D printing is known as additive manufacturing. This process involves a 3D printer applying a given material in thin layers on top of each other to create an object dictated to it by a computer-aided design (CAD) file. While this ability was first created in the 1980s, it has exploded in popularity over the past few years due to the advent of “home” 3D printers. Continue reading »

By: Killoran Long

After a thirty-five-day partial shutdown, the U.S. government is finally getting back to business. What started on December 22, 2018, as a disagreement over border security funding, became a shutdown, showdown between President Trump and Congress that finally came to an end on January 25, 2019. The thirty-five-day shutdown became the longest shutdown in modern history, surpassing the previous shutdown record of twenty-one-days that was set in the mid-nineties.  Continue reading »

By: Amber Razzano

Social media sites have the ability to provide tools for employers to assist with their search for candidates with specific qualifications, however, the improper use of this information is a blurry line. The EEOC’s position remains that personal information “may not be used to make employment decisions on prohibited bases, such as race, gender, national origin, color, religion, age, disability, or genetic information.”

In recent months, the EEOC issued a Charge of Discrimination brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against Facebook. The Charge alleges the company violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (“Title VII”) with its employment advertising, recruitment, and hiring, as well as state and local anti-discriminatory statutes. The City of Greensboro has also been charged for distributing ads for a number of different positions via Facebook’s ad platform, including the position of Officer at the Greensboro Police Department. The charging parties accuse Facebook of “enabling, encouraging, and assisting a number of employers and employment agencies, including Greensboro, to unlawfully target their advertisements based on sex and age, and for delivering the ads in a discriminatory manner” in exchange for payment. Facebook and other social media platforms have become dominated by advertisements, especially in relation to the labor market. This alleged discriminatory practice could profoundly affect those individuals, regardless of which gender they identify as, in search of a job. Continue reading »