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The Development of The Jury Case

The Jury Case
The Jury Case, by Kenneth Spencer

On my way home after a long day of jury selection in a California Superior Court, it puzzled me that in this million dollar civil lawsuit all the attorneys relied on sticky notes stuck to the back of a legal pad to keep track of juror information during Voir Dire.  Sticky notes are great because they can be quickly moved around as jurors shift seats like musical chairs.   However, a sticky note fell from the podium and floated to the floor during the questioning of a juror at the absolute wrong time.  That was the “ah hah moment” for me.  There must be a better way. Continue reading “The Development of The Jury Case”

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What is Engraving?

By Channing Lefebvre
By Channing Lefebvre

Man seems always to have had a propensity for incising images into hard, intractable materials. In Paleolithic times, stone implements were used to scratch symbols and figures of animals and human beings into rock surfaces. The quality of the traces cut in the Old Stone Age suggests that early man had a profound understanding of the visual world around him. Continue reading “What is Engraving?”

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What is a Delaware Statutory Trust?

A Delaware Statutory Trust (DST) is a legal entity in which each beneficiary  has a “beneficial interest” and for Federal income tax purposes is treated as owning an undivided fractional interest in the property held by the trust.  Delaware statutory trusts are formed as private governing agreements under which either (1) property (real, tangible and intangible) is held, managed, administered, invested and/or operated; or (2) business or professional activities for profit are carried on by one or more individuals who act as trustees for the benefit of a party who is entitled to a beneficial interest in the trust property.

Continue reading “What is a Delaware Statutory Trust?”

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What is the Purpose of a Corporate or LLC Kit?

The Corporate Kit or LLC Kit is a customized organizational binder–and a convenient, tried-and-true way to gather and maintain your company’s management records.

When you form your  corporation or LLC (Limited Liability Company), it is critical to objectify the management of the business.  This includes an orderly organization of key documents —including minutes of the activities of the company, bylaws, operating agreements, shareholder agreements, share certificate and stubs and transfers.

Continue reading “What is the Purpose of a Corporate or LLC Kit?”

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Best Practices for File Naming

From the National Archives Records Practice.

File names should:

  • Be unique and consistently structured;
  • Be persistent and not tied to anything that changes over time or location;
  • Limit the character length to no more than 25-35 characters;
  • Use leading 0s to facilitate sorting in numerical order if following a numeric scheme “001, 002, …010, 011 … 100, 101, etc.” instead of “1, 2, …10, 11 … 100, 101, etc.”;
  • Contain a file format extension;
  • Use a period followed by a file extension (for example, .tif, .jpg, .gif, .pdf, .wav, .mpg);
  • Use lowercase letters.  However, when a name has more than one word, start each word with an uppercase letter for example, “File_Name_Convention_001.doc”;
  • Use numbers and/or letters but not characters such as symbols or spaces that could cause complications across operating platforms;
  • Use hyphens or underscores instead of spaces;
  • Use international standard date notation (YYYY_MM_DD or YYYYMMDD);
  • Avoid blank spaces anywhere within the character string; and
  • Not use an overly complex or lengthy naming scheme that is susceptible to human error during manual input, such as “filenameconventionjoesfinalversioneditedfinal.doc”.”

For more information go to The National Archives.

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How to Form a Not-for-Profit Corporation

Not-for-Profit Corporations are formed for many reasons.  In New York State there are two types of formations: charitable and non-charitable.  New York now allows for filings of each with a purpose as simple as:  any purpose for which corporations may be organized under the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law as a charitable corporation or any purpose for which corporations may be organized under the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law as a non-charitable corporation. Continue reading “How to Form a Not-for-Profit Corporation”

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What is a legal pad?

We call them “legal pads” because when they were first available in 1888 (the year after Bob Blumberg’s grandfather founded our company) a paper mill worker collected the sortings (scraps) from various factories and bound them into pads. They were cut to legal size. Later, when the pad paper was manufactured with ground wood and scraps to make up the batch of pulp, they were colored yellow because it was more expensive to make the batch white. Continue reading “What is a legal pad?”