Thursday 28 June 2018

Corporate law – Preparing for technological evolution.

Unquestionably, technology has transformed the business world, quickly changing and expanding in every field imaginable. When it comes to the legal services industry, technological innovation is no exception. This is not surprising given the size and scope of the market—the second largest professional service industry in the U.S. With the 250 largest law firms employing more than 113,000 lawyers, this industry has the means and the need for technology to help address the many challenges facing today’s legal professionals.


Even in light of recent news about a hot M&A market and increase in associate bonuses, the legal climate has changed significantly over the past five years and a new reality is taking shape. More and more, clients are refusing to pay for junior associate work, outsourcing low-level work, and seeking alternatives to the billable hour. Increasing cost-cutting mandates from clients have made finding value and efficiency high priorities. In-house legal departments are facing mounting pressure to both improve the efficiency of their own operations while tackling a more expansive workload and also reducing the amount they spend in legal fees on outside counsel. This demand to do more with less is in turn passed on to law firms, who in a buyer’s market, must find ways to differentiate themselves and provide more value for clients to justify their fees. This relentless drive toward cost-effectiveness has made it necessary for both law firms and in-house legal departments to adopt technology that will make corporate lawyer in London more efficient.

Much of the focus of innovation to date has been seen on the litigation side. For example, eDiscovery tools and software have enabled significant time and cost savings when it comes to reviewing emails and other digital records.

Unfortunately, the level of innovation in legal technology has not been evenly distributed, particularly when it comes to transactional work. In the $93 billion corporate law industry, companies spend an estimated $4.2 billion each year on legal fees in mergers and acquisitions alone.

Why so uneven? One of the reasons we have seen technology advance with eDiscovery versus due diligence is that litigators must go through vast databases of email, coding responsive or non-responsive documents, which yields a binary analysis. Artificial intelligence tools can learn based on how corporate lawyer in London has coded a subset of documents and then apply that learning to the remainder of the documents. However, in the context of corporate due diligence, complex provisions that wind their way throughout a contract must be extracted and summarized for a vast number of highly varied documents. As a result, it is imperative that the machine learning techniques used in this setting be more specific and nuanced to be able to recognize the variety of ways in which concepts can be expressed and extract them with a granular focus.

One of the biggest lessons learned from eDiscovery is how dramatically software can improve speed and efficiency, particularly with regard to low-level work. Prior to using some of the eDiscovery tools now available, document review was extraordinarily time intensive. But technological innovation spurred increased efficiency, helping firms get through reviews more quickly, with ultimate time and cost savings passed on to the clients. Expedited document review is also a helpful differentiator firms can use to better market themselves. Many parallels can be drawn to the transactional side of the legal industry where completing the due diligence process efficiently in a merger or acquisition allows the corporate attorneys involved to focus on the negotiation of the deal documents.

Wednesday 27 June 2018

The history of US immigration law.

A large number of people look to migrate to the US and consult various immigration law firms in London to discuss their eligibility and another aspect. Though it is a good move to achieve what you want, it is also necessary to take a detailed look at the US immigration law. So, let’s know its history and other important facts.

The United States started regulating immigration soon after it won independence from Great Britain, and the laws since enacted have reflected the politics and migrant flows of the times. Early legislation tended to impose limits that favored Europeans, but a sweeping 1965 law opened doors to immigrants from other parts of the world. In more recent years, laws and presidential actions have been shaped by concerns about refugees, unauthorized immigration, and terrorism.

1790 Naturalization Act

Excluded non-white people from eligibility to naturalize! Naturalization requirements included two years of residence in the country and “good moral character,” and an applicant must be a “free white person.” The Naturalization Act of 1795 extended the residency requirement to five years. In 1798, this was extended to 14 years, then back to five in 1802.

Alien friends act 1798

The Alien Friends Act authorized the president to imprison or deport any alien who was deemed dangerous to the U.S. This act was the first to authorize deportation for immigrants. It expired two years after it was enacted.

Chinese exclusion act

Banned Chinese laborers from immigrating for the next 10 years and authorized deportation of unauthorized Chinese immigrants. Any Chinese immigrant who resided in the U.S. as of Nov. 17, 1880, could remain but was barred from naturalizing. The 1892 Geary Act extended this law for an additional 10 years and required that Chinese nationals obtain identification papers.\

Immigration act of 1903 (also called anarchist exclusion act)

Banned anarchists, beggars, and importers of prostitutes from immigrating. It is the first U.S. law to restrict immigration based on immigrants’ political beliefs.

1917 immigration act (also known as “Asiatic barred zone act”)

Banned immigration from most Asian countries, except the Philippines, which was a U.S. colony, and Japan, whose government voluntarily eliminated the immigration of Japanese laborers as part of the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907. Required immigrants over the age of 16 to demonstrate basic reading ability in any language.

Immigration and nationality act (also known as mccarran-walter act)

Formally removed race as an exclusion for immigration and naturalization and granted Asian countries a minimum quota of 100 visas per year (though this was still based on ancestry, not nationality; for example, a person with Chinese ancestry coming from the U.K. would be counted in the Chinese quota regardless of nationality/birthplace). Updated the national origins quota to one-sixth of 1% of each nationality’s population in the 1920 census. As a result, most spots were for immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. Under this law, political activities, ideology and mental health, among other criteria, served as a basis for exclusion and deportation. This law also created quota preferences for skilled immigrants and family reunification.

Homeland security act


In the wake of 9/11, the Homeland Security Act transfers nearly all the functions of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

US Immigration – Hot like never before.

If you’ve been searching for a US immigration lawyer in London, it is necessary that you keep aware of the statistics related to US immigration. The number of immigrants in the United States has swelled since 1990, with foreign-born residents now comprising more than 15 percent of the U.S. population.

As totals have increased, demographics have moved: While Mexico remained the top source of immigrants throughout recent decades, Asian nations have surpassed countries like Canada, Cuba, and Germany in their contributions to the U.S. immigrant population, according to United Nations data.
In rankings of the countries contributing the highest proportion of immigrants, China rose from fourth to second and India skyrocketed from 13th to third between 1990 and 2017.
By 2017, populations from China, India and the Philippines accounted for nearly 14 percent of immigrants living in the U.S.

President Donald Trump's immigration rhetoric has frequently focused on Mexico, and the country still dominates immigration totals. More than a quarter of foreign-born U.S. residents in 2017 hailed from Mexico, which accounted for more than five times as many as the next country.

After totals from China, India and the Philippines, another 3.8 percent of immigrants in the U.S. came from Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that the United Nations data counts as separate from the U.S. when calculating migration tallies.

More than 2.4 million immigrants in the U.S. hailed from China, and another 2.3 million came from India.

The topic of immigration looms large, as immigration numbers have grown in the last 27 years. At the same time, the demand of US immigration lawyer in London is touching new record. The nearly 50 million U.S. residents in 2017 who hailed from outside the country's borders constituted more than 15 percent of the U.S. population, which totaled more than 325 million.

In 1990, the U.S. hosted fewer than 25 million immigrants, who made up about 9 percent of its population of about 250 million.

In comparison to the number of foreign-born residents living in the U.S., smaller totals of Americans live abroad. Just over 3 million people born in the U.S. lived outside the country in 2017. Among those, Mexico hosted the most – 900,000 – in 2017, and Puerto Rico ranked fourth. Those places ranked high in the numbers of foreign-born immigrants headed to the U.S., too, indicating substantial exchanges of people in both directions.

But, in contrast to immigrants coming into the U.S., American-born residents more often head to other English-speaking countries, like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which all fall in the top six destinations. Those countries rank far lower – 12th, 15th and 67th, respectively – among sources of immigrants to the U.S. in 2017.

Sunday 24 June 2018

Get to know the complexities associated with immigration reform.

Immigration is one legal domain that is always found to be complex. People find it always difficult to successfully migrate to US. But in order to understand the complexity, there is a need for a deeper consultation with an immigration solicitor in London.


Immigration is a complex issue. Economic, cultural, legal, and security interests all stand in the way of finding a policy solution to manage the flow of immigrants into the U.S. We must first understand the full breadth of challenges along the pathway to a solution.

For the last several years, the United States has been gripped in a sharp debate over the flow of immigrants into the United States. The fierce exchanges include squabbles over issues like what to do with a large population of unauthorized immigrants and how to manage refugee flows. And the debate comes complete with political landmines that make it difficult to modernize immigration systems to meet the needs of the times.

It is easy to get demoralized about the inability to reach a consensus on immigration policy, but understanding the complexity of the challenge could help us appreciate what stands in the way of reform — and what needs to happen before change can occur. And make no mistake: We must resolve these issues if we are to experience a virtuous cycle of greater openness, wealth, and human development, rather than falling back into a vicious cycle that leads the world into greater anarchy, poverty, disorder and war.

Since World War II’s end, migration has gradually increased in every region of the globe. The United Nations estimates that in 2015 roughly 244 million people reside outside of their country of birth. That represents about 3.5 percent of the world’s population. Every day, tens of millions of people cross borders, adding up to roughly two billion annually. Managing those flows is a huge challenge for nation-states.

The charge is partly a function of market forces. As demand increases for immigrant labor, more people move in search of employment. The rise is also a function of family networks. People have a family member in, say, Chicago, and they want to reunite with them and have a shot at a better life.
To reap the benefits of immigration, such as new sources of human capital and labor, nation-states must accept the long-term costs of social integration, the short-term fiscal burdens of concentrated immigrant populations in some regions and localities, and the security costs that come with living in an age of drug cartels and domestic and international terrorism. Of course, the strong feelings on all sides of those issues make it painstakingly hard for immigration solicitor in London to create actual policies.


This is another section where so much of our nation’s debate has paused, particularly when it comes to identifying whether unauthorized immigrants should have a shot at legalization. Until we find a way to legalize their status, we risk undermining a social contract that extends rights in return for labor and long-term residence ultimately binds us together as a nation.