NEW YORK (February 3, 2012)- Better Buildings, the leading New York regional magazine for the building management and maintenance community in the 1980’s, has been retooled as a national publication and relaunched as a quarterly supplement to ALM’s Real Estate Forum. In its new form, Better Buildings will focus on the bottom-line challenges of property operations.

“Our annual reader survey indicated a need for more serious, in-depth articles on best practices for building operations and management,” said Michael G. Desiato, Vice President and Group Publisher of ALM’s Real Estate Media Division. “We have set our sights on meeting that request.”

The new Better Buildings will kick-off in the February/March Annual Review issue of Forum and will go behind the scenes to examine what’s happening in the area of building-performance strategies and the associated bottom-line savings. More information is available at http://reforum.com/betterbuildings/.

The new publication will be under the direction of Content Director John Salustri, who served as Editor of the magazine in its earlier form. “Better Buildings was the must-read information source for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region,” said Salustri, a 24-year industry veteran. “We decided it was time for a national Better Buildings designed as both a print and digital platform for the new generation of property professionals who see day-to-day operations as a key expression of overall asset-management strategy.”

Better Buildings will report on the leaders and innovators who drive the industry, probe practices that are allowing real estate owners to add value to their properties in a competitive market, and highlight the technologies they use to bring their missions to life. It will include building profiles, product reviews, expert columns and features exploring such topics as energy performance, construction solutions, adaptive re-use trends, design innovations, and changing tenant expectations.

Its circulation will encompass approximately 54,000 executive-level decision makers via print and digital editions, covering a broad spectrum of commercial real estate endeavors from office, retail, residential and industrial structures to schools, hospitals, museums, government facilities and hotels.

About ALM
ALM, an integrated media company, is a leading provider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors. ALM’s market-leading brands include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum. Headquartered in New York City, ALM was formed in 1997. For more information, visit www.alm.com.

ALM, The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum are trademarks or registered trademarks of ALM Media Properties, LLC or affiliated entities.

Media Contact:
Fred Rackmil
Rackmil Associates
Phone: 212-421-0044
E-mail: fred@rackmil.com

NEW YORK (February 1, 2012)- ALM’s The American Lawyer found that 2011 was a boom year for lateral hiring, if not for business, as nearly 2,500 partners left or joined the nation’s 200 largest law firms, 22 percent more than in 2010. Even discounting the dissolution of the Howrey firm, which accounted for 208 laterals, the 12-month period ending September 30, 2011, showed a 12 percent rise from the prior year.

“While 2010’s lateral slowdown was due, in part, to economic uncertainty, this year’s uptick doesn’t mean that the boom years are back,” wrote reporter Victor Li in the lead story of the February issue’s Lateral Report, available at www.americanlawyer.com. “In a stagnant economy, firms seek to expand market share and increase profits by poaching top performers from competitors.” Lawyers in some practice areas, like cross-border M&A, were particularly sought after.

The top gainers of lateral partners among the Am Law 200 were DLA Piper with 87, Jones Day with 59 and K&L Gates with 49. Last year’s biggest losers, aside from Howrey, were K&L Gates with 69, McDermott Will with 36 and Hunton & Williams with 34.

The American Lawyer also identifies and discusses last year’s most prominent lateral transactions and takes a feature-length look at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s complex effort to recruit local practitioners for its Hong Kong office. In a market where other U.S.-based firms had already snapped up most candidates, Simpson Thacher reached out to Magic Circle firms and found Linklaters’ Celia Lam and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Christopher Wong, both of whom were happy to give up firm management roles to practice fulltime.

Access to the full results of the Am Law 200 laterals survey, along with monthly updates, can be purchased from ALM Legal Intelligence at http://www.almlegalintelligence.com/LateralPartnerMoves.

About ALM
ALM, an integrated media company, is a leading provider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors. ALM’s market-leading brands include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum. Headquartered in New York City, ALM was formed in 1997. For more information, visit www.alm.com.

ALM, The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum are trademarks or registered trademarks of ALM Media Properties, LLC or affiliated entities.

Media Contact:
Fred Rackmil
Rackmil Associates
Phone: 212-421-0044
E-mail: fred@rackmil.com

NEW YORK (January 25, 2012)-ALM’s Law Journal Press, a leading publisher of print and digital publications for legal professionals, today announced the publication of Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation, co-authored by Noah A. Finkel, Brett C. Bartlett and Andrew M. Paley, with Richard L. Alfred as senior editor. All are partners at Seyfarth Shaw LLP.

Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation focuses on a rapidly growing area of litigation. Written from the defense perspective, it covers every step of a case, from complaint to certification, trial, verdict, settlement or dismissal. It is available in print and in an online edition, enhanced for the Web. A detailed table of contents, as well as ordering information for this and other Law Journal Press publications, is available at www.lawcatalog.com.

The new guide has already received high praise. The Honorable Elaine L. Chao, the 24th U.S. Secretary of Labor, states: “Given the recent explosion of wage and hour litigation, both management- and plaintiff-side attorneys will find this publication to be an invaluable reference. With its painstaking attention to the law and procedure, this treatise will certainly be the go-to resource when practitioners ponder questions of strategy and substance in the context of wage and hour cases.”

Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation examines the complex rules surrounding all types of wage and hour lawsuits: claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), claims under state wage and hour laws, “hybrid” cases involving both, and special issues involving government contractors. It explains how to proceed upon receipt of a wage and hour claim, how to assess the merits of the claim, whether to settle, how to oppose plaintiffs’ motion to facilitate notice for conditional certification, how to handle discovery issues in class and collective actions, what the best trial and settlement strategies are, and how to tilt the odds in the defense’s favor.

The co-authors of Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation are all co-chairs of Seyfarth Shaw’s Wage & Hour Litigation Practice Group. Finkel is based in the firm’s Chicago office, Bartlett in Atlanta and Paley in Los Angeles. Alfred, the senior editor, is Chair of Seyfarth Shaw’s Wage & Hour Litigation Practice Group and is based in Boston. All have considerable expertise in the defense of complex federal and state wage and hour litigation and have written and lectured widely on the subject.

Law Journal Press, a division of ALM, publishes more than 130 books, in print and in digital online and mobile formats, on a broad range of legal and business topics. Written by leading lawyers and experts and updated regularly, Law Journal Press editions offer definitive and timely information, insightful analysis and practitioner-oriented guidance for the legal profession.

About ALM
ALM, an integrated media company, is a leading provider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors. ALM’s market-leading brands include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum. Headquartered in New York City, ALM was formed in 1997. For more information, visit www.alm.com.

ALM, The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum are trademarks or registered trademarks of ALM Media Properties, LLC or affiliated entities.

Media Contact:
Daryn Teague
Teague Communications
Phone: 661.297.5292
E-mail: dteague@teaguecommunications.com

NEW YORK (January 23, 2012)-ALM’s LegalTech New York, the largest and most prestigious legal technology event in the world, opens next Monday at The Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan.

The event will take place January 30 – February 1, 2012, and features 19 tracks of educational programming, including three keynote presentations, emerging technology sessions, super sessions and town-hall style presentations over the course of three days. Keynote presentations begin at 9:00 am each day and will be delivered by nationally recognized speakers:

• Monday, January 30th: John Frank, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief of Staff at Microsoft Legal and Corporate Affairs. Frank will discuss the challenges and opportunities of building effective compliance programs in his keynote, “Ethical Business in a Global Economy: Preventing Corruption and Bribery.” This session is eligible for a complimentary ethics CLE credit.
• Tuesday, January 31st: Don Tapscott, Chairman of Moxie Insight, member of the World Economic Forum, Adjunct Professor of Management in the Rothman School of Management at the University of Toronto, co-author of Macrowikinomics and Wikinomics, and author of Grown-up Digital. Tapscott’s keynote, “Generations, Innovations & Practical Applications: What They Mean to Your Practice,” will discuss how technology has transformed our world.
• Wednesday, February 1st: Kevin Genirs, General Counsel for Investment Banking at Barclays Capital and former General Counsel at Lehman Brothers. Genirs’s keynote address, “2008 vs. 2011: Lessons from a Lehman Insider,” will provide a unique behind-the-scenes account of the final days of Lehman and its relevance to the challenges facing the financial world today. This session is eligible for a complimentary CLE credit.

All keynote presentations take place in the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom West.

LegalTech New York is expected to attract over 12,000 attendees and will feature more than 350 exhibiting companies offering a wide range of legal technology products and services. The 2012 show will offer a selection of more than 50 educational sessions on topics ranging from electronic discovery and information management to cloud computing and law practice management. Attendees are eligible to earn up to 16.8 CLE credits, including as many as 5.5 CLE ethics credits, over the course of the show.

For a complete conference agenda, exhibitor list and other details, visit www.legaltechshow.com.

LegalTech is presented by ALM Events, a leading producer of educational and networking events for business leaders and professionals. Other ALM events include ALM Legal Conferences, Insight Information Conferences and the RealShare Conference series for commercial real estate professionals.

About ALM
ALM, an integrated media company, is a leading provider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors. ALM’s market-leading brands include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum. Headquartered in New York City, ALM was formed in 1997. For more information, visit www.alm.com.

ALM, The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, GlobeSt.com, Insight Conferences, Law.com, Law Journal Press, LegalTech, The National Law Journal and Real Estate Forum are trademarks or registered trademarks of ALM Media Properties, LLC or affiliated entities.

Media Contact:
Daryn Teague
Teague Communications
Phone: 661.297.5292
E-mail: dteague@teaguecommunications.com