EDITOR’S DESK

When corporations look for ways to cut costs, labor is usually the first option. Other costs may be tied to the price of raw materials, levied by entities that are powerful enough to protect their own interests, or simply elements in supply chains that are complicated and suffer from disruption. But labor has been easy to bid down since the demise of unions. One means of cutting labor costs, however, may be hitting the wall, and that’s the subject of an article by Michael A. Chichester, Jr. and Sophia Behnia in this issue of Today’s General Counsel. They predict that remote work will hasten the rise of the gig economy but note that states are already limiting employers’ ability to call workers independent contractors, and movement toward a stringent nationwide test is gaining traction.

Kathy Jafari writes about another legislative trend to keep an eye on — states mandating diversity on corporate boards; and Geoff Berman and Steve Victor describe an often-advantageous alternative to bankruptcy. Phillip Maltin discusses issues that will arise as the pandemic wanes and employees return to the workplace, and David K. Taylor pinpoints some common mistakes that lawyers make in arbitration, including failure to understand pre-hearing discovery limits and stubbornly sticking to your weak arguments along with your stronger ones.

Also in this issue, the first of what will be a recurring feature in Today’s General Counsel, a Q&A interview with a general counsel. In this issue, we talk to Mara Jockers, General Counsel of FirstService Residential, a Florida-based, multi-state property management company.

Bob Nienhouse, Editor-In-Chief, bnienhouse@TodaysGC.com