New York Noncompete, Trade Secret & School Negligence Blog

Study Claims That Employee Theft Rises as Economy Worsens

Jonathan Cooper talks about the economy currently

After 2007, which bore the dubious distinction as "The Year of the Recall," and 2008, which saw even more recalls that were undertaken either voluntarily or in response to a governmental demand (not to mention the recent recall of well over 2,000 peanut-based products following the salmonella scare), there were several news reports of small businesses, particularly children's toy distributors and tire suppliers, that openly expressed their fears that any recall of their particular products would force them to close their doors. Strangely, none of these articles discussed a relatively straightforward solution to this threat: defective product or product contamination insurance.

According to A.M. Best Co., this area of insurance, despite the economic recession, is continuing to grow at a rapid clip of over 30% a year. 

If you run a small business that either manufactures or distributes products that could potentially become the subject of a safety recall, it certainly behooves you to ascertain whether this brand of insurance can cover your business; your business's survival may one day depend on it. 

In an article that appears in today's New York Times, a few prominent venture capitalists are quoted as saying that in the midst of this economic recession, the best way to entice investment in a start-up or small business is by demonstrating how the company's mission is specifically geared to save their clients money; decreased revenue across the economic spectrum have mandated that it is no longer enough to put out a great product.

And how does a small business go about showing that? Some recommendations, culled from the hi-tech sector, include using renewable materials, or promoting new web-based applications that are designed to seamlessly integrate different software applications, thereby increasing productivity.

This rule applies to the law business as well. In order to effectively market a law practice to small businesses, attorneys should be able to demonstrate, in concrete terms, to prospective clients how their firm streamlines the legal process to assure peak efficiency, particularly, but not limited to the context of litigation. One way this can be done is by filing cases electronically; another is by storing documents electronically for easy reference and retrieval; a third way is communicating with clients, adversaries and experts via e-mail, which not only reduces significantly postage costs that would otherwise be incurred, but also eliminates the time lag caused by the back-and-forth of snail-mail.