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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

MIGHT AS WELL JUMP - We all remember that dreaded scolding from mom when we were kids: "If all your colleagues left the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, would you follow them just because 'everybody's doing it'?" The Securities and Exchange Commission has already seen a significant flow of attorneys leaving for private practice this year, and industry observers told Law.com's Bruce Love that they foresee more on the horizon. "It's certainly unusual to see more lawyers leave the SEC the year after an administration change," said one Washington-based legal recruiter on the condition of anonymity because the recruiter works closely with government lawyers looking to move into private practice. "Usually, the SEC is more settled a year after a new president and commissioner. It could speak to unease in the ranks, or it could simply be a product of market demand. SEC lawyers are hot right now." That unease could come from the very top of the agency. Chairman Gary Gensler, appointed last year by the Biden administration, is apparently making good on his mission to move the SEC to an enforcement model of broken windows, targeting more cases and more individuals, according to sources with knowledge of how the SEC operates. And this "broken windows" policy has translated into more work—and sometimes disagreements—with staff attorneys over the direction of the agency.

TECH GUT CHECK - Experts say many legal departments aren't good at harnessing the power of data. That's not exactly a revelation. But if tech-challenged in-house teams are under the impression that they still have plenty of time to figure it out, they may be sorely mistaken. "As if in-house legal departments needed another problem—explosion of technology and data only adds to their list of anxieties," Jason Winmill, managing partner of the legal consulting firm Argopoint, told Law.com's Trudy Knockless. He added: "Technology has traditionally been a bit of a weak point of legal departments. That is no longer an acceptable position for a best-in-class legal department or even an adequate legal department." A Deloitte white paper released this year put it this way: "Companies today expect more than just advice purely based on individual experience or acumen; another level of persuasion and confidence comes from advice that is supported or enhanced with objective metrics." Beyond decision-making, savvy data management is critical to mitigating legal risks, wrote Jeffrey Wolff, director of e-discovery solutions at ZyLAB, in a November blog post. While underretention of data can starve a business of the intelligence it needs to make business decisions, holding too much data and for too long can bog down discovery during litigation and expose the company to liability from data breaches, Wolff said.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Holland & Knight partner Sara Schretenthaler Staha has entered an appearance for restaurant owner and operator Ra Sushi Addison Corp. in a pending collective employment action over alleged wage-and-hour violations. The complaint was filed July 1 in Texas Northern District Court by Sanford Law Firm on behalf of individuals employed by defendant as hourly paid servers who contend that they were not paid for overtime hours worked. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Karen Gren Scholer, is 3:22-cv-01437, Mims v. Ra Sushi Addison Corp. >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.