Last week the Legal Broadcast Network was one of the first media outlets to speak with nationally renown entertainment and intellectual property rights lawyer Larry Iser, when news of the suit filed by his client, Jackson Browne hit the wires. This case, while at first glance appears political, it's my opinion that it is really just a very solid copyright infringement case. I attach the entire article for you to read with the note that I really believe we are going to see a lot more of these case in the next few years as lawyers such as Larry Iser move aggressively to protect the long abused muscial and artistic IP of their clients. There is a looming ruling involving the recording industry that will futher strenghten the hand of lawyers protecting clients copyrights so I feel that lawyers and settlement professionals need to further educate themselves in this area and be in a position where they can utilize taxable, non-qualified structured annuities to fund the eventual payouts.

"Jackson Browne has filed a lawsuit today against Senator John McCain and the Republican National Committee in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, California.  The lawsuit stems from a recent television commercial for Senator McCain's presidential bid that incorporates the song Running On Empty.

There have been similar lawsuits in the past from artists like John Mellencamp and Abba for unauthorized use. This suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles claims the songs use is a clear infringement of his copyright and will lead people to the conclusion that he somehow endorses McCain.

Browne, a life long avowed liberal " an advocate for social and environmental justice " is noted in the article to have already made prior donations to Senator Obama's campaign and he is clearly upset about the use of the song.

While on it's face this might seem like a politically motivated action by a life time liberal entertainer, it really is much more then that as our interview with Attorney Larry Iser reveals. The ongoing abuse of music and entertainment intellectual property in a post Napster era is an issue that flys under the radar, particularly on the internet where people just assume they can grab a song and use it for their own entertainment and commercial purposes. As you'll hear in the interview, this is part of a long running and consistent pattern of abuse of the copyright laws and the careless attitude of the McCain camp in this instance has caused some of the industry's leading IP lawyers to draw a line in the sand. This is not the last we will hear of this case.

Scott Drake, host of the Legal Broadcast Network daily affairs show, Speaking of Justice, talks with Jackson Browne's attorney...Larry Iser in Santa Monica. California "


Click here to listen to the full podcast with Larry Iser on the Jackson Browne Law suit against John McCain.

The story from the AP

In today's online editon of the Wall Street Journal a story was reported that makes me feel like I'm watching the old Claude Raines character in the classic film, Casablanca. You all remember the scene, where the Nazi's come into Ricks bar and casino and when Raines, who is the local police chief and a regular at the illicit gambling hall, is told that "there is gambling going on here." He professes himself to be Shocked, all while getting paid his winnings. 

I feel like much the same is going on now that the real estate market has utterly collapsed and the insane lending practices of the unregulated mortgage industry are being exposed to the harsh glare of daylight.

The FBI investigation mentioned in the story centers around something that anyone who has lived in the booming southwest knew was going on first hand, much as anyone in Casablanca knew "Ricks" was the place to go for forged transit papers and gambling. That practice was the use by big corporate builders, and even some not so big builders, of having in house mortgage brokerage companies that would package loans and financial options that kept the prices on the builders homes high, but allowed the buyer/borrower to receive incentives as large as $100,000 to purchase the house.

Basically the scheme was for the builder to pay off a buyers car loans, credit cards, student loans, etc, so that their debt ratio and lending profile was dramatically improved and they would then qualify for a substantially larger house and loan then other wise would be possible. The buyer wins in the short term because even though they are paying an inflated price for the house, they are exchanging, off the books, expensive debt for cheap mortgage debt. The only problem is when you buy a house for $400,000 that is only worth $285,000, if it doesn't appreciate, or as is happening now it depreciates, the buyer is so far underwater on the loan it will take years, if not a decade, to catch up in value.

The builder however, who built the house on land he bought years prior at cheap prices, flips a property and books a big gain, the broker gets a huge commission on the inflated mortgage loan, often at a higher then normal commission rate as a pay off to look the other way, and the appraiser goes along for the ride as he can plausibly say that "comps in the area" are consistent with the price.

The problem is it is a massive shell game with huge transaction costs and now the US taxpayer is going to be picking up the tab for these crooks. Too strong a word, you say, crooks? Well, apparently the FBI and the Justice department think so too and as someone who watched this sickening fraud occurring for the last 5 years here in Arizona you have to wonder where in the world were the regulators then. Oh that's right, some of the single largest contributors to house and senate campaigns just happen to be corporate builders, banks and mortgage company's, not to mention their pervasive influence in state and local elections as well.

The fact is a lot of politicians from both parties got fat on the real estate boom and it's fraudulent lending and sales practices, and the lightly regulated mortgage lending business was a haven for con-men, crooks and others looking to flip a property and the eventual liability to the next sucker. 

Now when the politicians in both parties stand up in an election year and and do their best Claude Rains impersonation, saying they are shocked that this could have been going on right under the noses of the state and federal authorities, I suggest taxpayers and the FBI take a line from another Humphrey Bogart movie, The Maltese Falcon. In that one, at the end, Sam Spade is asked what the Falcon is and his reply is the often misquoted " This is the stuff that dreams are made of." Well, the real estate ponzi scheme was the stuff of dreams for years, but now it's a nightmare for the taxpayers and I hope the Justice Department as well as the trial bar take this opportunity to hold the crooks accountable for this disaster rather then letting another round of campaign contributions flush this latest financial sewage away and hope we forget who got us into this mess.

If you are in the settlement industry i'd suggest you sharpen up on the mass tort and non-qualified structure area as we are going to see a massive wave of litigation tied to the billions of dollars in losses from these types of criminal lending practices.

In this weeks edition of Speaking of Settlements I am joined by an old friend, but also the host of the newest channel on The Legal Broadcast Network, The Tax Law Channel. Attorney Robert Wood. We discuss the updated thinking on taxation of molestation and sexual abuse cases, an area that has been of increasing interest in the settlement and legal community. The entire podcast on taxation of molestation cases with Rob Wood and Mark Wahlstrom is available by clicking the audio player at the end of this post. What prompted this update was some recent discussion in the structured settlement world about a ruling earlier this year from Treasury that further clarified the documentation needed for an injured party to qualify for tax free status under section 104 under the "observable harm" standard. That ruling, Treasury ILM 20071127, discussed the issue of how a taxpayer handles taxation when the abuse occurred so long prior to the settlement that records or proof of observable harm are unavailable. In what can only be described as good news, the Treasury gave the taxpayer a break and said the presumption would be in favor of the taxpayer in that case, due to the passage of time. As the podcast cautions however, in current cases, particularly with this new guidance, the necessity of plaintiff, attorney and tax professional to carefully retain and document evidence that meets the observable harm standard is going to be essential to get this favorable tax treatment. You can go to Robert Wood's page on The Tax Law Channel to learn more, obtain resources or comment on the show. Listen to the podcast of this weeks edition of Speaking of Settlements.

In what is sure to be a hard sell for the old guard, tradition bound profession of law, the Legal Broadcast Network is taking the wraps off it's 4 month long beta test of it's social and professional network for lawyers this week with the roll out of LB Networks.

Along with the reintroduction of our multi-media portal and the expansion of the number of affiliated channels to seven distinctive shows, with 3 more scheduled to launch in August, the long promised growth and expansion of The Legal Broadcast Network has commenced.

The expansion features three primary upgrades and enhancements that deepen the offerings for lawyers all of the world who visit The Legal Broadcast Network and help to make our portal and networking site a place where anyone interested in the law would want to visit daily. Some of the new revisions you'll be seeing this week:

The launch of The Legal Broadcast Network multi-media portal and front page. As our long time readers and listeners know, we have been on a three month rebuilding campaign for our portal, with the goal to bring you a portal that lets you quickly, easily and logically navigate the rapidly expanding offerings of The Network. Go to our front page at www.legalbroadcastnetwork.com and see the new media, the daily legal minute, links to all blogs, featured channels, advertising segments and subscription to our RSS feeds or news letter. This new look is only the beginning as we will be adding three channels per month between now and the end of 2008, along with expanded daily and weekly video broadcasts from the LB Networks studios in Phoenix, AZ.

The end of the beta test of our social and professional networking site for lawyers. While we are still cleaning up the cosmetic appearance and expanding functionality by adding discussion forums for law students, paralegals and others, you can finally go in, kick the tires and create a profile on the www.LBNnetwork.com social and professional network for lawyers. What makes our network unique is unlike most networking sites it is totally free to join, has a comprehensive multi-media capacity that allows you to upload audio, video and photos, a powerful blogging tool, personal RSS feeds for your content and an amazing search engine metric that gives you exceptional visibility in key word searches. I know the idea of a profile or media page is scary for a lot of lawyers, and unlike most of the other ventures we recognize this is going to be a slow and steady process of demonstrating why lawyers and others need to be part of a professional or social networking site. I'll be doing a series of blog posts and tutorials on why lawyers and others need to get involved in professional networking on the internet, but until then just take my word for it that FREE publicity and search word metrics is a very good reason to at least join and be part of our rapidly expanding media network.

Finally, the next element you will start to glimpse this week is the start of our daily video broadcasts from either Voices of the Law or Speaking of Justice. The Phoenix studio is being fitted for live broadcasts and video so that our studio staff and guests will have an audio broadcast and video of their conversations with LB network hosts on shows such as Speaking of Justice, Voices of the Law, Speaking of Settlements, Tax Law Conversations and other shows we will be unveiling next week.

So, make sure you are subscribed to our feeds and if you are an attorney get to our new LB Network page and set up your professional profile. The early bird gets the worm, or in this case the most web traffic, and what lawyer wouldn't want to be part of that, particularly when it costs you nothing to be part of it.

In what amounts to a panicked screed by Forbes columnist Daniel Fisher, he outlines in his recent online article that "November Election A Lawyers Delight." Essentially he is presenting the position that both Obama and McCain are going to be presented with a string of bills that will halt the steady march of the tort reform machine to pack federal and state courts with pro-business Republican's in Name Only corporatists.

As a Republican who often refers to himself as to the right of Reagan who thought Goldwater was a lefty, I have been sickened by the wholesale sell out of the Republican party to the tort reform lobby. The huge piles of cash thrown at them by The Chamber of Commerce, Manufacturers associations, drug companies, casualty insurance companies and others has caused a collective sell out that is only matched by the influence railroads and robber baron's had in the US prior to Teddy Roosevelt ascending to the Presidency. As I often say, any true conservative, or any true American knows, that our fathers, uncles and brothers didn't die in foreign lands so that we could surrender our right to access the courts and obtain compensation for injury just to save $4 on my auto insurance bill. Tort reform has been one of the most intellectually dishonest and massive campaigns to rob American's of their rights and freedoms since the founding of this country.

However, as the gloomy tone of the Forbes article points out, the corporatist, Rockefeller Republicans who have dragged the Republican party to it's lowest level in 50 years, are now realizing that the pendulum is starting to swing back to the middle and that both Presidential candidates are likely to sign legislation repealing any Supreme Court decision on preemption, which has been the Tort Reformers holy grail for the better part of 10 years now.

While it's only a small glimmer of good news for true conservatives to see the inexorable march of the corporatists to strip citizens of their legal rights and capping damages halted to some degree, a great deal of work remains to continue to combat this massively funded lobby that is essentially the tail that wags the dog for the spineless Republican's who have disgraced this party for the last 8 years in office.

In what will come as no shock what so ever to seasoned settlement and legal professionals todays New York Times reported that recent studies indicate it is clearly better for plaintiffs to settle their dispute or litigation then it is to take it to trial. This will come as zero suprise to my friend Jan Schlichtmann who has been preaching for years about the destructive and expensive toll that litigation takes on clients and attorneys and who has been outlining his theory as to the best way to proceed using alternatives to litigation. You can get a glimpse of his most recent speech to the Florida Justice Association by clicking on this video or visiting LB Network to view all of the videos of this talk. You can also read the entire N.Y. Times article on settlement vs litigation by clicking here. As the co-author of the study says in summary: “The lesson for plaintiffs is, in the vast majority of cases, they are perceiving the defendant’s offer to be half a loaf when in fact it is an entire loaf or more,” said Randall L. Kiser, a co-author of the study and principal analyst at DecisionSet, a consulting firm that advises clients on litigation decisions. The study, which was a test of cases over 2004 to 2005 confirms what most of us know, which is that most clients vastly over estimate the monetary worth of their case and do not understand the risk of going to trial. The implications of this study, which should be kept on most structured settlement brokers desks for use in a difficult negotiation, are that structured settlements can often be the bridge between what the case is fairly valued at in settlement and what the plaintiff perceives as their needs or value going forward. To be able to illustrate via a structured settlement that pays out over 25 to 40 years what the future payments total up too and how they meet the clients needs, you can often allow the plaintiff to get "off the big number" and focus on their true needs for the money. Make sure you get a copy of this study when it comes out, i'll be sure to post it here. It's a good reminder that structured settlement professionals have an important role to play in educating plaintiffs as to the risks of trial, the value of settlement and our ability to leverage and magnify this settlement.

In yet another bad quarter for what was once the Dark Star of the insurance universe, AIG announced a worse then expected loss of $5.36 billion yesterday, tied largely to it's ill fated foray into mortgage related investments.

It wasn't long ago that AIG routinely racked up record earnings from quarter to quarter and was a stock and company beloved by Wall Street and stock analysts who were enamored by the management of former CEO Hank Greenberg and his team. Now, after being forced out by the maurading ex-governor, ex-attorney general Elliot Spitzer, the company has fallen on hard times and it's reliance on mortgage related investments and securities is a constant drag on performance and earnings.

The question is, does this portend any changes as this giant that dominates the structured settlement industry falters in the short term and will the current management team and style that has dominated that company for so long stay intact?

Only time will tell and as the rest of the quarterly earnings of other life and casualty markets is going to make for some interesting reading to see which companies avoided the time bomb of mortgage securities and which ones will be poised to grow once the current shake out ends. The bigger issue for structured settlement brokers and life markets is whether is contraction in capacity due to losses and increases in reserves is going to further slow the pace of claims settlement that is plaguing the settlement business this year.

Conversations with just about any settlement broker will tell you this is shaping up as a lean year, definitely not a growth market, with the fact that claims departments are sitting on cases and delaying settlements if possible to conserve cash is impacting our profession. Obviously, this is only a temporary slow down and one that will be followed by a burst of activity as cases have to eventually be settled, litigated or paid, but for the time being it's putting a pinch on the structured settlement market and is going to make expansion into new areas of settlements of paramount importance for most firms.

In short, it looks like rough sailing for the balance of 2008 until this recent round of investment idiocy works itself out so settlement professionals need to do a couple of things in my opinion.

1. Be careful where you spend your marketing and promotional dollars.

2. Invest in new markets and opportunities such as structured sales, non-qualified settlements and legal fee marketing.

3. Invest in technology that allows you to market your firm inexpensively and with great precision so that you can define your expertise and reach your new and existing customers more easily.

If you haven't checked out my seminar on internet marketing for settlement professionals, why don't you take some time this weekend and look it over. You might find it interesting and helpful, and while your at it join Speaking of Settlements so that you can beging to network with your peers and raise your internet profile immediately.

In an interesting piece from the usually liberal and pro-trial lawyer NY Times, a political investigative segment was published today on the relationship that NY Assemblyman and speaker Sheldon Silver has with Counsel Financial, one of the biggest legal finance firms in the business and one with ties to some of the bigger structured settlement firms in our industry.

You can access the NY Times article by clicking here.

I'm not really sure where the Times is going with this piece, other then to imply that Silver's investment in Counsel Financial is some how tied to his long standing resistance to tort reform measures submitted to the NY state legislature. The fact is that the article makes pretty clear there are no ethics violations here and Silver's long standing advocacy of prohibiting caps on damages and other "tort reform" that limits citizens rights to recovery predate his investment in Counsel.

What a lot of people who aren't aware of the power and influence of the legal finance business might find interesting is that the chairman and vice chairman of Counsel are the nationally renown trial lawyers Perry Weitz and Arthur Luxenberg. I've written before about the looming power and influence that legal finance and lending firms are about to exert on the settlement industry before, but as this article seems to imply their reach goes into the political world as well.

Legal finance firms have become the life blood of a huge segment of the legal world as regular banks and commercial lenders avoid lending to contigency law firms. However, with the cash and a lending relationship comes a power over the trial lawyer that can have far reaching influence over who they use as their structured settlement broker, settlement advisor or trustee.

I doubt this article will do anything but be a ripple in the water of local NY politics, but the fact that the legal finance business made the NY Times is news and indication that it is moving out of the shadows and into the light of the "big media" spotlight.

In the last month I had the opportunity to present twice on the idea of internet marketing and how lawyers and settlement professionals can start to get in the game. These video podcasts of my talk given back on June 6th, 2008 cover the basics of internet marketing and i'm providing the links here for those of you who want to view them.

Part one of Mark Wahlstrom's talk on Internet Marketing.

Part two of Mark Wahlstrom's talk on internet Marketing.

However, in today's blog post I want to talk about social and professional networks for attorneys and what they are. As many people who are on the cutting edge of marketing are aware, or if you have a child under the age of 24 who has a MySpace account, the explosion of social networks has turned into a tidal wave of activity for those of us interested in internet marketing. No other area of what is often called Web 2.0 has shown more growth, attracted more venture capital money and is of such keen interest to advertisers then social and professional networks. However, I also realize that most lawyers have no clue as to what a professional network is or why it is essential that they join one if they want to be viable on the internet.

The most familiar networks that people can join, such as MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin and Bebo, have drawn all the big boys of the media and internet world, with Rupport Murdoch buying MySpace as the signature example. Why are they attracting so much money and what are the implications for lawyers, financial experts and legal marketing firms who are spending their current money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), buying banner ads, Google clicks or utilizing email campaigns? It's simple, the money goes where the people go and right now the audience is moving strongly to social and professional networking sites. The bottom line is that the world is moving in this direction and that it won't be long before having a professional networking profile will be as essential as an email address and web site are today.

What is social/professional networking you might ask? In it's simplest, and crudest form, just go over to Myspace.com and check out the biggest social network. Essentially it is the creation of a personal profile by opening up a free membership with Myspace, putting your photo on it and then filling out a questionnaire, putting links to your content and basically letting the world know who you are and what you are about. Simple, right? Well, the simplicity is the value of the network and the fact that it allows you to find "friends" with common interests or common social circles allows you to expand your network and raise your profile. Of course in the Myspace world that often means finding dates, activity partners and others, not necessarily professional clients.

Now in the social world that "raised profile" means more potential dates and friends, but in the professional world it means that people who are looking for someone with your expertise and talents, would be able to locate you through the network or search engine results, and therefore could potentially be a source of future business. The issue up until now has been whether or not  the average lawyer, financial guy or legal marketer wants to put themselves out on MySpace or Facebook which are generally seen more as dating and pop culture sites for the general public and therefore risk diminishing their professional image by being seen in "that club".

So how does a legal professional obtain the massive benefits and exposure of joining a social network with out all of the potential draw backs? It's a pretty simple solution in that you just start searching for networking sites that specialize in your profession. The problem with that is that most "networks" are on list servers for state trial lawyer groups or bar associations, which by their very nature end up being isolated behind a membership fire wall. They don't allow for creation of individual firm or attorney profiles, they don't promote your specialty areas and they really only function as a question and answer board using technology around since 1990. They are exceptionally limited and provide the lawyer with only one of the three features of a social network and that is the abiiity to speak with their peers. 

What The Legal Broadcast Network has come up with is our own professional network that attorneys, law students, law professors, paralegals, media professionals and others can join that will be filled with their peers and the type of media you have come to expect from our platform.

We have titled it The LB Network and you can find it by clicking here.

What you will find is our beta phase test of a professional media network for attorneys that is totally open for any lawyer, law student, judge, law professor, reporter or legal marketing expert to join. Once you join you can create your media profile, links to your law firm, publications, up load audio and video podcasts and develop a blog all for no cost. The value to you is the opportunity to raise your profile among lawyers, clients and potential clients. In short, it helps them find you, refer you and communicate with you in an immediate fashion that other internet marketing options don't provide.

As this is the first of a five part series on developing your media profile and starting your networking program, you need to make sure you are subscribing to my RSS feed so you can read the next few posts that will get into the details of social marketing for lawyers and why you need to be part of it. My next post on professional marketing will get into the development of a professional media profile and it's essential ingredients.

On this weeks Speaking of Settlements, the weekly podcast feature of The Settlement Channel, I am joined once again by noted tax law attorney Robert Wood of the firm Wood & Porter of San Francisco, CA. The reason for having Rob back two weeks in a row is the news that the Treasury has issued final regulations on section 468B-6 trusts and I wanted to get copies and material to my audience as soon as possible.

Now, before anyone gets too excited, these regulations and final rules are NOT related to the more commonly discussed 468B trust that is used for litigation and mass torts. These rules are not related to those trusts or the pending issue before Treasury regarding the taxation of single claimant structures, as much as we would like to get that ruling after all these years of waiting.

No, this podcast is relative to the section of those trusts that govern a variety of other trusts, but specifically those related to section 1031 exchanges and the trust accounts used to manage those transactions. Now, before you go away and don't read this, keep in mind that Allstate Life has their structured sale product, which is a vital element of the 1031 fall back or fall out market so knowledge of these provisions is of keen interest if you are involved in that market.

I know it's a small niche as of yet, but a lot more producers should be looking at the 1031 fallback or fall out market as a means of getting into the structured sales arena. So take a few minutes, click on this link, and learn a little more about 468B-6 trusts and the new rules on section 1031 exchanges. 

You can also read more on these regulations and obtain a copy of this ruling by going over to The Tax Law Channel and looking for the pdf copy of the regulations.