Law Firm Cybersecurity: The State of Preventative and Remedial Regulation Governing Data Breaches in the Legal Profession

With the looming threat of the next hacking scandal, data protection efforts in law firms are becoming increasingly crucial in maintaining client confidentiality. This paper addresses ethical and legal issues arising with data storage and privacy in law firms. The American Bar Association’s Model Rules present an ethical standard for cybersecurity measures, which many states have adopted and interpreted. Other than state legislation mandating timely disclosure after a data breach, few legal standards govern law firm data breaches. As technology advances rapidly, the law must address preventative and remedial measures more effectively to protect clients from data breaches caused by outdated or ineffective cybersecurity procedures in law firms. These measures should include setting a minimum standard of care for data security protection and creating a private cause of action for individuals whose personal information has been improperly accessed because of a failure to comply with those standards

An evaluation of a group of counseled veterans attending school under P.L. 550.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Of Time, Place, and the Alaska Constitution

This Article places the Alaska Constitution in historical perspective by comparing it with other state constitutions. It first considers how the convention delegates’ need to satisfy four audiences—Congress, Alaska residents who would ratify the constitution, those who would live under the constitution, and posterity—affected the constitution’s design. It next shows how the Alaska Constitution reflects the fact that it is the state’s first constitution, that it is a western constitution, and that it is a mid-twentieth-century constitution. Finally, it compares the Alaska Constitution with the Hawaii Constitution, which was drafted at the same time

The political, regulatory and market failures that caused the US financial crisis

This paper discusses the key regulatory, market and political failures that led to the 2008-2009 United States financial crisis. While Congress was fixing the Savings and Loan crisis, it failed to give the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac normal bank supervisory power. This was a political failure as Congress was appealing to narrow constituencies. In the mid-1990s, to encourage home ownership, the Administration changedenforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, effectively requiring banks to lower bank mortgage standards to underserved areas. Crucially, the risky mortgage standards then spread to other sectors of the market. Market failure problems ensued as banks, mortgage brokers, securitizers, credit rating agencies, and asset managers were all plagued by problems such as moral hazard or conflicts of interest. The author explains that financial deregulation of the past three decades is unrelated to the financial crisis, and makes several recommendations for regulatory reform.Debt Markets,Access to Finance,Emerging Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress

Export restraints on russian natural gas and raw timber : what are the economic impacts ?

Export restraints by the Russian Federation on natural gas and timber have been the source of major controversy between the European Union and the Russian Federation. The analysis of this paper suggests that the export restraints in natural gas very substantially benefit Russia. On the other hand, in raw timber the analysis suggests that a substantial reduction of Russian export taxes would increase Russian welfare. The paper explains that Gazprom has failed to invest adequately, resulting in little development of new gas supplies. The result has been progressively increasing use by Gazprom of Central Asian gas supplies, at progressively higher prices for Russia. The increased prices of gas for Russian consumers have shown that it is crucial for Russia to allow new entrants and to introduce competition in the Russian domestic market. Without export restraints, however, competition among multiple gas suppliers from Russia would erode or eliminate the monopoly profits of the Russian Federation on gas exports. Thus, with a more competitive domestic market, the Russian government would be expected to grant exclusive exporting rights to a single entity (as it presently does with Gazprom) or impose export taxes. Thus, Europe should not expect to achieve cheaper Russian gas as a result of structural reforms within the Russian gas market. A more promising avenue for European energy diversification is new pipeline construction to open up new sources of supply independent of Russia (especially the Nabucco pipeline), and liquefied natural gas purchases.Markets and Market Access,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Energy Production and Transportation,Economic Theory&Research,Oil Refining&Gas Industry

Russian trade and foreign direct investment policy at the crossroads

This paper summarizes the estimates of what Russia will get from World Trade Organization accession and why. A key finding is the estimate that Russia will gain about $53 billion per year in the medium term from World Trade Organization accession and$177 billion per year in the long term, due largely to its own commitments to reform its own business services sectors. The paper summarizes the principal reform commitments that Russia has undertaken as part of its World Trade Organization accession negotiations, and compares them with those of other countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. It finds that the Russian commitments represent a liberal offer to the members of the World Trade Organization for admission, but they are typical of other transition countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. The authors discuss the outstanding issues in the Russian World Trade Organizaiton accession negotiations, and explain why Russian accession will result in the elimination of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment against Russia. They discuss Russian policies to attract foreign direct investment, including an assessment of the impact of the 2008 law on strategic sectors and the increased role of the state in the economy. Finally, the authors assess the importance of Russian accession to Russia and to the international trading community, and suggestions for most efficiently meeting the government’s diversification objective.Economic Theory&Research,World Trade Organization,Emerging Markets,Debt Markets,Free Trade

Trade, foreign exchange, and energy policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran : reform agenda, economic implications, and impact on the poor

The Islamic Republic of Iran has committed itself to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five-Year Development Plan. It started out with nontariff barriers on all products, a dual exchange rate regime with the market rate more than four times the official rate, and domestic energy subsidies equal to about 90 percent of the cost of energy products. Many of these policies were justified as helping the poor. To analyze the effect of the reforms, separately and together, the authors develop a multisector computable general equilibrium model with 10 rural and 10 urban households. They find that the combined reforms could generate welfare gains equal to about 50 percent of aggregate consumer income. These gains reflect the large initial distortions-for example, energy subsidies equal to about 18 percent of GDP, and retail energy prices equal to about 10 percent of world market prices. Separately, trade reform would lead to gains of about 5 percent of income, exchange rate reform to gains of 7 percent of income, and energy pricing reform to gains of 33 percent of income. The authors'results show that well-intentioned commodity subsidy policies for the poor can have perverse effects. Direct income payments to all households (not just the poor) would vastly increase the incomes of the poor compared with the status quo. Moreover, if the combined reforms were implemented, the poorest rural household would receive gains equal to about 290 percent of its income, and the poorest urban household gains equal to about 140 percent of its income.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Stabilization

mplot: An R Package for Graphical Model Stability and Variable Selection Procedures

The mplot package provides an easy to use implementation of model stability and variable inclusion plots (M\"uller and Welsh 2010; Murray, Heritier, and M\"uller 2013) as well as the adaptive fence (Jiang, Rao, Gu, and Nguyen 2008; Jiang, Nguyen, and Rao 2009) for linear and generalised linear models. We provide a number of innovations on the standard procedures and address many practical implementation issues including the addition of redundant variables, interactive visualisations and approximating logistic models with linear models. An option is provided that combines our bootstrap approach with glmnet for higher dimensional models. The plots and graphical user interface leverage state of the art web technologies to facilitate interaction with the results. The speed of implementation comes from the leaps package and cross-platform multicore support.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figure