Remember those law school exams that depended not as much on getting the right answer as on issue spotting? Usually you got a fact pattern and you had to look at all the ways those facts would present interesting legal questions for a judge to consider.
Investigation is something like this, but instead of legal
You are the Chief Investment Officer screening possible targets for a $5 million investment in a non-public asset. Whether you work at a family office, a private equity fund or somewhere else, the prospective deal flow should be coming at you good and hard.
If you
Hiring good people is getting a lot harder, and not just because there are fewer candidates in a lot of industries. With AI-enabled cheating, grade inflation, and the shunning of standardized tests by colleges and graduate schools, how is a hiring manager supposed to know who’s a good fit?
My prediction: Good companies will have
ChatGPT now comes up in most of the extended conversations I have with lawyers about how things are going. Many rave about how easy it is to have this robot whip up a simple motion or even, in one example, “a short speech about NATO defense capabilities.”
While it may be true that ChatGPT can
In a financial investigation it’s easy to get buried under all the words and numbers and to forget about emotions – those of your client, the person you’re investigating, and your own.
It’s understandable but something to guard against.
Is it in poor taste to argue against leaning too hard on credentials when you post something on LinkedIn, a platform where people showcase their credentials for all to see? I don’t think so.
If you want a lawyer who will do a good job drafting a will, handling your divorce or making sure you’re
Investors in Madoff Securities and FTX were both warned, but by different sets of people.
If it turns out to be true that without customer knowledge FTX took billions of dollars of customer account money to invest in a risky company owned by FTX’s CEO, this will truly compare to the Madoff scheme for audacious
Listen to me explain why putting people at ease is the best way to elicit information from them. I don’t have a badge or a subpoena, so the key is to be nice to them and be interested in what they do, think, and feel. Get the podcast chat on Ernie Sander’s “You Said What?”
You want to invest $3 million into a real estate project. Time is tight because it’s closing in 12 days. The developer (51 years old) seems to have a decent track record and takes credit for billions of dollars of projects, but this project doesn’t yet have zoning approval and the previous owner dumped the
One indispensable part of due diligence is to check for regulatory sanctions. Was a company found by the SEC or FINRA to have misappropriated investor money? Put them in unsuitable investments? Lied on a filing to induce people to invest money under false pretenses?
While we never pronounce “Invest” or “Don’t Invest,” “Hire” or “Don’t