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Laws, Volume 9, Issue 2 (June 2020) – 6 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): This paper discusses how large law firms should re-organize themselves to maintain a competitive edge in the increasingly digitalized legal field. While providing a brief historical introduction to the rise of large law firms and the challenges posed by the rise of digital capitalism and the gig economy, the paper proposes an original and radical approach to reforming large law firms in the light of digitalization. Among other things, the paper discusses (I) the partnership as an organizational tool for large law firms in an increasingly digital and agile legal field; (II) the importance of multidisciplinary practices and of the relationship between lawyers and non-lawyers within firms; and (III) the centrality of outsourcing strategies to legal tech companies and other actors in order to deliver legal services more effectively and in a more client-oriented manner. View this paper.

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38 pages, 1084 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Expectations and Experiences of Women Imprisoned for Drug Offending and Returning to Communities in Thailand: Understanding Women’s Pathways Into, Through, and Post-Imprisonment

by Samantha Jeffries, Chontit Chuenurah and Tristan Russell

Laws 2020, 9(2), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020015 - 22 Jun 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7550

Abstract

Thailand places a high priority on the gender-specific contexts out of which offending arises and the differential needs of women in the criminal justice system. Despite this, Thailand has the highest female incarceration rate in South East Asia and there has been substantial growth since the 1990s. This increase has been driven by punitive changes in drug law, criminal justice policy/practice which have disproportionately impacted women. As female representation in Thailand’s prisons grows, so does the number of women who return to communities. Thus, one of the challenges facing Thai society is the efficacious re-integration of growing numbers of formally incarcerated women. However, what is known about re-entry comes almost exclusively from studies of prisoners (usually men) returning home in western societies. Re-integration does not occur in a vacuum. Supporting women post-release necessitates knowledge of their pathways to, experiences of, and journeys out of prison. Utilising in-depth interviews with (n = 80) imprisoned/formally incarcerated women and focus groups with (n = 16) correctional staff, this paper reports findings from the first comprehensive study of women’s re-integration expectations and experiences in Thailand. Findings showed that women had multifaceted and intersectional needs which directed their pathways into, during, and out of prison. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Criminology and Criminal Justice)

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23 pages, 279 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Digitalization of the Legal Field and the Future of Large Law Firms

by Salvatore Caserta

Laws 2020, 9(2), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020014 - 21 Jun 2020

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 14220

Abstract

This paper discusses how large law firms should re-organize themselves to maintain a competitive edge in the increasingly digitalized legal field. While providing a brief historical introduction to the rise of large law firms and the challenges posed by the rise of digital capitalism and the gig economy, the paper proposes an original and radical approach to reforming large law firms in the light of the digitalization. Among other things, the paper discusses (I) the partnership as organizational tool for large law firms in an increasingly digital and agile legal field; (II) the importance of multidisciplinary practices and of the relationship between lawyers and non-lawyers within firms; and (III) the centrality of outsourcing strategies to legal tech companies and other actors in order to deliver legal services more effectively and in a more client-oriented manner. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laws and Emerging Technologies)

19 pages, 516 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Legislation, Regulations, and Reflections on Environmental Accounting as a Reflection of the Incorporation of Social Responsibility in Companies

by Maripaz Muñoz Prieto

Laws 2020, 9(2), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020013 - 5 Jun 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5426

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze how accounting legislation has contributed to the improvement of public information on environmental aspects in the financial reports issued by companies. Also, the article aims to verify the relationship between this environmental accounting legislation and the processes of corporate social responsibility. These reports are used for decision making, so any improvement in the publication should mean a better business strategy. Companies should seek to improve their relationship with the environment, helping to minimize the environmental problems caused by their production systems. The methodology used in this study has been the deductive method, through the bibliographic review, and a descriptive research level was used. Among the main results of this work are a summary table with regulations related to environmental care, evidence of the lack of specific legislation, and the need for more demanding regulations with companies when providing environmental data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Legal-Economic Issues of Digital & Collaborative Economy)

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13 pages, 241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Wearable Technologies and Smart Clothes in the Fashion Business: Some Issues Concerning Cybersecurity and Data Protection

by Giovanni Ziccardi

Laws 2020, 9(2), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020012 - 29 May 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7434

Abstract

Wearable devices and smart clothes give rise to pivotal technological and legal issues in the fashion business. The cybersecurity attention in the digital society, and the advent of General Data Protection Regulation No. 2016/679 (GDPR) in the European, and global, legal framework, implied the need to evaluate which norms and aspects of the European Regulation could apply to wearable devices, which are becoming more and more invasive. Wearable devices are, first of all (and from a data protection point of view), intrusive tools that can put users’ personal (and intimate) data at risk. In particular, we will discuss the aspects of the spread of an accountability “culture” (also) in the fashion business, the need for correct management policy of data breaches, the rights of transparency for users/customers who are using wearable devices and smart clothes, and respect for the dignity and nondiscrimination of the individual during the data collection and processing. These are, all, fundamental points: the protection of the individual’s data in the digital landscape is, in fact, strictly connected to the protection of his/her fundamental rights in the modern digital society. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Frontiers of Fashion Law)

21 pages, 276 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring the Impact of Government Regulation on Technological Transitions; a Historical Perspective on Innovation in the Dutch Network-Based Industries

by Helen Stout and Martin de Jong

Laws 2020, 9(2), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020011 - 11 Apr 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5204

Abstract

Government interventions can affect processes of technological transition through the enactment of legal and other policy instruments. In this contribution, we concentrated on legal interventions only and examined what they were, the relation between the public and private players that they affected, and the nature of the incentive they provided. We did this for four historical cases in the world of utility industries in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The summarizing results for each case appeared in overview tables which eventually showed whether most of the administered stimuli were negative, neutral, or positive for the action alternatives of the innovating players, and thus the further development of the newly emerging technology. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the common argument and rhetoric that governments normally aim to propel industrial progress by opening a variety of options for innovating private players rings hollow when analyzed more systematically. A higher number of the incentives we found across the four cases were negative rather than positive, while some cases had only negative incentives and none had more positive than negative incentives. Full article

16 pages, 305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Subject (in) Trouble: Humans, Robots, and Legal Imagination

by Ana Oliveira

Laws 2020, 9(2), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws9020010 - 31 Mar 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5233

Abstract

The legal conception and interpretation of the subject of law have long been challenged by different theoretical backgrounds: from the feminist critiques of the patriarchal nature of law and its subjects to the Marxist critiques of its capitalist ideological nature and the anti-racist critiques of its colonial nature. These perspectives are, in turn, challenged by anarchist, queer, and crip conceptions that, while compelling a critical return to the subject, the structure and the law also serve as an inspiration for arguments that deplete the structures and render them hostages of the sovereignty of the subject’ self-fiction. Identity Wars (a possible epithet for this political and epistemological battle to establish meaning through which power is exercised) have, for their part, been challenged by a renewed axiological consensus, here introduced by posthuman critical theory: species hierarchy and anthropocentric exceptionalism. As concepts and matter, questioning human exceptionalism has created new legal issues: from ecosexual weddings with the sea, the sun, or a horse; to human rights of animals; to granting legal personhood to nature; to human rights of machines, inter alia the right to (or not to) consent. Part of a wider movement on legal theory, which extends the notion of legal subjectivity to non-human agents, the subject is increasingly in trouble. From Science Fiction to hyperrealist materialism, this paper intends to signal some of the normative problems introduced, firstly, by the sovereignty of the subject’s self-fiction; and, secondly, by the anthropomorphization of high-tech robotics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feminist Legal Theory in the 21st Century)

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Laws, Volume 9, Issue 2 (June 2020) – 6 articles

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