Author Archives: Library Relations

Free Form of the Month

PLI PLUS offers unlimited electronic access to more than 4,500 downloadable, searchable, and editable legal forms ready for use in your practice. In an effort to highlight this unique content type, we’ve selected one form per month and made it available for anyone to download for free – no subscription required.

April’s free form:

List of Disclosure and Reporting Requirements for Debtor Under Bankruptcy Code and Rules

More information about Legal Forms & Checklists:

  • Forms & Checklists Flyer – This flyer provides an overview of the forms & checklists on PLI PLUS and highlights a handful of popular examples.

Book Update: Holtzschue on Real Estate Contracts and Closings: A Step-by-Step Guide to Buying and Selling Real Estate (Third Edition)

Holtzschue on Real Estate Contracts and Closings provides thorough legal, technical, and strategic guidance to help implement dispute-free residential deals more quickly and easily. This book clearly explains the governing law and customary industry practices, enabling practitioners to efficiently handle real estate transactions. It covers managing the appropriate documents, tax issues, and brokers, drafting and negotiating the contract, with sample forms that save time and effort, preparing for the closing, including the documents and scheduling details, and closing the sale, including delivering and reviewing deeds and other paperwork, and dealing with insurance policies, tax documents, and closing checks.

The new release includes the following updates:

  • Chapter 2, Drafting and Negotiating the Contract, includes a new caveat emptor case that rejected the special facts doctrine, an article about a proposed amendment to RPAPL 881 concerning licenses, a new remedies case, a mortgage commitment contingency case where a purchaser acted in good faith, easement cases, and a time of the essence case where notice was too short.
  • Chapter 4, The Closing,discusses the uncertainty as to the effective date of the Corporate Transparency Act and rules.

The Tables of Authorities have also been updated.

Order a print copy today.

PLI PLUS subscribers can access this title through their subscription.

Book Update: Patent Claim Construction and Markman Hearings

Patent Claim Construction and Markman Hearings provides in-depth guidance to this important area of patent practice, walking the reader through the entire process of preparing for, conducting, and appealing a Markman hearing. This book helps readers understand how courts decide “what a person of ordinary skill in the field of the patent invention would understand the language of the claim to mean”, the impact of prior constructions on a new hearing, how to decide what claims or claim elements should be construed by the court, what constitutes intrinsic and extrinsic evidence in interpreting the claim, at what point in the overall patent proceeding a construction hearing should be held, and what are the rules that will be used when a contested construction is an issue in an appeal to the Federal Circuit.

The new release includes the following updates:

  • Reviews a case in which a district court judge recused himself from the case on remand from the Federal Circuit because he had “no idea how to reconcile the facts presented to the court with the Federal Circuit’s holding” and did not believe that that he could “set aside [his] previous conclusions to make an impartial determination.” (See section 1:3.1).
  • Covers Vascular Solutions LLC v. Medtronic, where the Federal Circuit rejected the notion that a term—“substantially rigid portion/ segment”—needed to be consistent across claims. (See section 2:2.1[B][5]).
  • Includes discussion of a case in which the Federal Circuit explained how to determine whether the lower court or Board construed a claim or whether it has simply compared the claim to prior art or an allegedly infringing technology (See section 11:2).

Appendix C, Table of Authorities and Index have also been updated.

Order a print copy today.

PLI PLUS subscribers can access this title through their subscription.

Book Update: The Circular 230 Deskbook: Related Penalties, Reportable Transactions, Working Forms

The Circular 230 Deskbook: Related Penalties, Reportable Transactions, Working Forms is an essential compliance resource for every tax professional who practices before the IRS, helping practitioners comply with complex Circular 230 amendments more easily while avoiding costly penalties and sanctions. This practice guide shows you how to meet mandated duties applicable to six types of covered opinions, comply with critical requirements for written tax advice, carry out prescribed duties when advising in preparation of tax returns, satisfy reporting/list maintenance rules for six types of reportable transactions, and qualify for ”safe harbors” that free you from burdensome Circular standards, exploit proven defenses against the Code’s section 6662 penalties, and avoid common errors that can trigger these 6662 penalties.

The new release includes the following updates:

  • Chapter 1, Deference: When the Court Must Yield to the Government’s Interpretation, discusses a D.C. Circuit Court decision ruling in favor of the taxpayer after noting that the regulation in question was amenable to both a pro-taxpayer and pro-IRS reading and that the IRS itself had previously agreed with the taxpayer’s reading.
  • Chapter 4, Circular 230, advises that the IRS and Treasury issued proposed amendments to various sections of the Circular in late December 2024. The proposal is driven, in large part, by losses the IRS sustained in two cases (Loving v. IRS and Ridgely v. Lew) limiting its authority under the statute that authorizes the promulgation of the Circular.

The Table of Authorities have also been updated.

Order a print copy today.

PLI PLUS subscribers can access this title through their subscription.

Free Form of the Month

PLI PLUS offers unlimited electronic access to more than 4,500 downloadable, searchable, and editable legal forms ready for use in your practice. In an effort to highlight this unique content type, we’ve selected one form per month and made it available for anyone to download for free – no subscription required.

March’s free form:

Framework of an Investment Management Agreement

More information about Legal Forms & Checklists:

  • Forms & Checklists Flyer – This flyer provides an overview of the forms & checklists on PLI PLUS and highlights a handful of popular examples.

Treatise Update: Derivatives Deskbook: Close-Out Netting, Risk Mitigation, Litigation (Second Edition)

Derivatives Deskbook: Close-Out Netting, Risk Mitigation, Litigation (Second Edition) is a comprehensive resource for all users of swap agreements and derivatives, from financial institutions to corporate end-users. This treatise defines the key terminology and identifies the major players, discusses the full range of required documentation, highlights the best practices for the legal risk management of derivatives and includes numerous practice-tested legal forms.

The new release includes the following updates:

  • Chapter 1, Introduction, explains that statistics illustrate that in spite of the complete regulatory overhaul of the OTC derivatives market since the 2008 financial crisis, the use of OTC derivatives continues to grow rapidly (Section 1:1).
  • Chapter 7, U.S. Bankruptcy Implications of Close-Out Netting, examines the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that section 546(e) does not protect transfers made through a financial institution to a third party as an intermediary (Section 7:2.3).
  • Chapter 8, Best Practices Recommendations, advises parties to carefully consider forum and jurisdictional issues in the drafting of what are considered boilerplate provisions in an OTC derivatives contract, but which may impact the entire outcome of the transaction (Section 8.8).
  • Chapter 9, U.S. Regulatory Summary, explores the availability of judicial remedies for violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) by foreign counterparties (Section 9.1).

Order a print copy today.

PLI PLUS subscribers can access this title through their subscription.

What’s New in PLI PLUS

We add content to PLI PLUS every month to ensure our subscribers have access to the most up-to-date and relevant secondary source legal documents. Renowned legal experts regularly update our acclaimed Treatises/Practice Guides, Course Handbooks, Answer Books, Transcripts, and Forms to reflect recent changes and developments in the law.

Click here to see what we added in February 2025!

PLI @ ACLEA’s Mid-Year Meeting

PLI was well-represented at ACLEA’s Mid-Year Meeting in San Diego earlier this month. 

Alexa Robertson, Vice President, Publishing & Legal Information Services, spoke on the panel “Publishing Trends: Where We Are Now and the Brave New World Ahead” with Sharon Sandle, an ACLEA Director and Director of the Law Practice Resources Division of the State Bar of Texas, and Annette Turcotte, Director of Operations at Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. 

Andrew Ottiger, VP of Accreditation & Compliance, moderated the session “A Conversation with the Regulators,” which featured Shelley Sutton, the Attorney Services Administrator at the Kansas CLE (a department of the Kansas Supreme Court), Sydnie Kuhre, Board Director at the Utah Supreme Court, Board of Continuing Legal Education, and Jonita Rose, Program Analyst at the Office of Professional Competence, The State Bar of California.