Cristopher Farrar, of counsel at DLA Piper in Houston, recently returned from Tanzania, where he was part of a DLA Piper pro bono team that taught negotiation skills to Tanzanian lawyers. "The basis of the trip was to share some of our international experience and [to] help to develop skills sets in negotiations for the Tanzanian government lawyers," says Farrar, a project development lawyer. Farrar says about 10 DLA Piper lawyers from around the world made the trip to Tanzania during the last week in April for the teaching sessions. Most of the Tanzanian attorneys involved work at various government agencies, such as the attorney general’s office, the prime minister’s office, the tax division, the contract-and-treaties division and the public prosecutor’s office, he says. He says the Tanzanian attorneys were divided into small groups for mock negotiation sessions, with some representing a government-owned company and others representing a multinational company. His role was advising one of the groups tasked with representing a government-owned company. In addition to the hands-on experience in negotiations, Farrar says the DLA Piper lawyers wanted to show the Tanzanian lawyers the importance of understanding all aspects of a business matter, not just a discrete part of it. "We helped them to explore the entire business transactions and look at it from a high level. . . ," he says. "The attorneys we were working with really enjoyed that aspect, because the attorneys working in a government department, sometimes they don’t get to see the entire transaction."
Bond, James Bond
One of the coolest espionage gadgets on James Bond’s Aston Martin was the license-plate flipper. At the flip of a switch, the plates on Bond’s silver DB5 would rotate, enabling him to change his car’s identity and avoid being spotted by various cinematic bad guys. Bexar County DA Susan Reed also thinks this is a cool feature but not as it pertains to cars that travel the roads in Texas. After Mark Gibson, one of Reed’s investigators, spotted a company that was selling license-plate flippers over the internet, she brought it to the attention of the Texas Legislature, she says. On May 17, the Texas House of Representative passed S.B. 1757, which criminalizes possession of a license-plate flipper, making it a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Distributing or selling a flipper is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. The bill awaits the signature of Gov. Rick Perry. Reed says Texas doesn’t need people using license plate flippers to avoid law enforcement or the fees on toll roads, for that matter. But there is one caveat about the proposed law, at least as it applies to Bexar County, she says. "If James Bond comes to Texas and wants to use the flipper, I’ll give him immunity. I’ve always been a Bond fan. Anybody else can forget it," Reed says with a laugh. No word on whether the Lege will consider banning the most lethal feature on Bond’s sport car: the hidden, front-mounted machine guns. Don’t bet on it though. This is Texas, after all.
