’ Paul Bokota believes outside counsel get a bad rap. He says the key to changing that is in treating them as more than just vendors.
In a corporate setting, outside counsel can be a godsend. They can dole out expertise, tidy up overflow and, by and large, make your life easier. So why in corporate culture do they so often get a bad reputation?
The answer is obvious: money. When companies are looking to cut costs, outside counsel is often first on the chopping block. For Paul Bokota, however, the explanation is a little more complicated.
When you have as many responsibilities as Bokota, it’s always good to have that helping hand. As division vice president and division general counsel with Spectrum Brands, he oversees everything from transactions and mergers and acquisitions to compliance and antitrust within the company’s $1.3 billion hardware and home division. Even if one hasn’t heard of Spectrum, they have certainly heard of the brands the company owns, which include Rayovac, Armor All, Kwikset, Pfister, and even the George Foreman Grill.
Each brand has its own regulations and peculiarities. Without the help of outside counsel, Bokota might drown in contracts and textbooks. He says there’s roughly ten or so firms that he regularly calls upon, some of which provide assistance with international law while others manage overflow, offer guidance and, in some situations, provide a judgment call. He cites one prominent firm he almost fired for weighing theoretical concerns when he called them for a yes or no answer.
“You have to be commercially savvy and business friendly,” Bokota says. “I need to make a decision, and I need them to help me make that decision. I don’t need this to be a law school exam. I need to know which hand is the right hand.” Because Bokota relies heavily on outside counsel, he’s developed a strong sense of what he looks for in a collaborator.
Fostering those relationships includes Bokota personally meeting each and every outside counsel he employs. He recalls a trip to China where he made a stop in Shanghai specifically to spend time with a colleague at a Chinese firm. Putting a face to a name, Bokota says, is integral. He’s also eager to bring outside counsel to meetings at Spectrum’s corporate headquarters, where they can meet the team and get a feel for the business.
Spectrum also establishes alternative fee arrangements with outside counsel that can often provide a greater value. Most outside counsel operate on an hourly basis, but Bokota says he’s becoming more interested in fixed-fee arrangements and not-to-exceed contracts. This approach gives him more certainty while at the same time demonstrating a level of trust with his outside counsel.
Costs still must figure into Bokota’s decisions. In his opinion, however, it’s not about eliminating outside counsel so much as winnowing your pool down to a curated selection of firms with whom you’ve established a healthy relationship.
“I think we use too many law firms,” Bokota admits, noting that Spectrum is hoping to narrow it down by implementing more RFPs, which allows firms to be more creative and also offers a safe space for them to propose their own alternative arrangements.
This approach is rooted as much in identifying personality and humanity in the outside counsel with whom they choose to work.
Obviously, Bokota’s opinion is the former. A sound outside counsel is worth the cost, he says, especially if one has cultivated a relationship into something that transcends a mere transaction. No one wants to be viewed as a vendor, after all.A spaceman (Lewis Garvey) is in a spaceship on a mission. We later find out that he actually started off as the scullery cook, but became commander on the spaceship via a series of unfortunate events leaving the rest of the crew completely dead. This is not just a sci-fi drama though; there is romance. Our scullery-cook-turned-commander is romantically involved with PROM, the super computer who controls the spaceship, presented to us in the form of pre-recorded voiceover. The play is a telling of his relationships with references to the new world he is going to inhabit, and whether or not it might have dolphins.
Garvey performs against a black backdrop of fairy lights, sort of giving the look and feel of a starry sky. The stage itself is pretty much bare, apart from the microphone towards the front and a small plant pot. He is dressed in a white spacesuit with white wellingtons and has a helmet which looks like a high-tech dustbin lid. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the helmet was made out of a dustbin.
The opening is all a bit too science-y for a novice, but quickly moves on to more relatable language. Garvey is sort of awkwardly charming. His reactions to the various voiceover characters seem genuinely live and he’s certainly very likeable. You can practically see the cogs working in his mind as he’s working out what he’s going to do or say next. 
Despite the script itself being quite lively, and Garvey delivering it as such, the show is rather monotonous. His performance is a bit like a best man’s speech at a wedding; it’s enjoyable enough, a little bit fun and the bloke who’s reading it out is likeable, but you don’t need to listen to it for a whole hour.
Perhaps this show needs an audience with a patient humour; there’s no tension or anything in particular to grip us to the story. It almost feels like it would be better suited to a YouTube mini-series, something I can watch in the background whilst doing something else. As much energy as Garvey gives to this show, it just begs for a bit more of a dramatic hold.
Cron Jobs in Shared Website Hosting
The user-friendly Hepsia Hosting Control Panel will help you to set up cron jobs without difficulty. If you don't have prior knowledge of these types of things, you'll find a really user-friendly interface where you could plan the execution of your cron, picking one or several time frame possibilities - months, days, hours, minutes, or exact days of the week. The only thing you will have to fill manually is the actual task to be executed, which includes the path for PHP, Perl and Python scripts and also the path to the particular file that will be executed. More experienced users can also take advantage of the Advanced mode of our instrument and type in manually the execution time with numbers and asterisks. If you want more crons than your shared website hosting package allows you to have, you're able to upgrade this feature in increments of five with just a few mouse clicks.
Cron Jobs in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you use a semi-dedicated server account from our company to host your websites, you are able to set up cron jobs for any of them without any difficulty. This can be done in 3 uncomplicated steps in the Hepsia Control Panel that is used to manage the website hosting account, so you are able to create a new cron even when you lack previous experience. In the Cron Jobs part of Hepsia, you will find a box where you should copy and paste the path to the system files in your account for the programming language your script was written in - PHP, Perl, Bash, Python, etcetera. You also have to submit the folder path to the script file that will be executed in the same box then use our intuitive drop-down menus to choose how often our system will execute the cron. Experienced users, can also use the traditional method of setting up a cron job by typing digits and asterisks in certain positions in addition to the aforementioned paths.This series = win. I'm definitely watching this. I love the novel drawings...probably because I loved the H2O drawings though, but who cares.
This. Exactly, this. I mean, I love a good moe/harem/rocom just fine, but then there's...ugh. Like I said, this might be good, but the H2O art sure isn't starting off on the right foot. Most generic. Art. Ever.
There's this thing called "opportunity cost". If someone does X, they can't simultaneously do Y, and if I prefer Y to X, or even if I'm just entirely bored with X and all it stands for, their chosing to do X in preference to Y affects me adversely.
Yeez, and I bet none of you have even read the novels, let alone seen the yet-to-even-be-aired anime before passing judgement on it. All you're going on is a single summary and cover art (hang on... book covers... judging... I think there's a rather common saying about this...), which I for one took to mean 'detached narrator slice-of-life' rather than 'harem comedy'.
Which is why I'm saying it could possibly be promising and not entirely writing it off. I will, however, say the art is off putting to hell and back, regardless of how good the book is.
I'm familiar with the concept of opportunity cost. Your analogy falls short of reality however, since there are tons of other options for you, not just 1 anime series per season. If that was the case, sure that'd certainly be a reason to get worked up about it and make a big stink and impress everyone with economics jargon.
Yes and no. If there's lots of studios making X but none doing Y in a given season, the analogy does hold up