One Sec Tech

Cited: Fortune Small Business

Many businesses do not have the time or manpower to wade through security-camera footage on a daily basis. Because of this inventory losses are on the rise and the culprits are usually the cashiers giving themselves and friends and old-fashioned five-finger discount. It is estimated that $15 billion was stolen by employees from realtors in the last year, at least according to University of Fort criminologist Richard Hollinger. He conducts annual surveys of the top stores in the country. This figure indicates that 25% more in inventory was lost than what is lost to shoplifters. However, there is hope on the horizon to retailers across the country.

In almost all of these cases, closed-circuit-TV monitoring systems failed to spot the crime. “The problem is, you have hours and hours of video to go through,” says Hollinger. In recessionary times few companies have the staff to review all that footage.

So Agilence, a small firm in Camden, N.J., is stepping in with a solution: patented software that scans for likely theft moments and a team of “loss prevention” experts to review the results for you. By synchronizing raw security-camera footage with point-of-sale data, the software takes a still image associated with every item scanned at a checkout stand.

The market is crowded: Plenty of companies, including Vfinity and StopLift, sell advanced video surveillance technology. But few offer point-of-sale synchronization, and fewer still include human video analysts in the price of a subscription, which starts at $300 per month.

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Rather than having to scan hours of video, Agilence’s investigators can quickly review thousands of still images on a computer screen, click on any that appear suspect and call up the full video of the transactions.

The Agilence analysts report likely cases of fraud — which employers can then see for themselves — and note areas in which intervention or improved training might help. “A retailer would have to hire 10 employees to do what we do for them,” says Pedro Ramos, vice president of operations at Agilence.

In particular, Ramos says, Agilence is seeing an increase in conspiracies between cashiers and customers, known as “sweet-hearting.” The employee may bag an item after voiding a transaction, or simply press the price check button on the register and allow his friend to walk past the checkout station as if a sale had been made.

Hollinger and other experts say Agilence is onto something big. The next step is to automate the process and identify common scam patterns. “We’re starting to see the computers getting smarter,” Hollinger says. “They soon may be smart enough to send a text message to alert a manager who’s actually in the store and can do something about it.”

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My Take: Well, I guess the employees that have sticky fingers better start watching what they are doing not to mention the shoplifters. My concern would be employee harassment. Some employees just might be contacting in NY Long Island harassment lawyer. When you measure jobs because of theft, you usually do not get any severance pay. And if you are accused and there is no evidence, you should get an NYC severance pay lawyer to get what is coming to you.

The ones I worry about are the kids. There are so many kids that use the five finger discount to get things at their parents cannot afford or will not buy for them. That means that parents are going to have to get a Pittsburgh family lawyer that can handle a theft case. Then again, the way kids are big on technology today they just might take your way around it. However, these are usually caught eventually and they will still need an Allegheny PA family attorney.

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Family Law

When a person is thinking about the prospect of divorce, they are often confused and worried about what steps to take. One group of Denver family lawyers leads them through the process. They hole up on his protect their assets, keep their relationships with their children, and take the burden of clients, minimizing the impact of the divorce on them. Edwards CO family law attorneys offer full-service divorce mediation services.

Cited: New Jersey Law Journal

New Jersey’s leading litigators and teachers in the field of personal injury law, Kenneth Javerbaum and Gerald Baker, are joining forces to practice together in four counties in a firm that will have 22-lawyers working in various offices. Baker and his two partners will be joining the 19-lawyer Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins that will give the Springfield firm its first substantial presence in Houston County.

Baker says the takeover of his Hoboken firm, Baker, Pedersen & Robbins, gives him and partners Jorden “Nick” Pedersen, Jr. and Bennett Robbins an opportunity to expand their practices throughout the state and frees him of responsibility for management and marketing.

Baker says personal injury firms of one, two or three lawyers often are hard pressed to find time for law, the business of law and coping with best practices. Joining a larger operation is the right solution for his firm, he says.

“I didn’t want to market or manage a firm anymore,” says Baker, 66. He is already getting used to the luxury. He joked on November 6 that when he and his new colleagues started to discuss the timing of their announcement, his contribution was, “You decide.”

Baker says he approached Javerbaum informally at a State Bar Association meeting earlier this year and spent the past few months working out the details with Javerbaum Wurgaft’s managing partner, Eric Kahn.

The melding of the two operations, though, will take about a year “as we make sure our practices and personalities blend with each other,” Baker says. That shouldn’t be hard, he says, because “we’re all personal injury lawyers.”

Besides having firms with a record of winning multi-million awards, Baker and Javerbaum, 67, are longtime leaders of the plaintiff’s personal injury bar. Since 1985, Javerbaum has been on the board of governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America-New Jersey. Baker is one of the state’s busiest legal lecturers — at the Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other forums — on trends in personal injury law, particularly automobile negligence.

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Baker has also represented survivors and heirs of passengers in major airline disasters, and being part of a large firm will improve his chances of competing for such work with large New York firms that dominate the field, he says,

Pedersen has a specialty handling personal injury matters for employees protected by federal statutes, longshoreman, seamen, railroad workers and defense contract workers. Robbins is the Hudson County trustee of the state Bar Association.

“The strength of Nick Pedersen is that he does things that few people do — Longshore and Harborworkers Compensation Act claims, admiralty law cases — things like that,” Javerbaum says. “Ben Robbins is a very experienced trial lawyer. We can give him anything to try,”

Having lawyers with longtime presence in the county will be a special boon, Javerbaum and Kahn say. Baker’s father Nathan started the firm in 1926 and Pedersen’s father was a tax official in the county for many years.

“We have a lot of depth now,” Javerbaum says.

Baker and his colleagues will also work at the Newark office, which Javerbaum Wurgaft acquired in 2007 when three lawyers from 35-year-old Sinins & Bross joined the firm. The office in Springfield will remain the largest Javerbaum Wurgaft center and there will be two lawyers in Freehold, headed by another lateral hire, Paul Newell, a well-known personal injury practitioner in Monmouth County.

“Personal injury firms are unique,” Javerbaum says. “The business model in most firms is keeping time records by the hour, expecting associates to work a certain number of hours a year, having all of your costs paid up front and all that is totally at odds with the way a personal injury firm works. Ironically, in personal injury practice, the better business is the more money you are laying out.”

According to Javerbaum, there are no plans at this time for growth of the firm but they are willing to seize any opportunities to get new attorneys. A practice depends on referrals so it is important for a firm to be of good size and have lawyers that are interested in marketing and professional activities. Javerbaum also estimated that 50-60% of the firm’s revenue comes from referrals from other attorneys.

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My Take: Wow, 22 lawyers all under the same roof that sounds more like a convention. I suppose that’s great for New Jersey but what about the rest of the country. What if I need a personal injury attorney Denver CO? Or a NYC slip and fall accident attorney?

I suppose I could just pick up the Yellow Pages to find a Denver criminal lawyer or a Brooklyn nursing home abuse lawyer. I suppose is saying is true that you can find a lawyer anywhere. What does it say about our country? Why do we need so many lawyers? You would think there would be more doctors and lawyers.

No matter, one thing is definitely positive, all lawyers need litigation support services in LA, Denver, New York or wherever. That means that is a New York, Denver, Portland, LA California court reporting service available to each lawyer in every state.

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NC bankruptcy lawyers will tell you that a bankruptcy does not wipe out voluntary liens, like mortgages and deeds of trust, or tax liens. So the lender still has the right to foreclose if you do not pay. If you pay, everyone is happy. Remember, the lender does not want the property. He/she wants you to pay regularly on the loan. South Carolina bankruptcy lawyers will tell you that foreclosure is a last resort for the lender if it concludes it cannot get the owed money any other way.