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California law requires employers to provide a 30-minute meal break to non-exempt employees who work between 5 and 6 hours in a single shift, unless the meal break is “waived by mutual consent of both the employer and employee.”  But the Labor Code, and the orders of the Industrial Wage Commission, the state agency which formulates California’s wage orders, don’t specify what form the waiver must take, or whether an employee can provide consent before working a particular shift.

Companies often spend significant time and resources negotiating contracts before entering into business relationships, especially where the parties intend to have a longstanding, ongoing relationship. The expectation is that the terms negotiated in the contract will apply if any questions arise in the relationship, and courts typically enforce these terms if one business brings a claim that the other breached the agreement.

It is well understood that a lawyer can have a disqualifying conflict of interest by having conflicting duties to current clients or because of a conflict between the duties owed to a current and a former client. This is the reason that, when a prospective client contacts a lawyer about possibly representation, one of the lawyer's first steps is to conduct a “conflict check” – that is, to see if representing a potential new client would create a conflict of interest for the lawyer or the lawyer's firm because of a relationship with another current or former client.

Thousands of California families will benefit from a recent change in state law that makes the probate process simpler, quicker, and less expensive for heirs and beneficiaries of relatively modest estates. But for most families, a well-designed estate plan, with a carefully crafted trust, is still the better option.

Our legal system depends on clients and lawyers being able to have complete, candid, and effective communications. To allow for this communication, California law protects from disclosure without consent of confidential communications between a lawyer and client (see Cal. Evidence Code Section 950 et seq.) However, in the practical realities of transactions and litigations, parties may inadvertently disclose attorney-client privileged materials, or these may leak out in other ways, and sometimes it is not clear if material is attorney-client privileged.

 Anyone visiting or working in one of the towering skyscrapers that dominate the heart of Los Angeles and other major cities is likely to be captivated by their size, architectural beauty, and engineering mastery.