BU Now » School of Law

“Reaching Out” Part Three: Connecting Social Workers with their Communities

Kira Jastive — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:53:50 +0000

Part three of BU Today’s “Reaching Out” series that looks at how BU programs are helping immigrants and refugess in Boston highlights the School of Social Work’s (SSE) BRIDGE (Building Refugee and Immigrant Degrees for Graduate Education) progam. An outgrowth of SSW’s Refugee and Immigrant Training Program, which began in the early 1990s to recruit immigrants for careers in social work, BRIDGE is a Master of Social Work (MSW) program designed to help recent immigrants serve their communities here. The program shepherds applicants from orientation to preadmission to study for an MSW and beyond to career development.

The series continues tomorrow with two parts. One will examine the School of Law’s (LAW) Asylum & Human Rights Clinic (AHR), where law students represent asylum seekers and others involved in immigration and humanitarian cases; the other will look at the interpreter certificate program at the University’s Center for Professional Education, which trains multilingual students in community, legal and medical interpreting.

Google/AdMob deal okayed

Dick Taffe — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:11:33 +0000

Despite concerns that Google could extend its Internet marketing dominance into the emerging field of wireless devices, federal regulators approved the company’s $750 million purchase of its mobile advertising rival AdMob. Law Professor Keith Hylton, an authority on antitrust law, said it looks like the right decision given rapid changes in the market such as rival Apple buying the third largest mobile ad network, Quattro Wireless. Besides, he said, Google doesn’t seemed worried about antitrust threats from the Obama administration.

“[Google] appears to have the administration working diligently on its side on the net neutrality issue, and that is probably worth a lot more than these relatively minor antitrust issues.”

Contact Keith Hylton, 617-353-8959, knhylton@bu.edu

Crisis panel probes bank “window dressing”

Dick Taffe — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:43:45 +0000

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is looking into the causes for the 2008 economic crash, today questioned former executives from the investment bank Bear Stearns (sold to J.P. Morgan in a firesale after a run on the bank) and explored the open-secret of how Wall Street banks legally fudged their quarterly books to dress up their financial statements. Law Professor Cornelius Hurley, a former counsel to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and now director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, says that to deal with such “window dressing” it is time to consider borrowing a principle from tax law.

“Namely, if a pattern of financial and accounting maneuvers has no ‘economic substance’ other than to misstate the firm’s financial condition, it should be per se securities fraud.”

Contact Cornelius Hurley, 617-353-5427, ckhurley@bu.edu

Fiduciary and investment banks

Dick Taffe — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:32:40 +0000

On the heels of allegations that Goldman Sachs took advantage of clients during the mortgage-market collapse, Congress reportedly is considering new legal standards for investment banks when they deal with customers. Law Professor Tamar Frankel, an authority on securities law and author of “Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad,” says slapping fiduciary duties on investment bankers would prevent them from acting for their own benefit at the expense of the investors.

“The result may be that brokers and investment bankers will innovate less for their own benefit and might even, God forbid, earn less. But the financial system will be less subject to bubbles and crashes, so investors might earn less but they’ll also lose less.”

Contact Tamar Frankel, 617-353-3773, tfrankel@bu.edu

Pfizer’s history of illegal marketing

Dick Taffe — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:29:21 +0000

Bloomberg News reports on the history of Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, illegally promoting drugs for uses not approved by the FDA – even after being heavily fined for doing so. Law Professor Kevin Outterson, an expert on drug marketing and director of the BU School of Law’s Health Law Program, says big pharma can afford to pay the fines for such transgressions.

“Drug companies are paying these fines so frequently that they begin to look like speeding tickets when you’re earning billions in profits.”

Contact Kevin Outterson, 617-353-3103, mko@bu.edu