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I’m pretty excited that Nina Flax of Mayer Brown is willing to share the following with us (let Nina know what you think of her list of lists!):

At the recent “Women’s 100” in Palo Alto, I decided to share two (overachiever, I know) interesting facts during the intros (where each attendee stands up & provides a “fun fact” about themselves). In addition to the fact that I’ve been to North Korea, I am a perpetual “list maker.” My second fun fact was: the night before the event, I couldn’t fall asleep (common problem for me), so I had been up until 2 am making an excel list of all of the words my son knows. Yes, I am crazy.

But I am also fortunate! Apparently, lists are cool. So Broc & Liz asked me to contribute some lists for this blog. Where to begin? A list of potential lists! So here it goes…

1. Things On My “To Do List” I Never Get To
2. Why I Love LinkedIn
3. Crazy Things I’ve Done For The Job Lately
4. How I Try to Balance Work & Life
5. Things I Miss From Pre-Law Days
6. Things I Still Do Infrequently
7. Some Truly Horrifying Quotes
8. The Hidden Gem Associates
9. Meaningful Law School Characters
10. Things I Feel When Reviewing Agreements
11. Things About My Job That Exhaust Me
12. Ways We Make Our Office Fun
13. My “Personal Grateful” List for Today
14. My “Work Grateful” List for Today
15. Things That Are Always On My Desk
16. How I’ve Mastered Work Travel
17. My Favorite Shows I’ve Binge Watched Lately
18. Questions I Have About The “Other Side”
19. Why I Always Question My Skills
20. Things I Constantly Scope on Amazon

I am sure I will come up with a bunch more – and I am not promising any of the above in any particular order! Stay tuned…

Auditors Being Tipped Off Before Inspections: Will Your Company’s Name Surface?

Yes, your company may be impacted by shenanigans committed by your independent auditor. The intro from this MarketWatch piece by Francine McKenna makes that clear:

Former KPMG executives are on trial for obtaining confidential information about audit inspections. The auditor of some of the world’s largest banks including Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank was tipped off before a regulator inspected them.

It’s been previously reported that KPMG executives were able to extract from the regulator, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, confidential information ahead of inspections, and use that information to correct their work and at least in one instance, withdrawn an opinion. But MarketWatch now has court documents that, for the first time, names the audit clients caught up in the scandal.

The SEC’s Proposed Long-Term Strategic Plan

Every time that the SEC comes out with its strategic plan, I blog about how I dislike five-year horizons for any plan since unforeseen events often change priorities & needs (here’s an example of a past blog). As noted in this Cooley blog, the SEC has come out with a draft of its latest strategic plan. Nothing earth-shattering as it essentially recaps what Chair Clayton has been saying since he took office – here is Chair Clayton’s testimony about the plan…

– Broc Romanek