for this special edition of pro se nation understand the law for one cell to take a peek at the wide range of topics explored to help all citizens better understand the legal issues related to for closure whistleblower law class action eminent domain the media and entertainment what every entrepreneur should know about the law free speech and the first amendment rights and much much pro se nation dot org the average american earns about twenty five dollars an hour the average law firm in the united states bills out at about three hundred forty two dollars an hour if we're to look at the economics alone can you know it seems that in every aspect of our lives everything we do is a contract now this may have always been the case but in the past it was a handshake you know maybe life was just simpler now you get married you buy a house you get a gym membership you enter a hospital all of it you're entering into a contract so as opposed to say twenty years ago forty years ago does the average person need to know  to have some kind of legal education absolutely because i think our world has changed to so years ago if you were buying a car you were buying a car from someone that you knew down the street so when you shook that person's hand that was good enough but now that's not the case so i think it would be very helpful to educate the public meaning you consider the fact that we're not even on a paper system anymore you want to get a gym membership today you're looking at something online with somebody basically hovering over you saying here's the pen do the electronic signature and press the agree but agree to what terms of use that spill over a page that you can't possibly understand why you're sitting there in the gym and people are doing that in a lot of different contexts today and i think there are a lot of dangers inherent in that system it's like as if people believe that this is a modern convenience and that the system couldn't possibly be hurting them there's so much behind the scenes going on with the companies insulate themselves from liability protecting themselves the average consumer has no clue what they're signing away when they do that a potential client comes to you and has google you know been up on google and google narrowed in on what they supposed to be the media's subject and so so they they they don't bring to bear the same level of learning or experience that a lawyer has but but it is yes it is helpful and it allows the lawyer in talking to that kind of person to to more effectively contribute to provide some help mediation gives you the opportunity for the participants to act and for the litigants to actually be participants so they're not just bumps on a log sitting next to you sitting next to their attorney their hired math piece depending upon the attorney and the and but normally in a caucus situation the the the participants really feel that they have an active role one of the biggest benefits of mediation is that it keeps control in the hands of the participants it goes more towards when you have people who are contributing towards a resolution there is b and so at the end of the day they they all feel it is a win win there are court system really acts on money so what you get out of a most trials is either a judgment for a certain amount of money or no cause and that may not be what the parties are actually looking for and they may be looking for something else and that's what they can get in mediation so you've identified your passion and you're ready to launch your own business but what are the legal implications this year entrepreneur dot com name tim one of the hot thirty movers and shakers of new york city startup scene joining us today is the cash patel a serial entrepreneur business attorney and a private mission to do good in this world right now other is a kind of common belief that in a class action suits it's the lawyers who walk away with the lion's share of the of the rewards and i think it's very important for people to recognize that class actions offer an opportunity of recovery that they may not otherwise have when it comes to some kind of corporate malfeasance among the things that class actions potentially give to a plaintiff is the ability to make a statement software device that defeated the emissions testing programs so essentially the software could recognize whether the car was on the open road or whether it was hooked up to an emissions test if it was hooked up to an emissions test all the pollution controls would go on but if the car was on the open road there were no pollution controls on on september twenty first of this year the c e o for volkswagen usa came out and said yes we misled the e p a and we misled her customers really and in the united states there were over four hundred thousand affected cars worldwide there's over eleven million predispose mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts wow think of it as the prenuptial agreement for the corporate world i don't think most people understand what an arbitration clause is you are agreeing as part of your as a condition of your employment that you are going to take any dispute rising out of your employment here with us at this company and move it into an arbitration setting where you do not have a right to trial by jury they are what courts call contracts of it he's in maine meaning it's a sort of a take it or leave it contract if you don't agree to it you don't get the job it's quicker easier less disruptive for the employer your quicker for the employee it's really just trying to prevent the employee from having their day in court you motions start to take on a life of their own then the process gets to be very confrontational the sad thing when you're getting divorced it's like a death but no one brings you casserole drive because some experts believe the stress of divorce is second only to the death of a spouse for most people divorce marks the end of a relationship that was intended to last a lifetime what is the biggest mistake that most people make when they are about to enter into the divorce process i think coming to the process as an educated consumer is the biggest mistake that they make it's very important that they all are in the alternatives that are available to them it's very important that the potential client learn a little bit about the issues that they'll be facing i think people need to stop watching television and it comes to divorce they oftentimes have this idea that if i file the complaint magic will happen and in fact often times filing a complaint especially prematurely before you understand your options it's merit a saying can really create problems of that complaint for divorce often signifies the end date of the marriage is for things like a little distribution it may not be in your best interest to be filing the complaint and the other part of that is the complaint just starts to be a divorce process but you need to still come to a settlement on your parenting issues on your division of assets and support the growing gap between the rich and the poor spells disaster for the average american in this edition of pro se nation we're going to hear from the co authors of a newly released book called the third way they're going to share their proposed ideas for changes to the corporate tax laws which they believe will revive the american economy especially for the middle class i marry lynching arming and welcome because inclusive capitalism is  solution to this income inequality problem they were hearing over and over and over again things to keep talking about is how do you see income inequality one of the solutions that were proposed was increasing the minimum wage and  we tried several times in the legislature that did not happen capitalism is a bad thing the problem is who owns it what we're saying is that you know you're going to pay the wages and people are going to work for wages and they're going to make money but i think if you give them a part of the company that they work for and ask the company grows then it's also motivation for them to our car to make the company successful the thing that people have to understand is that the real divide is not in the wage side which is a serious problem but there were forgetting about the capital side of the equation and you're not hearing this in the media today for not asking the owners of the company to give it all to the p employee but to give a part of that so that way they can also accumulate the capital if you're talking about who could have their their property condemned it's anybody who has property culo of course there's a supreme court case which will in certain instances government can acquire property for redevelopment and ultimately give that property to private developer the first really written concept of it goes back to the magna carta all the way back to the year twelve fifteen and that's where the british government had the right to take it pacified that they had the right to take unfortunately for a lot of people it didn't mention anything about paying for that property that they were taking generally once a project is stored if it's for a public use you're going to have a very difficult trains are they going down the track exactly when is it really in a but when is it used in a kind of underhanded way what i would it's hard to answer that because government obviously is not supposed to be doing bad trade but never before in history have so many of us had access to the tools and the networks to create content and distribute it to a world wide network but how many of us know the legal implications of what we're creating and disseminating in this edition of pro se nation we're going to be given to explore the vast landscape of media and entertainment law if you're a writer producer singer songwriter performer content producer of any kind i think you're going to find this program interesting and useful but i love what your show is about i think it's so important and i'm just glad to be able to contribute to it and of course like every lawyer i have to make the little disclaimer we're going to get into some details and if course none of the concepts that we should that will be discussing should be taken as legal advice supportable to a specific situation but i hope that what we talk about is helpful to people gives them guidance and direction and adds to their sophistication in what i think is one of the most exciting and fun areas of the law to practice in and one of the greatest businesses to be in in this era it's very exciting and it's obvious that you know your stuff is you're the only attorney  disclaimer i'm just paranoid this is why we need you technology is revolutionizing the way we produce content and the way we distribute content we think about it it took and it's happening quickly it was a life time from the invention of the telephone to you know the v h s player and in between what did we have radio black and white t color t v that's all that happened in seventy five years now or one hundred years whatever it is i mean now you know just in a few years of time we have cable and streaming and mobile and interactive and you know virtual reality and three d printing and more things are coming in just when we think we've wrapped our head around something there's something else and it challenges lawyers and frightening experiences that anyone faces but with some knowledge about the processes and the options available you may be able to weather the experience with a little less stress and anguish and find the strength and the clarity to make choices that are right for you i need them to understand that there's many things that they could do during the entire process of their modification so there you go that could cause them to lose the the a veil ability of that for example do not go on vacation during your fork your modification process you've no idea how many people tell me they just bought tickets to go someplace like you haven't had a mortgage payment to your name  demonstrating hardship you're right but i mean are you are the banks monitoring people closely there how can you have their bank statements yes they review bank oh now i see updated bank statement ok every month for the entire process once they signed up on it they're signed off but during that duration they write definitely up looking for updated bank statements and if they choose to they can certainly review their credit cards if they really want to how many people are i mean i don't know are able to go through the process on their own without any help from an expert such as yourselves and i think you if you're organized you can do it on your own but it's a lot of follow up and making sure that the documents don't get stale because the banks were notorious just to my understanding is that the servicers make money on a defaulted loan more than they do on a performing loan and so every time there's an application for a loan modification that servicers making more money and fees and costs so they they make more money on a default it yes yes ok explain that i don't  i'm not sure i completely understand it but my understanding is that there is service or gets paid to service the loan collect the mortgage payments and can charge fees and costs  association with that when the loan is in default they get paid more because of the default as opposed to performing loan and i don't understand why free speech is our most valued and fiercely protected right guaranteed by the first amendment but when does free speech become something else especially when published on social media or used during political rallies and at what point does free the first amendment but it is a very very narrow exception court has got to be convinced that there is no way that the police can control this right before they start saying you can't even be there the one exception tends to be when the president of the united states is and is giving a speech and then the secret service has come up with these very controversial notion of free speech zones people who likely considers themselves civil libertarians see the entire country as a free speech zone you you can't as ignite parts of it is our legal system in need of a major transformation would justice be better served if lawyers view themselves as peacemakers rather than adversarial in combat in this edition of pro se nation we're going to explore a radically new vision of law and justice off school thinking i was going to change the world writing and i ended up really being disgusted i had a guy come to me one time and say you're really you're really doing too much and  it took me twenty years literally to figure out he was in competition with me and in law school i had seven kids that homos working full time started a couple of organizations i'm one of those doers and he was coming up short and i realized that lawyers could be jerks and i didn't want to be a jerk so when i graduated from law school i ran a domestic violence program for a while and i was in a program you know what is personal growth kind of programs and a guy stood up he was visiting from chicago we were in atlanta and he stood up and he said my name is forest spared and i'm a lawyer and he said i grant dignity to everyone in the process and i practiced divorce law in a different way it's my job to make sure that my client is still friends with the other parent because they're going to raise kids together and i had one of those moments that you see on cartoons the whole sky open and birds saying you know the butterflies came out everything was and vivid color and i said i can do that the concept of a contract has been at the center of law and justice throughout the ages each one of us enters into a contract multiple times during our life time every time we get married divorced sign up for a long enter into a business partnership or even authorize a medical procedure in this edition of pro se nation we're going to look at a radically different mindset and approach to entering into contracts one that creates a win win situation for all parties involved that's a cultural change we have always seen and this comes out of you know from our historic jousting in the wind lose obviously you know and the system was created to serve that win lose mentality and we grew up you and i and most people in a hierarchical situation where power meant dominance or you know that's what you had to have dominance in order to have power since the early ninety's right when the internet impacted culture in a whole new way right our emerging business leaders now and the culture that's emerging as our youth grows into adulthood is a much more collaborative culture because they understand that for them it's normal that every voice is heard right it's normal that they can create something by crowdsourcing not by owning they understand that access can be more important than ownership of something and so there's a shift in the mindset that's happening and part of the beauty of this discovery in agreement way of doing contracts which is sometimes called value based contracts and sometimes called conscious contracts the beauty of it is that it serves the needs of business that is understanding the role of business differently right and understanding to snowden whistle blowers have garnered both an octal aid and harsh criticism for exposing illegal practices in the workplace but should all employees be protected under our whistleblower laws and should we even care that they're protected so what is the difference between a whiny and complaining employee and a whistleblower well andy would you like to take that possibly there is no difference  you know george bernard shaw once said that the reasonable person adapts himself to the world around him and the unreasonable person insists that the world adapt to him hence all change depends on the unreasonable person and so a lot of whistleblowers are difficult people they are sometimes unreasonable it doesn't mean though that what they are doing is wrong and it doesn't mean that they should be punished for it i think one of the things that's important for non lawyers to understand is that there are actually very few whistleblowers cases that are ever brought very very tiny number of cases that are brought but the statutes nonetheless have an effect on all of us because if somebody feels comfortable in the work place to complain about something to publicly disclose something about a threat to the environment or financial system or public health and safety that is a benefit to all people even people who never blow the whistle in the course of their jobs at all marcus would you like to weigh well i think it's instructive in this case to look at the statute itself and when you look at the statute the words you see most often are fraud the fraud criminal misrepresent  and so i think the statute was intended originally to get out to you have whistleblowers blow the whistle on things that were actually legally unsound fraudulent misrepresentations of products yes there is room there for other broader areas but i think the study is pretty clear that what they're going for is the most severe instances where employee knows an employer doing something actually illegal to fraud fraudulent stature that doesn't actually say that just understand the statute unlike say discrimination where there's a federal statute applies everywhere in the country that bars discrimination there's no such thing as a generic federal whistleblower law so there was a border laws like sarbanes oxley that apply to publicly traded companies when there's concern about deceiving investors or there are whistleblower laws where somebody supposedly is defrauding the u s government the so called key tam statute there's no generic whistleblower statute for any kind of complaints new jersey is one state that has a statute like that it's very broadly written in addition to things that are illegal not just criminal criminally illegal but also civilly illegal and also prohibits as as marcus said things that are fraudulent but it also prohibits anything that is a violation of a clear mandate of public policy so that is a much broader statute that you're going to find most states and this scope of and that's right in the language of statute i didn't invent that that's the language of the statute so the legislature obviously intended to