The Reference Attorneys continue to receive a healthy number of calls focusing on financial reform, and, specifically, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank).  The paramaters of Dodd-Frank continue to evolve.  Check out the Fox Rothschild Alert , a JD Supra document.  To review the proposed rule referenced in this alert, see  75 FR 70152-01.  Track its progress by setting up a WestClip in the FR database for RIN 3038-AC96.  For more information on RINs, see our earlier posting, Anatomy of a RIN.

Earlier posts addressing the financial crisis highlighted Westlaw’s “Financial Crisis” tab and the “Finance and Banking” folder. The “Dodd-Frank Wall St. Reform” tab is another excellent option. The tab contains the latest federal agency updates, links to key provisions, and a broad selection of primary and secondary sources.  Here are a few notable resources:

First, we found the citation referenced above by selecting the CFTC Federal Register database and running a simple key terms query:

See also, the Dodd-Frank Reform and Consumer Protection Act (PLIREF-DEFREF):  an excellent overview of the Act, including specific chapters on the “Volcker Rule” and the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Wall Street Reform-USCCAN (WALLST-USCCAN) is a great option for Dodd-Frank legislative history.

On WestlawNext, you’ll find the Dodd-Frank treatise and other excellent resources from the Finance & Banking content page.

The Federal Register tweets.  While that is exciting for a variety of reasons, I found a recent tweet most helpful.  A few calls have come in about Public Law 111-209.  What is Public Law 111-209?  According to @Federal Register, PL 111-209 (HR 5502) amends “gift card provisions effective date.”

Pulling up PL 111-209 (also cited as 2010 HR 5502 or 124 Stat 2254) indicates that it amends the “gift card provisions effective date” of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CCARD for short).

While I love short public laws (and this is a short public law), I couldn’t figure out the significance of this change in effective date.   (After all, this tiny little public law garnered its own tweet.)

A little more research indicates that PL 111-209 is also popularly known as the ECO-Gift Card Act.  Prior to the passage of PL 111-209, the implementation of the gift card rules of CCARD was scheduled for August 22, 2010.  In a function of the law of unintended consequences, this August 22nd deadline would have led to the destruction of millions of plastic gift cards that would have no longer complied with the disclosure requirements CCARD.  According to one of its sponsors, the ECO-Gift Card Act will prevent 100 million of those plastic gift cards from ending up in the landfill (or ocean) prematurely.  That is the equivalent of eight football fields filled 12 feet deep with plastic cards.

PL 111-209 gives retailers until Jan. 31, 2011 (well after the Christmas shopping season) to get those *old* gift cards off of their shelves and get the new, compliant gift cards and gift certificates into place.

It’s worth noting that the ECO-Gift Card Act passed both the House and Senate unanimously.  Our legislators may not agree on a lot, but they apparently don’t care for wasted plastic.

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With the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill last week the Reference Attorneys have received an increasing number of  questions about financial reform.  Did you know there are many databases on Westlaw specific to the financial crisis?  Accessible from either the Finance & Banking folder in the Directory or its own “Financial Crisis” tab, these databases include cases, trial filings, news resources, sections of the Federal Register, law reviews, and legislation all pertaining to the financial crisis.

For example, the database FC-BILLTXT contains full-text versions of all pending Congressional bills since 1994 pertaining to either the subprime mortgage crisis or the financial reform.  There is also a database called FC-MISC, which contains miscellaneous materials such as agency or party statements, speeches, comments, and bill drafts as they appeared prior to their introduction.

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There has been a flurry of  Congressional news this week with the enactment of the Financial Reform Bill, and the Senate passing the extension of jobless benefits.  When researching active or recently passed legislation it is important to understand which version you are interested in, either the engrossed, enrolled or introduced version, and how to access other versions.

In Westlaw, a find by citation for the Wall Street reform Bill 2009 CONG US HR 4173, will pull up all the versions as separate results.  When you are in any of these bills you can click on the Graphical Bills link on the left side of the screen.  To open up a map that not only shows all of the versions, but also links to legislative history organized by category.

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Congress passed this bill yesterday afternoon.  The Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” is not law yet, close, but not quite yet. The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 11, 2009 and the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 (S. 3217) was passed by the U.S. Senate on May 20, 2010. The Congressional Conference Committee on Financial Regulatory Reform has reconciled the two bills and the final legislation has been named the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Act”) (H.R. CONF. REP. 111-517).  The House approved the Act on June 30th and the Senate voted and passed it on July 15.   The bill is now on its way to President Obama who is expected to sign the legislation into law soon.

The Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 will reform the regulation of the financial industry and will protect consumers and investors. The Act is over 2000 pages long and the news databases are a great place to get the gist of the new impending law. For example, try the following search:

Database: ALLNEWSPLUS Query: da(after 6/24/2010) & PR,CA,TI(FINAN! WALL-STREET /5 REFORM! REGULAT! STABILITY) & “WALL STREET REFORM AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT”

The full text of the House Conference Committee Report at 2010 WL 2671804: H.R. CONF. REP. 111-517

Update: On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the new legislation into law.

Enrolled version can be found at:  2009 CONG US HR 4173

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It is a cuss-out on capitol hill (see Sen. Carl Levin Holds a Hearing on the Causes of the Financial Crisis, Panel 1)!  The reform issue is extremely contentious and has every financial institution worried.  Therefore, many law firms that service those institutions are keeping their eyes to the nation’s capitol.  That also means the Reference Attorneys are getting the frequent “where do I start?” calls.

If you happen to be the lucky (unlucky) summer associate that seems to be available, you may get the daunting task of collecting material that may help associates and partners keep abreast of the mayhem in D.C. related to Wall Street reform.  No reason to panic, the late shows are not the only place where you will find helpful information (although they may help you stay sane).

To get a foothold, it is a good idea to run a general search through a news database (ALLNEWS, ALLNEWSPLUS, RALLNEWSPLUS). A workable search would be something like: “Wall St.” financ! /3 reform debate.  Also, using a date restriction will make your hits manageable (maybe back to November of last year since the House passed their form of Wall Street reform back in December).  Then run locates for terms that will help you narrow the material to the gold nuggets such as:  senate house /3 bill report committee hearing testimony.  Since your results will be in reverse chronological order, make sure to peruse more than just the first page.

You will find topics will be clumped because the issue of the day will be reported by several news organizations in different ways.  No doubt, you will find several gems, such as the bill numbers for the Senate Bill (2009 CONG US S 3217) and the House Bill (2009 CONG US HR 4173) as well as terms you would like to explore further like the “Volcker Rule” and “Goldman Sachs.”

At this point you have some dangerous leads that need to be explored.  Use the terms you have found and run searches using the federal legislative history tab along with the databases like USCCAN-REP and FED-LH.

Did one of your news or legislative searches do you good?  Then keep running it.  For example, the Volcker Rule (section 619) is an important piece of the reform legislation and after running a search in the news and the legislative history databases I have saved a Westclip.  This will pick up any discussion about the “Volcker Rule” alerting me when there are new articles on the subject.

Legal research is a combination of art and science, so there really is no “right” way to go about working your way through the financial reform debate.  However, I hope I have made it clearer on how the process can work for you.