Ever wonder what it cost to take a company public? Well, if it's of the same size and notoriety as Facebook, roughly $2.6 million.

Fenwick & West's Silicon Valley office was tapped to head Facebook's initial public offering back in February, and according to new regulatory figures, the social network expects to pay the firm approximately $2.6 million.

Partners Gordon Davidson and Jeffrey Vetter and associate James Evans must be very happy.

Union elections are officially in a state of flux. Just two weeks after becoming effective, a federal judge has tossed out the National Labor Relations Board's "quickie election rule." The rule, which business groups vehemently oppose, cuts the election timeline in half.

But instead of focusing on the substance of these changes, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia focused on a procedural technicality. The quickie election rule is invalid because the Board failed to follow proper voting protocols.

In-house counsel, beware of the MAC. No, we're not talking about the computer. We're talking about the deal-breaker clause in a merger.

It's not always easy for an investor or a potential buyer to walk away from a deal. But with material adverse change, or MAC, there is a loophole for the buyer in a deal to walk away.

History repeats itself, or so they say. And it looks like it might be repeating itself with none other than Microsoft.

Microsoft has been working on Windows RT, which is a version of Windows 8 made for ARM-based touch screen tablets and laptops. As ZDNet explains it, Windows RT has two interfaces: Metro and a Windows 7-style desktop. The desktop interface has been designed to run only Microsoft applications, including Internet Explorer.

Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser, and Google, which owns Chrome, have raised concerns about this limitation.

Honk if you like small-claims appeals.

Lawyers for Honda have reason to toot their own horns after a judge overturned a nearly $10,000 small-claims award against the automaker, in a much-publicized case about their hybrids' fuel economy.

Heather Peters, a California hybrid owner who's also a former lawyer, sued Honda in small claims court for alleged false advertising about her hybrid's fuel economy. She won a $9,867 judgment in February, the Associated Press reports.

But Honda's lawyers have now successfully prevented Peters from taking a victory lap.

A former in-house attorney is suing insurance giant AIG over allegedly racist in-house jokes that likened him to the 1970s cartoon character Fat Albert.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" was the title character's catch phrase on "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids," a Saturday morning cartoon that ran from 1972 to the mid-1980s. Comedian Bill Cosby voiced Fat Albert, an obese black kid who ended each episode with a rock song.

But when uttered in the workplace, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" took on a totally different and offensive tone, the former assistant general counsel's Fat Albert lawsuit asserts.

Looking to fill job vacancies at your in-house department? Look no further than promoting your current employees, who will likely outperform external hires and can save you money, a new study suggests.

"My research documents some quite substantial costs to external hires and some substantial benefits to internal mobility," the study's author, Matthew Bidwell of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, said in a statement.

External hires may seem more attractive because they bring new skills or a new perspective to your in-house operation. But those benefits may not outweigh the costs, Bidwell warns. For example:

Just months after he joined the company, investors are publicly calling for Yahoo to fire CEO Scott Thompson. Thompson, who has been touted for his technological experience, appears to have claimed that he had degrees in both accounting and computer science. His computer science degree doesn't actually exist.

Dan Loeb, whose company ThirdPoint holds a 5.8% stake in the company, broke the story when he released a scathing letter sent to the Board of Directors. Though the letter certainly calls into question Thompson's reputation, it also makes you wonder what Yahoo's legal department has been doing during these past few months.

Now that the Senate has failed to pass a resolution and a judge has refused to issue an injunction, American businesses are officially subject to the National Labor Relations Board's new "quickie election" rule. As of Monday April 30, the rule became law.

The provisions are expected to shorten the time between the filing of a representation petition and a union election. Experts are predicting that the timeframe will drop from 56 days to about 30.

As reports continue to stream in regarding the California dairy cow infected with mad cow disease, American consumers are second-guessing their meat choices. The news has even caused two major South Korean stores to pull U.S. beef from their shelves. Could bankruptcy announcements follow?

While the USDA investigates the circumstances surrounding the tainted cow, the only thing certain is that the beef industry will likely suffer from the press.

But how much damage could the negative coverage do to beef producers and could it be enough to force bankruptcies?