President Barack Obama signed into law last week the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the most substantial financial services reform legislation since the Great Depression.

To help businesses make sense of the law and understand how it will affect them specifically, Leonard, Street and Deinard created a task force to advise clients on the complex legislation. The task force includes attorneys from the banking, insurance, employment, compensation, energy, public company, private equity and litigation practice groups.

"The Dodd-Frank Act, with a remarkable 2,300 pages of legislation, has broad and deep implications that will touch every corner of the financial services industry and more, with sweeping regulations for Wall Street and new protections for consumers," said Stephen M. Quinlivan, a shareholder in Leonard, Street and Deinard's corporate and business practice and leader of the firm's public companies and securities group.

"People were focusing on the consumer aspect of this law," said Jonathan Gottlieb, a shareholder in the firm's energy practice, "but the section on over-the-counter derivatives is actually one of the most important aspects, because it will subject an entire sector of the economy, the second largest consumer of capital after real estate, to regulation—and that's a sector that wasn't regulated before."

Leonard, Street and Deinard also launched a dedicated website, www.dodd-frank.com, that will feature a compendium of law blogs written by the firm's attorneys. Dodd-Frank.com will feature insight into a number of topics, including:

• Governance provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act affecting nonfinancial institutions. Click here to read an overview article.
• Banking regulation.
• Compensation issues, such as required clawbacks for exchange-listed companies.
• New regulation for private equity groups and investment advisers.

Visit www.dodd-frank.com regularly to read our updates on the new law and its many implications. We will announce new posts via Twitter, so follow @leonardnews to stay on top of the latest Dodd-Frank developments.