Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Underpinning any legal risk management strategy is the requirement for a comprehensive set of
compliance and governance policies. Policy making is a key tool which in-house counsel has within their
remit to positively influence the way in which business is conducted and to set the standard for expected
behavior. It is essential that all such policies have the buy-in and support of the management team, and
that the legal department has a defined role in implementing and ensuring compliance with the policies.
4. Operations
The daily operations of a business always prove to be the most fertile ground for legal input. An
abundance of legal consequences can be found in supply, manufacturing and distribution chains,
protection of intellectual property rights, brand protection (online and offline), pending and threatened
litigation, product liability, sales and marketing practice, insurance, property matters, employment and HR
practice, industry regulation as well as company secretarial, board and shareholder matters.
Good working relationships with colleagues operating in each of these areas are essential for in-house
counsel to play an effective and valued role within the business; the challenge is for the lawyer to be seen
as part of the team, and not as an obstacle, to achieving operational outputs and objectives.
5. Legal Resource
The individual character of each business will determine its exposure to legal risk and the
management tools required to best handle that risk. Inherent to that is the balance of matching and
managing internal and external legal resource, and indeed other professional suppliers to the business.
The tough economic conditions are resulting in more businesses expecting their legal teams to reduce
head-count and manage costs more tightly, but arguably against a back-drop of increased legal risk. A
core skill of the in-house lawyer in todays world is their ability to manage the risks in this more intense
climate by better clarifying the role of the legal function within the business, demonstrating value-add and
selecting, managing and getting the most out of their internal and external legal resource.
Every business will have legal risks peculiar to it, but taking the above steps will help manage the risks
which are core to most. Please comment and share your experiences of legal risk management