General Counsel Feel The World Getting More And More Risky
Everything keeps getting harder and harder.
Running a legal department is probably 10 percent management and legal acumen and 90 percent unbridled terror of the unknown. Firm lawyers often daydream about the virtue of having “one client,” but the flipside of trading in 11 clients for one is knowing that you’re no longer the lawyer coming in to get the job done, you’re the lawyer deciding what needs to get done in the first place. Do we need a firm to handle this personnel issue? Does this deal structure invite regulatory review? Has our CEO just exposed us to a securities violation because he’s a narcissist?
And while that’s always been the burden of in-house leaders, the climate has only gotten more worrisome. FTI Technology and Relativity worked together to produce The General Counsel Report 2022: Leading with Endurance Through Risk, Culture and Technology Challenges, “a detailed survey and one-on-one interviews between Ari Kaplan and chief legal officers at large corporations.”
Part 1 of this report is out now and focuses on risk.
Law Firm Business Development Is More Than Relationship Building
Roughly 60% indicated that their risk landscape is expanding or becoming more difficult to navigate in areas spanning compliance, regulatory enforcement, data privacy, information security, emerging data sources and ongoing effects from the pandemic. Feelings of preparedness dropped from the previous year in every major category discussed.
In some ways the accelerating complexity will always drive the world toward more perceived uncertainty, but on some level you’d think that counsel would express some comfort in the improved resources out there from both law firms and third-party vendors aimed at these concerns. And to some extent GCs have gained comfort from the responses in the market because while concerns continue to rise generally, the specific issues causing heartburn have changed.
Compliance and regulation came right out of nowhere, didn’t it? One respondent said, “it has to be the increased regulatory scrutiny over the past couple of years…everywhere we turn regulators are emboldened. It is that increased regulatory scrutiny combined with a hyper-vigilance around reputational risk that everyone seems to have.” A headache for legal departments, but probably a good thing for, you know, society at large.
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No doubt there’s also a bit of privacy overlap there too as the implications of those issues have moved more into the sphere of government regulation. In fact, back in 2020 the respondents felt “well prepared (4.02 on a scale of 1 to 5) for data privacy obligations and regulations such as GDPR and CCPA” but that confidence has since slipped to 3.27.
No rest for the weary, I guess.
Parts 2 and 3, dealing with culture and technology, will be released down the road.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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Law Firm Business Development Is More Than Relationship Building
