A piece in Bus. Law Today, Vol. 17, Jan./Feb. 2008 at 23, lists 25 “potential disasters” in a table. Other columns of the table encourage planners to use a scale from 0 to 9 to rate the probability of each one striking, the magnitude of the disruption it would cause, and its geographic scope. With the total score in hand for each type of disaster, planners can focus on those with the worst consequences.
Law department lawyers might be involved as a team member in enterprise-wide disaster planning (See my posts of Aug. 28, 2006 on business continuity plans regarding what to do if a catastrophe occurs; and May 13, 2007 about one advantage to being a decentralized law department; Nov. 10, 2007 on crisis response.). Whether or not they are, their managers should look ahead to how the legal department would respond to massive disruption by nature, human wrong-doing, or internal upset (See my post of Oct. 10, 2005 on politics and succession planning.).