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Case studies as means to spread awareness of legal and compliance risks

Lawyers at McGuire Woods described a useful approach in Counsel to Counsel (March 2005 at pg. 22)   A law department should gather key personnel from critical areas such as compliance, research, legal, sales and marketing.  Divide those participants into cross-functional teams and give each team a case study regarding a fictional company.  Have the teams work through a series of different legal problems that progressively worsen for the company. 

Each team then returns to the full group and reports on their scenario and how they approached and resolved it.  The teams analyze the situation, make recommendations, communicate which issues are important and outline their solutions. 

The case study process achieves the dual goals of cross-pollinating the company’s departments, which makes risk management real, and creates an environment for systematically learning and understanding what the company needs to do and determining risk management procedures.