Law Department Management Blog
In a previous post, I commented on the frequency with which convergence and off-shoring showed up among the innovative law departments honored in the past month by the Financial Times (See my post of Dec. 3, 2010: seven law departments and two focused initiatives.).
A careful reading also discloses among the short descriptions at least six references to risk and management efforts. BAE Systems has developed a system to enable global compliance training. Unilever “implemented comprehensive anti-trust training across the organization for more than 7000 managers” while COFRA Holding “introduced a risk-control process based on interactive dashboards.” Standard Chartered “devised a unified vision for risk management across the business.” HSBC formalized its approach to legal risk management and “developed a database to store and assess risks arising across the legal function of each business unit” while Siemens was busy “devising tools to improve risk management and training.”
The implosion of the financial system two years ago continues to reverberate through law departments. With systems, training, visualization, technology, and awareness, in-house lawyers are tackling the Hydra of risk.