Congregation of Best Consultants to Manage and Mitigate Legal Risk.
Strategies for managing risk, complying with legal requirements, communicating with shareholders, and preparing for known uncertainties evolve constantly.
We work with you and your board of directors to avoid problems and resolve those that arise. We combine deep regulatory and industry knowledge with extensive experience in government relations, litigation, internal investigations, and securities law compliance to provide a comprehensive and holistic approach to problem solving. We provide innovative, cost-effective, and value-added solutions for uncertainties that must be managed carefully, proactively, and with proper guidance.
Our areas of work include:
- Business ethics and anti-corruption
- Crisis management
- Dispute resolution and litigation
- Employment and labor, including employee benefits and executive compensation
- Insurance, including director and officer indemnifications
Internal investigations - M&A
- Professional negligence
- Regulation and investigations
- Reputation and defamation protection
- Risk advisory
- Securities, regulation and enforcement
- Shareholder engagement
Identify your legal risk with WLA Risk Assistance
As business increases in complexity, pace and connectivity, managing risk has become the cornerstone of informed decision-making. However, before you can take steps to manage risks, you need to first identify and assess the risks, including how those risks may interact with other potential risks. Try our Legal Risk Radar, which gives you an indication of some of the potential risks to which your company is exposed
If you are uncertain as to the relevance of having a legal risk management review of your business, we will be happy to talk to you about what kind of risk profile your company has and what we would propose to do in order to identify the risks that your company is facing.
We can assist in the structuring of a legal risk management process, conduct the review of specific documents and procedures, assist with the setting up of a legal risk management reporting system and a document management system and a stream lining of various contractual terms across the contract portfolio in order ensure corporate compliance with the risk strategy.
Top risks that concern legal teams
Fraudulent or illegal activities can bring down mammoth organizations, destroy carefully built reputations, and even send employees to prison.
If your legal team isn’t adequately prepared to handle massive fraud cases or if it doesn’t have a plan in place if fraud were to occur, you are leaving your organization open to extreme vulnerabilities.
Increasing numbers of customers are prioritizing green companies. Environmental conscientiousness is also important to many watchdog groups and regulatory agencies.
Poor sustainability practices that do not reduce an organization’s energy footprint or that actually accelerate anthropocentric climate change can hurt a company’s reputation and place it in legal jeopardy. Thankfully, most green initiatives are not complicated to launch and can pay off in real dollars saved. For instance, lower energy use means lower overhead costs. A less toxic environment reduces worker’s compensation claims. Promoting green eating in the company cafeteria can lower health insurance costs.
Companies doing business in highly regulated industries like banking, healthcare, and energy need to be especially cognizant of the latest changes in laws and best practices. If an organization’s employees are unable to manage new and changing legal or regulatory requirements, that organization puts itself at grave legal risk.
Loss of intellectual property occurs when an organization fails to protect and/or enforce its intellectual property rights. Particularly prescient for companies that engage in extensive research and development, loss of intellectual property is a serious threat in a global economic environment.
Due to conflicting national laws and the varied ability of national governments to enforce them, companies that do business across borders run high risks of getting ripped off by unscrupulous hackers, and often, police agencies can do little to stop them. Luxury fashion brands and media production companies have historically borne the brunt of fake reproductions, but today, hackers and thieves can steal any scientific and technological knowledge not protected by secure cyber borders and crack legal teams. Perhaps most disturbing, many technological innovations could be co-opted for nefarious purposes and sold on the international black market.
The WLA Risk Management Process
First, and most importantly, you need to know where your company stands in terms of risks:
What are your risks?
What strategic/commercial initiatives do you expect to make in the coming period of time?
Who are authorized to do what?
What kind of risk management have you had so far?
You should convene an initial meeting to assemble a cross-functional team with representatives from i.a. the BoD, management, legal department, and any other relevant employees who can help identify your risk profile. Consider involving an external advisor to help assess your risks.
Based on your company’s risk profile the team will typically identify a handful of primary risk areas. From there, you will work out each party’s tasks and responsibilities in the process.
The next step is to carefully analyze your company’s risks. The team will need to go through relevant contracts, agreements and other documents, also to identify any mutually affecting risks, such as:
- Loan agreements
- Partnership agreements
- License agreements
- Supply and purchase agreements
- Insurance.
At this point, you need to go over the risk analysis with all relevant parties, including the team, the management, and the BoD. Go for an open and constructive discussion and allow everyone to comment on the conclusions and recommendations in the report.
You have now mapped all relevant information about your risk profile and used the data to analyse what you need to do to stay safe in the future.
Now what you need to do is to translate your recommendations into actions. You could do this by drafting an action plan, which might also be the starting point of your new legal risk management strategy. The plan should be realistic and identify what areas you wish to prioritize.
It should include suggestions on what to do about:
- Current risks, based on current situation
- Potential future risks, based on future strategic and commercial plans
- The immediate threats that are facing all businesses due to the global, general uncertainty.
When implementing new procedures and security measures, it is vital that you make sure to properly communicate these new initiatives and your new risk strategy. You need to convey the message to your staff in a way that makes it something they can relate to; they must know what to do in practical terms.
Moreover, and using the recommendations arrived at, the team should consider the following:
- Renegotiation of agreements
- Corporate-law changes
- New internal authorizations
- Employee matters, e.g. rectifying invalid clauses
- Negotiations with authorities and other parties
- Insurance matters, e.g. avoiding under-insurance
- Drafting of new standard contracts
- Information letters
- Implementation of document handling and risk categorization systems, etc.
To make sure you keep the overview at all times and keep your risk strategy up-to-date on market developments and your own development, it is necessary that your management/BoD ensures periodic follow-ups. These follow-ups could be at management level and with the persons responsible for each area, but which basically includes a test of the assumptions made, a match against the then current risk strategy and corporate strategy and a renewed analysis of the risks at hand – which should now be mapped in the system.