According to the Penguin English Dictionary, autonomy means “self-determined freedom and independence, especially moral independence.” Research on lawyer happiness and wellbeing indicates that this is an important concept. If you experience autonomy in your working life, then your chances of experiencing happiness and wellbeing are increased. Two interesting pieces of research address this question and explain why autonomy is so important and how it links to happiness.
Episode 76 of the Hearing is now available. Yasmin’s guest this week hardly needs introduction – we’re speaking to feminist icon Laura Bates. Laura is founder of The Everyday Sexism Project, a catalogue of day-to-day instances of sexism and gender inequality.
Earlier this month I chaired a meeting of the Practical Law In-house Consultation Board focusing on environmental, social and governance reporting (ESG). Across the spectrum of industry sector and organisation size, our members agreed that the various and fast-paced developments in this area presented multiple challenges for in-house teams.
Please join us for a discussion hosted by the Centre for Legal Leadership (CLL) on 19 May 2021 (2.00pm-3.30pm) about how in-house legal teams can best be structured and resourced to deliver an effective service to their organisation. Whether you lead a team or work within one, it’s important that you understand the context in which structuring and resourcing decisions are taken.
A further relaxation of lockdown restrictions in England are expected on 17 May 2021 and the first repayments under the Bounce Back Loan Scheme are also due in May. Aside from COVID-19, in-house lawyers should also take note of the publication of the UK’s 6th carbon budget, which will require greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 78% by 2035.
300 members of the International Compliance Association (ICA) were surveyed in September 2020 about their experience of diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the workforce. Their responses exposed some sobering statistics including that four in ten compliance professionals have experienced discrimination at work. However, the survey also recorded promising signs of progress in advancing D&I.
Since the winter agenda, the UK and EU formally exited the transition period on 31 December 2020, the UK GDPR entered force in the UK, and the EU GDPR regime is now a separate and parallel system. Businesses that are involved in processing activity in both the UK and the EU need to be compliant with both regimes. Continue reading
Lockdown restrictions are expected to be eased in England from 12 April 2021. Restart Grants will be available in England from 1 April and, from 6 April, the Recovery Loan Scheme will open to all UK businesses and most changes to the Immigration Rules will come into force.
At the start of the month, The Centre for Legal Leadership hosted the first of a series of webinars in conjunction with Practical Law on ethics and the in-house lawyer. Here is a summary of the key themes that were discussed at the event.
What are legal ethics?
In the “standard conception of legal ethics”, lawyers are:
Working in-house changes this dynamic somewhat as lawyers are closer to the culture and values of their organisation than external counsel.
Companies are constantly being challenged to review their existing operating models and improve the processes and technology that support them. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the related explosion in remote working, has fuelled the need for innovative solutions that can radically improve the efficiency and security of those models.
Contract management is one such case. The emergence of distributed ledger technology (blockchain), as well as significantly improved e-signature platforms and multi-party digital web-browsers, has made the document execution elements of contract management more efficient and flexible than ever before. When different technologies are adopted collaboratively, important legal contract requirements, such as authorised signing and witness signatures, can be met quickly and securely.