October’s vlog focuses on preparations for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Over 70% of respondents to our recent survey on GDPR compliance thought it would necessitate significant changes to some of their business processes but 13% hadn’t yet begun to tackling the task of compliance.
I suggest a couple of areas where there are low hanging fruit for anyone in that 13% to get started on straight away including getting management buy in to support compliance initiatives (see Board memorandum) and considering whether you need to appoint a data protection officer (see Richard Merrygold of HomeServe’s video). There’s also some recommended reading in our Tesco case study for those slightly further along in the process who are interested in benchmarking their approach or trouble shooting key issues.
Separately, I look at how we should tackle the proposals in response to the Green Paper on corporate governance reform. In-house lawyers now face a patchwork of different initiatives aimed at bringing about something approaching the Prime Minister’s vision in this area without major primary legislation. The key challenge is how to identify and influence the initiatives that really matter to your organisation and on that I defer to Parliamentary lawyer Daniel Greenberg’s approach as outlined in our influencing legislation Q&A earlier this year.
Finally, I pick out some of my personal highlights from Practical Law’s recently published content on life in-house and legal department management.
