REUTERS | Tulips bloom in Bryant Park in New York City, U.S., April 29, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid - RC15C0A16600
June 19, 2020

Boards must add skills and expertise to address the challenges and opportunities created by the COVID-19 pandemic

Boards need to take steps to ensure that their organisations are equipped to address the risks, challenges and opportunities that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic. They should re-consider their board composition, review their succession plans and reflect on the skills and expertise that have been missing or need strengthening.

Non-executive directors (NEDs) can play a crucial role in supporting the executive team during these turbulent times by guiding and coaching the senior management team, and identifying priorities.

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REUTERS | Ricardo Moraes
June 17, 2020

Why we need kindness in the law

The last few months have been difficult, but they have often brought out the best in us: thousands of people signing up to be GoodSAM NHS volunteers, neighbours offering to do each other’s shopping, Captain Tom Moore’s fundraising efforts and the weekly #clapforcarers have shown just how much kindness matters in a crisis.

Positive connections and interactions with people are one of the greatest predictors of our happiness. Our nervous systems respond to kindness and helping other people and connecting with them creates feelings of pleasure, safety and warmth in our brains. Humans have evolved to behave in ways that promote the survival of our species, and kindness and looking out for others have been crucial. From around 18 months old young children demonstrate an instinct to be kind, for example, by picking something up someone has dropped or hugging or kissing someone who looks sad.

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REUTERS |
June 15, 2020

Compliance programme review: new US Justice Department guidance

On 1 June 2020, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) updated its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance. This guidance is used by DOJ prosecutors in assessing the adequacy and effectiveness of corporate compliance programmes, providing a window for compliance officers into the ever-developing standards expected of the programmes they create and manage.

The updated guidance retains much of the previous text from April 2019, with the new elements reflecting the greater dynamism now expected. Key messages from this update are that programmes must be ‘adequately resourced and empowered to function effectively’ – this meaning that the DOJ will look beyond the programme on paper to ‘how’ it functions. Also, that there should be compliance of culture ‘at all levels of the company’.

Even if the US guidance does not apply directly to your business, good practice lessons can be taken from it in benchmarking and updating your own programme.

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REUTERS | People gather at a popular viewpoint in front of the Moscow International Business Center also known as "Moskva-City" during sunset in Moscow, Russia, May 30, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov - RTX2EY0L
June 10, 2020

LegalTech in the most advanced digital society in the world

I grew up in the old Soviet Union and for me, as for many other Soviet citizens, the three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were a strange island of relative liberalism in the USSR. They had medieval towns, signs in Latin alphabet letters, cosy cafes serving real coffee, glossy magazines and far greater numbers of young people wearing jeans. Locally manufactured magnetic tape-recorders and cassette-players, though highly desirable, were often unattainable for most Soviet households as they were regarded as items of “non first-necessity”.

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REUTERS |
June 1, 2020

Privacy and cybersecurity: Summer agenda 2020

At the time I wrote the Spring agenda piece COVID-19 was still a rather a remote and abstract force. It’s no understatement to say the whole world has changed since then as the pandemic has ravaged healthcare systems and economies across the globe. This includes the place in the world occupied by data protection, privacy and cyber security. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Amit Dave
May 28, 2020

How law firms can help in-house legal teams benefit from legal tech

Legal tech has undoubtedly proved its value in recent years, helping law firms to become more efficient, cost-effective and agile, and also realise the benefits of advances such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data and automation. But what role can a law firm play when an in-house team is in the process of considering, choosing, implementing and finally using legal tech?

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REUTERS | Luke MacGregor
May 22, 2020

What’s on the agenda for in-house lawyers in June 2020?

The government’s publication of its COVID-19 recovery strategy, together with guidance on working safely during the pandemic, has at least provided business with a starting point for planning a return to work. However, companies in many industry sectors remain unsure when and how they will be back in business. Brexit has been understandably overshadowed recently but in-house lawyers should also track the negotiations on the future UK-EU relationship as a no-deal Brexit remains a possibility.

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REUTERS | Pillar Lee
May 21, 2020

Networking for lawyers: lockdown, lodestars and legacies

  • by Alisa Grafton
  • Consultant scrivener notary and networking expert

Networking during a lockdown sounds like a contradiction in terms. And it is in many ways – for most of us our social circles have been reduced to immediate family, with the most exciting social events being online friends-and-family quizzes. Now does not feel like the time to go looking for business, or to suddenly embrace e-marketing for developing your client portfolio.

However, this is not to say that your networking efforts must come to a halt with the advent of working from home.  There are many things you can do to stay relevant, to keep your connections alive and interested, and to demonstrate the angle of your professional persona that will favourably set you apart from others in your field.

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REUTERS | Mark Blinch
May 18, 2020

New normal, new ethics?

In 2019, the UK Office for National Statistics calculated that just over 5% of the UK labour force worked mainly from home. In the US, the percentage is even lower. A recent survey estimated that, prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, only 3.6% of the US labour force worked from home at least half the time. Coronavirus has radically altered these figures, with a study by MIT estimating that, of those who had previously been commuting to work, 34% are now working from home.  And it looks like this trend could outlast the pandemic, with Global Workplace Analytics estimating that:

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REUTERS | Ricardo Moraes
May 12, 2020

The Hearing: Episode 51 – COVID-19: the economic implications for lawyers and law firms

I recently sat down to talk with three experts about COVID-19 and the economic implications of the crisis. In particular, we explored how this relates to lawyers, the legal industry and the implications for our future. You can listen to the recording as part of the new series of The Cross-Examination episodes for The Hearing podcast.

Every recession has its own starting point and character, and some industries will be hit harder than others.  But the COVID-19 recession is unique, coming from a sudden, global, flattening of economic activity. The normal rules have been utterly changed and this podcast starts to unpick what that means for the legal industry and provides some hope for the future.