General Counsel Role Shifts to Offense to Prevent Business Risks

摘要

A seismic shift has been occurring over the last several years in the role of general counsel and chief legal officers. This role is now focused as much on business risk as legal risk. The increasingly overlapping responsibilities among legal, privacy, compliance, security, and IT teams in global companies are creating new challenges for GC and CLOs everywhere. Rapidly evolving regulations and laws are forcing them to assume a broader role in organization-wide compliance and risk mitigation strategies. Thanks to recent data from the 2021 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey, we're finally starting to get a more complete picture of this trend. Results show that legal is exerting more control over business units focused on risk such as privacy and compliance-which are more likely than ever to report to legal-and are carefully coordinating legal governance, risk and compliance (GRC) strategies across the enterprise. This means legal departments now have more responsibility for, and influence over, processes and technologies that can help mitigate cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance risks. For many enterprises, these risks are increasingly complex and serious, and mitigation typically boils down to how effectively an organization manages their data. A few key takeaways from the report highlight this new focus on data-based business risks and the leading role that GC/CLOs have assumed in mitigation efforts.