Grey Matters: Managing risk and compliance – how GCs can become a trusted business adviser | 20 June 2019

You wear a number of hats: crisis counsellor, risk manager, CEO confidant, Board member and department leader.

This roundtable will look at risk and crisis management and how you can elevate these issues to the Boardroom agenda.

Programme

2.00pm – Registration

2.30pm – Welcome and introduction

2.40pm - Polly Russell Stower, Group GC of Ultimate Finance Group: How GCs can turn from being the trusted legal adviser to the trusted business adviser to help shape the Board agenda

Business models are becoming more complex and more global, which means that the legal and regulatory environment is becoming more intrusive to business. In order to help the business thrive, it is important that risk and compliance are heavily featured on the Board agenda. Key to that is making sure that the legal function is at the heart of the business so it can help identify where there are trouble spots and help the Board to manage any legal or compliance risks.

Polly will be looking at the balancing act of engaging with the business on a day to day basis, whilst helping to deliver the business’ strategic priorities and identifying and managing legal risk. She will highlight the importance of ensuring that the legal team is a key partner to the business, that its departmental plan aligns with the business and that it is seen as central to helping the business make good ethical, legal and reputational decisions.

3.10pm - Emma Palmer, Head of Risk, RWK Goodman: Managing the risk and compliance universe

The risk and compliance universe is enormous. The long list of well-known legislation and regulation, from GDPR to Anti-Bribery and Corruption, SRA regulation to Consumer Credit, gives us our relatively stable and familiar ‘centre of the universe’ of compliance and a long list of topics about which we need to train, write policies and procedures, monitor compliance and report to the Board.

And if that wasn’t enough, there are the never-ending ‘shooting stars’ of regulatory change: new SRA regulation, new tax evasion offences… the list goes on. One of the key challenges for anyone responsible for risk and compliance within a law firm, or in any business, is keeping on top of everything within their purview and ensuring key risks are on the Board’s agenda. This session discusses the ways that can be achieved whilst exploring  some of the key issues that keep you up at night.

3.40pm - Lucy Nash, Associate, RWK Goodman: When a crisis does happen; how to draw up a crisis management plan

If your organisation suffers an event which gives rise to significant financial, legal or public relations exposure, you should have a clear crisis management plan in place so that you and your team can address those issues whilst your business continues as normal.

In an ideal world, the best strategy is to take a proactive approach to prevent a crisis in the first place, but we know that is not always the reality.

Your crisis management plan will need to clearly set out:

• Who is responsible for taking what steps
• What you need to address in the media
• How and what you will tell your employees
• What legal processes might need to be followed within certain prescribed time limits, e.g. reporting a data breach to the ICO.

During this interactive session, we will provide you with practical tips on mapping, creating and implementing a robust crisis management plan so that you feel confident that if something does go wrong, you and others within your organisations will know what steps need to be taken in order to mitigate any potential damage to your organisation’s reputation or finances.

4.25pm - Closing comments

4.35pm - Further drinks and networking

5.30pm - Finish

Event details

Date: Thursday 20 June 2019

Venue: The Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PH.