Forward-thinking organizations that refocus their legal teams on the removal of systemic friction and value creation can better detect and forecast risk; however, organizations that have not modernized their legal teams often miss subtleties masking surprisingly deep areas of risk. Recent history shows nothing is too big to fail, but earlier risk detection may have helped avoid some of the most catastrophic losses.

The most recent and notable industry-wide example, of course, was the financial services industry, which triggered the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. 

In the world’s most infamous accounting scandal, Enron imploded in 2001, wiping out $74bn of shareholder funds and the pensions and jobs of thousands of employees. Enron’s auditor also collapsed. The organizations were interconnected and dependent systems. One fell, the other followed. Undetected risk festered and worsened, and the interconnectedness of these organizations and systems created a complex network that made detecting risk more difficult.

As modern society demands more capable systems, they become more interconnected and complex by necessity. As Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It posits, this staggering complexity means that tiny mistakes or simple accidents can lead to devastating catastrophes that often go undetected. The reasons for failure can stem from very different problems, but the underlying causes are similar.

In accounting scandals with nefarious actors, huge debts are obscured and once revealed, lead to corporate failure. In legal departments with good actors – led by a noble General Counsel (GC) who serves as the defender of the enterprise – business risks are obscured and once revealed, can lead to devastating consequences: bet-the-company litigation, core intellectual property battles, merger & acquisition failure, and crippling regulatory fines, to name a few.

Embracing digital helps identify and expose risk, but organizations set the stage for failure when legal, or other critical functions, don’t keep up, fail to embrace the digital evolution, become disconnected, and lack or lose visibility. Those organizations make decisions without a clear view of the legal implications, and they might not even know it because, for now, they operate with blind trust of the Office of the GC.

Corporations in all industries are “going digital” to remain competitive amidst technological disruption. This focus on digital starts with core products and service offerings, and then is pushed throughout the business to align company to product. The result? Faster moving businesses with a wave of demand pummelling the legal department…if not yet, then soon as digital initiatives across the business mature.

Most corporate legal departments simply do not have the systems required to keep up -- providing consistent regulatory counsel, detecting and preventing impending litigation, or simply knowing who is doing what in the legal organization is already a challenge Risk is obscured. A “break” like we’ve never experienced is primed.

If we examine the ecosystem, the warning signs are there.

Catching up to other corporate functions

As demands on legal teams continue to grow and CFOs ask GCs to do more with less, quality suffers amid rising law firm rates and unchecked complexity. Corners get cut. Risks emerge while their likelihood to go undetected rises. Of course, when adding headcount is not an option, revamping processes and technology is often the answer.

In finance, accounting, information technology, and human resource departments, among others, advances in technology have enabled self-service, helped control costs, made it easier to compare costs, and increased quality choices. These corporate functions have embraced systems-level restructuring with artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, cloud computing and “Big Data” to modernize working practices and improve performance.

In their often siloed and conservative world, most GCs and corporate legal departments, on the other hand, make crucial decisions guided as much by gut instinct as by data and industry benchmarks. For decades, they have resisted change or lacked sufficient resources to enable change in technology, working practices, and corporate culture. Now, with the real-time requirement for speed, scale, and transparency -- that era is over.

To retain and increase influence, improve their performance and trim costs as recessionary fears grow, GCs would be wise to more fully modernize their legal departments quickly through an open, digitally-savvy, and collaborative working culture.

Collaborate and listen

Building a data-driven, digital, secure and scalable legal system is an ethical and commercial imperative for GCs. Technology is part of the solution but not the place to start.

To more proactively expose, manage and mitigate risk, executives and their boards need GCs to emphasize the imperative for a more analytical, data-based and efficient approach to corporate legal practice with concrete examples to punctuate the “Why.”

You could start with three actions.

1. Educate yourself and your colleagues about trends in legal digitization, performance improvement and new working practices. A comprehensive source of information is the Digital Legal Exchange, a global institute of leading thinkers from academia, business, government, technology and law.
2. Become Modern. Be the change. Lead the change. Make tough decisions about your top leaders and whether they are capable of a data and digital-first mindset and way of working. Change leadership is the prime point of failure for legal modernization efforts.
3. Be ambitious in the scope of your reforms. Small, pilot projects (ie, e-signature or automated NDAs) won’t make much of an impact and won’t convince your board of the need for bold legal change.

Modernizing the legal system and companies’ legal departments can improve affordability and performance for clients, lawyers, company boards, and shareholders.

Absent modern means of detection, legal risk can proliferate unknown and unseen only to all too often reveal triggers of impending corporate failure when it’s already too late.