legal - kn

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has been intensifying efforts to crack down strongly on broker-dealers for poor e-mail oversight. In 2013, FINRA fined a financial advisory firm a whopping US$7.5 million for 35 significant failures in e-mail oversight over a five-year period and in 2017 a Broker-Dealer was fined $2 million for failing to properly supervise email messages. FINRA found that during a nine-year review period, the firm’s email review system was significantly flawed, allowing millions of emails to evade meaningful review. This created the unacceptable risk of such misconduct by firm employees going undetected.^[1]

Corporations of today are swiftly incorporating sustainability and/or ethical best practices as part of their organization-wide revamps. Better known as environmental, social, and governance (ESG), this system not only impacts the way corporations handle their processes’ outcomes on the environment and its community, but also promotes brand loyalty among customers looking for better brand choices. 

The U.S. Department of Treasury requested $1.59 billion for treasury programs in 2021. With such a large budget spend, it’s imperative that financial security is a priority to secure national interests and money. To this end, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has a stringent set of policies to safeguard companies that deal in international trade. OFAC has a list of sanctioned and embargoed nations that organizations can look up, to ensure that they don’t trade with these countries and end up in a financial mess, or worse.

How can legal departments navigate this challenge and use this rich data to better inform matter strategy and support decision-making? Through Business Intelligence.

Legal Operations is a growing domain [allowing] corporate legal departments to work more efficiently; as workloads increase, costs should be reduced.– Wolters-Kluwers

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A study conducted last year showed that 58 percent of people in the US perceive new technology to be a threat. 23 percent go as far as to worry about losing their jobs to new technology. In fact, US workers are twice as likely to worry about job loss from technology, than from immigration[1].

Legal professionals process mountain loads of data. This data holds even more value in the form of unlocked potential that can be used to create better litigation outcomes and legal department decision-making. But how can attorneys unlock the potential stored within these data sets? The process of harnessing data across the organization by utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) is called legal analytics.

Without a legal spend management strategy in place, firms might be paying 5% to 10% more each year, in undetected costs. When attorneys are paid according to their “billable hours” it’s imperative that these precious hours of legal work are safeguarded. It’s one thing to note expenditures to outside counsel, and another thing altogether to track legal spend, manage, and budget wisely.