Legal Risk Benchmarking Report: Survey Results and Analysis
Eighty percent of company executives have little or no confidence in their organisation’s ability to manage emerging legal risks, according to a survey of senior business figures carried out by Berwin Leighton Paisner, which looks at how companies are tackling the legal aspects of operational risk.

You should read this report if you have responsibilities for legal risk or are thinking about reviewing the work of your legal function.

three broad conclusions from the results, which are discussed in more detail in the full report:

1. There is broad agreement on what are the top 3 legal risk priorities. The top three risks vary slightly by sector, but there is enough agreement to guide your initial work priorities and quickly begin to identify your own key legal risks.

2. Legal risk is poorly understood outside the Office of the General Counsel (OGC). To improve understanding, General Counsel should report clearly how legal risk materially impacts their organisation.

3. Respondents lack confidence in the organisation’s ability to manage emerging and business-as-usual legal risks. The legal department’s role in the 3-lines of defence is a particular weakness. To resolve this, assign clear roles and responsibilities for legal risk management within the legal department and the business.

About the Legal Risk Benchmarking Survey

The survey was submitted to participants in electronic format by direct email and was also hosted online at the BLP Legal Risk Consultancy homepage. It attracted a good level of responses from a range of ‘C-suite’ executives across a selection of sectors including Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities. The (close to) 100 respondents were from across the globe with a sample covering Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia Pacific.