Risk Update

Risk Interview — How COVID-19 will Affect Risk Functions in Law Firms (Sponsor Spotlight)

Posted Dan Bressler

This month’s sponsor thank you to our supporter Accuity features an interview with Mike Guernon, Global Director of Intake, Risk & Compliance at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

Listen to him explore: “How COVID-19 will Affect Risk Functions in Law Firms” —

  • “We’ve got a large global footprint so we’re always dealing with a number of compliance issues that arise out of new legislation, new laws, new rules, new opinions. And my role has been and throughout my career is just to identify ways to improve the workflow and find the right tools. Whether it’s resources or technology that really take the sting out of the bureaucratic delays that can come with some of the compliance issues. Our focus has always been making it very efficient, making it painless and really raising the overall amount of compliance that we get… our forucs is really to be proactive about these risk issues.”
  • “…everyone had to take drastic steps. We found ourselves in an unique position in that we had to be responsive to all of our clients’ needs. They had many questions, whether it was the state by state policies or some of the federal policies as they as they came about. And there was a concern to really be super responsive to what new markets and new demands were arising. At the same time, in our experience on the risk mitigation side, we were well familiar with similar events like the 2008 recession where you had similar reactions from the markets and from clients. And this very, very vocal need to get things done quickly. But our takeaways and I think risk management throughout law firm and legal.”
  • “A key takeaways from 2008 was the amount of claims that would exponentially rise like 12 to 16 months after an event like that are alarming because people are anxious to get to the work. Sometimes in an attempt to do that, some of the risk protocols can sort of be overlooked. So our focus right from the jump was to be very, very responsive to our attorney needs, while at the same time making sure we were missing any of the critical steps from the basic to run the conflicts analysis within our database to make sure we didn’t have an ethical issue.”
  • Listen to the complete podcast here.

See Also: Past Interviews from Accuity (in PDF form):