Law Technology Today From the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
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The intersection of legal management and GRC is not a new venture, more recently in-house counsels are making efforts to oversee this development through integrated technology solutions. It is been heralded a strategic imperative which is showing significant potential to help corporations better manage the risk exposure and compliance concerns that usually exhaust the resources of a business.
For the integration of legal and GRC to be fully realized, these functions must work collaboratively to define how these areas interact in holistic terms, ensuring that the overlap between the legal function and GRC tasks (e.g., assessing and prioritizing risk, creating policies in response to a new regulation, or handling a compliance incident) can be tackled effectively and efficiently to the benefit of the enterprise.
In order to acknowledge the potential benefits of the integration of legal and GRC, it is first essential to understand the key ways in which, de facto, these areas intersect.
Regulatory Interpretation and Guidance
The legal department will be needed for consultation and guidance on the applicability of any new regulatory requirement or a change to an existing one, the inference of a specific regulation on business operations or a compliance requirement for a specific situation.
Risk Assessment
The risk management team will need consultation and support of the in-house legal team in risk assessment. For eg: A risk manager might need the expertise of regulatory law personnel to assess the influence of non-compliance related to a newly identified regulatory risk.
Third-party Due Diligence and Contract Development
Any corporation that enters into an agreement with a third party will have to conduct a thorough due diligence process in order to determine the supplier’s risk factor and the legal department will have to participate in the process of approving/disapproving the relationship. For this, they will be involved in determining the specific compliance terms and conditions required for developing a contract.
Addressing a Legal Matter That Has Grown From a Compliance Incident
Some compliance issues can result into bigger legal involvements, bringing the legal team at the forefront in resolving them. Therefore, it is better to inform the legal department beforehand of any incidents and also make them equipped with any information gathered by the investigators/staff involved in the incident.
The effectiveness of this convergence lies solely on the shared information and processes being administered under a common technology solution. GRC processes should be designed in a way that addresses the need for frequent and close-knit cooperation between GRC and legal staff resulting in a single, coherent business process spanning GCs and other executive leadership.
Legal Tech Solves the Challenges of Regulatory Compliance
Whether it is the growing concern of protecting an organization’s reputation or the dissemination of knowledge from the large pool of information in identifying what is important from a regulatory perspective, the compliance department is always laden with newer as well as existing challenges in the system.
Even the strongest regulatory-compliance functions are grappled with challenges of lack of visibility and lack of authority. And the scenario is further complicated within the emerging markets where organizations are entering an unknown regulatory environment with limited knowledge about local as well as international compliance issues.
In order to overcome these problems, the latest regulatory-focused tech solutions or regulatory technology are entering the market to aid regulatory compliance and provide better business outcomes. Technologies like PracticeLeague integrated ELM Platform are used for regulatory data collection, protection and reporting but this can also help in boosting data accuracy while helping with the single view of the customer, leading to an improved customer experience and faster speed to market. To be compliant with national and international regulations is very important for organizations to have an accurate handle on their customers’ data.
