Managing Legal Challenges: Key Approaches for Smooth Business Operations
Running a business successfully means being able to deal with legal risk. Doing this effectively, in most cases, means doing it proactively. After all, it’s better to avoid a legal dispute than it is to try to resolve it after it’s arisen. This principle will not only help you to avoid conflicts with your workforce, but also with your clients, suppliers, and the wider public.
Understanding Common Legal Risks in Business
Legal risk takes many forms. There are laws regulating mergers and acquisitions, recruitment, health and safety, and intellectual property. Different kinds of business might assign different levels of importance to each of these. For example, a software company might have to think extensively about intellectual property. But all of these areas of law, and the problems that might stem from them, should be considered.
Implementing Robust Compliance Frameworks
How do you stay on the right side of the law? By implementing a clear framework for everyone involved in your business to follow. When compliant actions are made part of the routine of your business, they become much easier to take. Of course, a good framework should also be adaptable. As the law changes, so too should your business.
Risk Management: Identifying and Addressing Potential Legal Pitfalls
Regular risk assessments should be part of your health and safety policy. They’ll help you to spot hazards before they have a chance to cause an accident. The same principle might be applied to other areas of risk in your business. Audits might uncover financial risks, while contract reviews might uncover legal ones.
Handling Disputes Effectively
Ideally, all risks would be spotted and mitigated early on. But this isn’t always possible. It’s important that you’re able to cope with conflicts and disputes whenever they occur. This often means making mediation and negotiation part of your routine. Often, it’s worth being generous at the early stages, and admitting fault where fault is clear. When disputes with employees, or those outside the business, escalate to a courtroom, the business’s reputation might take a hit.
Engaging Legal Experts for Strategic Advice
Effectively mitigating legal risk means having the relevant expertise. Just as you wouldn’t attempt to rewire your premises yourself, it makes little sense to try to form an effective policy for compliance and litigation without the input of external experts, including solicitors. Corporate litigation is largely the preserve of highly specialised dispute resolution lawyers. Involving these people early on will help your business to resist legal risk.
Fostering a Culture of Legal Awareness within the Organisation
Obviously, it’s not possible for everyone in your business to have detailed knowledge of the law. But a vague knowledge is better than no knowledge at all. By providing your employees with the right training, and inculcating a culture of legal vigilance, with special emphasis placed on more common forms of risk, you’ll be able to stay compliant and protected.
