LEGAL
The challenges keep mounting for corporate counsel– dealing with new regulations and keeping their companies in compliance, learning how to better manage their legal budgets, establishing data security protocols, and much more. This year's ACC Annual Meeting, to be held in Boston, MA October 18 – 21, will feature industry experts covering these and many other timely topics. Corporate Counsel Connect spoke with ACC's President and CEO Veta T. Richardson about some of the latest trends and what to expect at this year's annual meeting.
Many of the trends this addressed at this year's annual meeting mirror popular issues, such as data breaches and globalization. These issues have been bringing the corporate counsel's work into the headlines, which isn't always a comfortable place to be. Now it's a matter of making the plans to avoid that attention and becoming proactive instead of reactive. "Over the past year, we have seen the industry dedicate more time and resources to data security, information governance, and cybersecurity issues," shares Veta. The ACC Chief Legal Officers (CLO) 2015 Survey reports that more than a quarter (27 percent) of CLOs and general counsel (GC) work at organizations that have experienced a data breach in the past two years. This number spiked to 41 percent in Canada. Veta adds, "To help thwart these challenges, we recently supported our members' launch of the ACC Information Governance Committee to aid their fellow in-house lawyers with strategies for data risk mitigation and information security and storage."
Globalization continues to make a significant impact on the industry as departments are being asked to practice across jurisdictions, further complicated by the rapid changes in global business operations and regulations. "As a result, compliance work is not expected to regress as an increasingly aggressive regulatory environment ensures that this will sustain well beyond 2015. This compliance focus is not new, but still among the most important areas ACC is following," shares Veta.
Another major trend in the legal industry is the rise of legal operations, an area that has grown in significance and recognition in recent years. "Legal operations executives support the success of the GC and law department as a whole by running advancement initiatives, while simultaneously making sure the law department is running efficiently and effectively," Veta explains. As corporate law departments move more of the strategic work in-house, the need to streamline efforts and automate outdated processes has become more prevalent, which is where the legal ops professional comes in.
The need for this type of discipline is especially pronounced as the size of the organization grows larger. The ACC CLO 2015 Survey found that 40 percent of CLOs of departments of 300 or more lawyers and 36 percent of CLOs of departments between 50 and 299 delegate operational management responsibilities to one or more legal operations professionals. "We expect these figures to grow in the next few years," adds Veta.
In recognition of this important role, ACC recently established a new membership sector, ACC Legal Operations, and held the first-ever Legal Operations Conference this past June. Shares Veta, "As a result of the conference, we expect greater interest in the ACC Legal Operations sector from the in-house counsel community at large. Currently, the section features regional groups that parallel the idea of chapters for the rest of ACC membership and build upon existing legal operations groups in Chicago, greater New York, Northern California, Southern California, and Texas. The collaborative spirit of this community has been instrumental in shaping the ACC Legal Operations section and its first conference."
Legal operations professionals will continue to find great opportunities to learn and connect at the upcoming ACC Annual Meeting, including a session titled, "ACC Value Champion Series (I): Legal Operations Professionals Share Strategies and Tactics to Improve the Value of Legal Services." Veta explains that the panelists will touch upon applying analytics to sharpen focus, deploying technology to automate processes, cultivating talent to meet department needs, and managing external resources. There are many other sessions that apply to this new role, including thoughtful change management processes and tactics to cut costs, improve predictability, and achieve better outcomes.
There is always much to look forward to at an ACC Annual Meeting. Shares Veta, "Every year at the ACC Annual Meeting, I thoroughly enjoy interacting with our members and executive leaders. We will welcome over 3,000 attendees from nearly 40 countries to the 2015 ACC Annual Meeting in Boston. Interacting with such a diverse group of people and perspectives helps us glean best practices and trends to improve our work, and thus, better serve our global membership base."
On the heels of extremely popular sessions on emotional intelligence and other personal development opportunities at the 2014 meeting, this year the ACC is featuring Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School Associate Professor, as a keynote speaker. Best known for her "Power Poses" TED talk, Amy will provide insight into how non-verbal behavior affects people's surroundings and explain how people's behavior shapes perceptions. "Her TED talk on this topic is the second most viewed of all time, so I am especially looking forward to hearing her in person," offers Veta.
The meeting will also feature a little game-show style. "Attendees can look forward to a 'Family Feud' style session testing in-house counsel knowledge of potential cyber risks and possible solutions to manage each scenario, as well as a discussion on US Supreme Court decisions from the past term and their impact on business," states Veta.
This year, industry experts from Anthem, Bitcoin, Deutsche Bank AG, Exxon Mobil, Google, NIKE, The Clorox Company, and Wal-Mart, among others, will lead sessions focused on a myriad of leading business and legal issues, including anti-corruption, economic sanctions, cybersecurity, internal investigations, and cross-border matters.
Taking a look beyond the upcoming meeting, ACC will "remain keenly focused on ensuring that our members have access to the best global connections and resources to help them do their jobs in today's fast-paced business environment." This includes integrating the membership of ACC Australia (ACLA), formerly the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association, to provide members in Australia and throughout the Asia-Pacific region with more international connections and resources.
"Further, we will continue to grow our membership base globally," explains Veta, "To that end, we plan to increase the creation of country-specific resources and research. For example, we recently released the ACC CLO 2015 Survey – Canada and ACC CLO 2015 Survey – Europe, as well as 2014 ACC Global Work-Life Balance Report – Canada and 2014 ACC Global Work-Life Balance Report – Europe."
"It is vital that we continue to provide members with comprehensive surveys and benchmarking opportunities on the topics they care about, such as law department management and cybersecurity," shares Veta. This information provides corporate counsel intelligence to make strategic decisions and better guide their respective organizations, fulfilling ACC's promise to support the industry and ensure members can best serve their corporate clients.
Prior to ACC, Veta served as the executive director of another in-house counsel-focused legal association for about 10 years. Before that, she served as vice president and deputy general counsel at ACC, where she oversaw the development of online resources, practice area committees, and continuing legal education for in-house lawyers. Veta's expertise in the in-house arena was shaped over an 11-year stint as in-house counsel at Sunoco, Inc. based in Philadelphia where she focused on corporate governance, transactions, securities disclosure, and finance.
Currently, as ACC president and CEO, her main priority is to continue to increase ACC's global footprint and strengthen the association's position as the global voice of in-house counsel. Additionally, she is responsible for setting the vision and execution strategies for ACC to deliver value to its global membership by providing practical resources, substantive educational programs, networking opportunities, timely legal and regulatory updates, and advocacy on the issues that matter to ACC members.
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