Legal Opinions & Advice

What are Legal Opinions & Advice?

Legal opinions and advice includes all documentary evidence of advice received from internal and/or external legal counsel to resolve company issues and consult on relevant transactions across jurisdictions.

It captures historical and potential future legal issues, opinions and advice sought, costs and time of legal counsel and their contact details.

It covers both:

• Regulatory Issues: Related to legal risks associated with complying with regulatory authorities
• Third-party Issues: Related to legal risks associated with the company’s relationship with third parties
• Internal issues: Related to legal risk associated with internal stakeholders such as employees

Why are Legal Opinions & Advice important for business today?

An up to date and comprehensive collection of legal opinions and advice documents enables your company to:

• Review legal advice received on issues over the years
• Evaluate the impact of ongoing or closed issues on your business
• Mitigate risks of regulatory or third-party complaints that may impact operations
• Monitor the strategies formulated to manage and resolve issues
• Estimate the financial expenses related to legal counsel fees and the time and resources required to resolve issues

Why are Legal Opinions & Advice important for an event tomorrow?

An up to date and comprehensive collection of legal opinions and advice documents is important for an event tomorrow, as it helps:

• Evaluate the nature of legal issues against opinions or advice received
• Assess the strengths and capabilities of your company’s in-house legal department and need to seek external advice
• Assess reasons behind conflict situations and associated legal counsel advice on mitigation
• Analyze your company’s capability to manage legal issues by evaluating the implementation of opinions and advice received
• Determine the costs incurred to receive legal counsel across jurisdictions

Pros of addressing Legal Opinions & Advice

• Provides a record of the resolution of issues against or by your company, highlighted by regulatory authorities
• Reduces the time required to resolve legal issues
• Optimises your company’s internal decision- making by leveraging past opinions and advice received on similar issues across jurisdictions
• Establish accountability of legal counsel on opinions and advice provided
• Introduction and implementation of internal processes to manage legal issues

Cons of not addressing this topic

• Restrictions on your company’s ability to efficiently deal with and manage legal issues
• Increase in risks of liabilities, fines and legal enforcements
• Potential over-utilization of resources due to lack of visibility on opinions and advice re legal issues of similar nature
• Impact on your company’s finances and credibility as issues are resolved without seeking legal opinions and advice
• Delays in legal issue resolution.