Law Department Management Blog
In light of the recent amendments to Sarbanes-Oxley, I rummaged through my past posts to find earlier references to the original legislation. Several posts considered the hit to legal department budgets that compliance with SOX would entail (See my post of May 30, 2005: SOX expenses; June 15, 2005: additional costs of Section 404 compliance; March 29, 2010 #2: additional compliance costs of publicly traded companies; and May 6, 2010: costs imposed by SOX.).
Some posts are about substantive legal issues raised by SOX that burden legal departments (See my post of Feb. 18, 2006 #2: more than 35% of Boards had retained their own lawyers since Sarbanes-Oxley passed; Feb. 28, 2006: slight rise in securities class actions after Sarbanes took effect; and Nov. 10, 2007: GCs hire personal lawyers to represent them.).
Most of the posts, unsurprisingly, discuss how SOX might affect the organization and workload of legal departments in publicly traded companies (See my post of March 11, 2005: would SOX push legal departments to reorganize; May 10, 2005 requirement that companies value their IP; May 20, 2005: merger of GC and CCO roles; Aug. 24, 2005: intranets and concerns with SOX; Nov. 24, 2005 #2: DuPont did not add legal staff to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley; June 5, 2006: encourages hourly billing; June 13, 2006: encourages online training programs; April 22, 2007: audit committee checklist in software inspired by SOX; Nov. 30, 2008: encouraged all practicing lawyers to report to the top legal officer; Jan. 21, 2009: up the line reporting obligation; May 20, 2009: audit trails in matter management systems for controls; and Dec. 14, 2009: SEC Commissioner supports legal departments.).