Three of top ten risks to organizations are legal

Protiviti obtained survey responses from 150 “CEOs, CFOs and other senior-level executives from among the top 2,000 companies.” As reported in the Wall St. J., June 5, 2007 in a supplement on risk, those respondents ranked the “top ten risks to organizations.” Most were business concerns: competition, customer satisfaction, IT and security, market evolution, financial markets, and technology innovation. Two have a legal gloss to them: brand image and reputation, because of trademark issues, and human resources, because of the prevalence of legal problems such as discrimination and harassment claims.

The remaining three, in the third, seventh and ninth positions respectively, were “regulatory environment,” “legal environment,” and “legal.” Set aside the obvious overlaps, these risks are still straightforwardly in the charge of most law departments.