For In-house Counsel, More Regulation and Fewer Resources
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Today’s corporate counsel do battle with multiple risks on numerous fronts. Whether it’s facing off against cybercriminals or government regulators, defending the enterprise involves time, energy and money. A new survey from Grant Thornton LLP, the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd., an independent tax, audit and advisory firm, shows that in-house counsel looking to handle growing corporate challenges are facing serious budget shortfalls.
Grant Thornton’s “2014 Corporate General Counsel Survey” was conducted earlier this year and administered online by ALM Marketing Services (which is part of Corporate Counsel’s parent company, ALM). It drew responses from more than 250 in-house attorneys at public and private companies in the U.S., from a range of different industries and with a range of revenue levels.
Of the attorneys surveyed, only 17 percent disagreed that the pace of new regulatory legislation and regulations was more than they could keep up with. Some 50 percent of attorneys said they were neutral on the matter, and 33 percent agreed that regulation was moving too fast to handle. The most common reason for not implementing compliance guidelines from the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission was a lack of compliance staff and budgets, according to 65 percent of respondents, followed by multiple regulatory and compliance models around the world at 40 percent.
Brad Preber, national managing partner of Grant Thornton’s forensic and valuation services practice, told CorpCounsel.com the problem isn’t that in-house counsel are not doing their jobs when it comes to regulation. It’s just not always easy to adopt a tight focus on evolving regulatory compliance functions internally when there are a lot of risks to address and strict limits to an organization’s resources. “There’s so many other risks that they are facing that this is simply on a long list of things they have to prioritize,” Preber said.
Read original articleTags: ALM, ALM Marketing Services, corporate counsel, Grant Thornton International Ltd., Grant Thornton LLP
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