The business owns legal issues

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In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights.
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Ignorantia juris non excusat.

A founding, fundamental point, but one lost in our disintermediated, siloed age: the ultimate owner of legal risk is not legal, but the business. Legal simply advises the business on the legal risk.

Some counterintuitive implications of this:

  • The business should make legal calls in normal operating parameters (the BAU)
  • The business should read the whole contract.
  • It is up to the business to know not just the known knowns [1] but also the known unknowns and to be aware, and responsible for, the unknown unknowns. Only where you encounter a known unknown should the business get on the phone to legal, but the outcome of that advice is for the business to acquire another known known.
  1. ↑ And the unknown knowns, but QED it does not know those. Such is the imperfect state of the world, my friends.
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