Risk taxonomy: Difference between revisions

This exercise can occupy as little — a breakout session on an away-day — or as much — the permanent task of a dedicated division in the department — of your firm's intellectual capacity as you have going spare: organisations that run to the bureaucratic<ref>You know who you are.</ref> may become so swooned by this notion that they can find little time to do anything else. For how can one asses the risks of a transaction if one doesn't know from which family of what genus in what species it hails?

The first is that any taxonomy, like a map, can only document the territory you ''know''. This is of a piece with the common lawyer’s usual mode of reasoning, the doctrine of precedent, whose organising principle is to move ''forward'' by exclusive reference to what lies ''behind''.