The Complexity Nexus: Legal Acumen and Business Outcomes

Abstract

As legal acumen becomes more important to business outcomes, legal operations becomes more important to the proper management of law departments. GDPR is not an isolated ‘legal’ issue. GDPR is a business challenge with legal underpinnings. Brexit is not a legal event. Brexit is a regulatory realignment with business implications requiring legal savvy to navigate. GDPR and Brexit are outliers with respect to their reach. But they are indicative of direction. The world is becoming more complex. Lawyers are complexity engineers. Some lawyers create complexity. Most lawyers solve for complexity. Complexity has an important characteristic: it compounds. Regulations, as an example, are a means to confront complexity. As governments try to tackle complexity, new regulations do not simply accrete. Regulations interact, intersect, and conflict—especially as business crosses borders in an increasingly globalized economy.