From managing risk to designing resilience: rethinking the General Counsel as risk architect

Modern lawyers need to look beyond identifying legal issues and solving problems that may have arisen, and instead help organisations anticipate and navigate risks in ways that enable the wider business to move forward, says André Vos, Head of Dispute Resolution at leading African firm Deneys.

“It’s no longer only about the law and giving advice from a legal perspective, but a more holistic role in managing risks,” Vos says. “It’s all about managing risks and enabling the business to advance and excel, not to hold it back.”

It is an evolution Vos has witnessed across 30 years in legal practice, and one that will be at the heart of the panel he will moderate at next month’s GC Forum Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC). In “The GC as Risk Architect | Designing Resilience in Uncertain Times, Hermien Uys of Impala Platinum, Anton Du Randt of PwC, Velile Memela of Sanlam, and Celeste Appollis of Famous Brands will share their real experiences as in-house counsel while exploring how dispute avoidance can be built into day-to-day business operations, how Legal can work more effectively with commercial teams, and what it takes to manage risk and build resilient organisations across multiple jurisdictions. For Vos himself, the shift towards prevention has grown naturally from his roots as a commercial litigator.

Over three decades, he has advised boards, executives and general counsel on complex commercial disputes, corporate investigations, business ethics and anti-corruption, risk and compliance, and asset recovery. His work has also spanned domestic and international arbitration and cross-border matters.

Vos says disputes lawyers traditionally bring valuable skills to bear once something has gone wrong. Investigations similarly tend to begin after an issue has emerged. Combining that experience with compliance and broader risk advice, however, allows lawyers to move upstream. “How do you assist the client in avoiding the problem in the first instance?” he asks.

Compliance, investigations, disputes, and wider risk advice are, for Vos, all “pieces in the same puzzle”. Bringing them together can help lawyers nip problems in the bud while providing the practical, commercially focused advice businesses increasingly expect, rather than stopping at black-letter law.

The underlying risks are not always new.

Often, it is their form and scale that have changed.

When Vos began practising in 1996, lawyers still posted letters and sent faxes when something was urgent. Desktop computers and email followed, dramatically accelerating communications and increasing the volume of information businesses and their advisers handle.

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) represents another significant technological shift, alongside environmental, cyber, regulatory. and reputational exposures. “There’s a large element of the same type of risks that have just evolved in different forms,” Vos says. He believes AI can be a powerful too, but organisations need to understand its boundaries and manage the risks accompanying its use.

For lawyers, that means continuing to adapt, while helping businesses navigate an increasingly complex operating environment.

The role of General Counsel has evolved alongside that changing landscape. Vos sees considerable scope for in-house legal leaders to move further beyond the role of being the people that are called when problems arise, towards a broader strategic role that brings legal, compliance, and commercial considerations together, and helps organisations make confident decisions amid uncertainty.

But it’s not just GCs and their legal teams that are having to evolve in a fast-changing world; external lawyers too need to evolve alongside them, and better understand the different pressures faced by their in-house counterparts.

“The one thing we don’t have as external lawyers is a complete understanding of the client’s role,” Vos says. “I know the incredible demands that are placed on a GC that we don’t always fully understand from an external perspective.”

That makes opportunities to exchange perspectives at events such as the upcoming GC Forum GRC in Johannesburg particularly valuable.

Even after enormous technological advances during his career, Vos believes there’s no replacement for being in the room, together. “To be the trusted adviser, one has to have a relationship,” he says. “It needs to be a professional one, but it doesn’t mean it should not be a human one.”

Understanding those relationships, the commercial realities and internal pressures, can ultimately help lawyers provide more useful advice – shifting the emphasis from identifying obstacles towards finding workable ways forward.

“Our advice is not, ‘No, but you can’t do this, that and the other’, or ‘That’s a problem. This is a problem,’” Vos says. “Rather find the solutions that would move the business forward. Legal advice should be an enabler, not a restrictor.”