Before identifying the list of possible or exact legal risk mitigation strategies for a business project, it is important to identify the metrics by which you will assess your options. For example, if you are dealing with an established business, I would suggest a mitigation strategy or plan that comes as close as possible to meeting the following criteria:

• Provides the highest level of protection
• Cost-effective
• Little operational disruption
• Little to no customer impact
• Can be implemented easily and efficiently
• Provides a compliant and easily transferrable approach across jurisdictions
• Lends itself to ongoing protection as laws and facts change

Mitigation strategies can be less intrusive in more established businesses and industries because the business's legal framework tends to be well defined and fairly stable. Leaders also usually come up through the ranks where they gained an understanding of the regulatory environment. Intuitively, those leaders are less likely to conceive of or pursue business strategies that are not compatible with the legal framework they have always worked within. That does not mean there is no legal work to do. There is always legal work. It just means that the legal work usually aligns well with what the business is doing.

However, if you are considering a mitigation strategy for a new area of law or less established business, you may have to accept some operational disruption, customer impact and increased costs. Start-up legal costs can be sizeable, just like any other start-up costs. While it may be tempting to cut costs because young businesses have many issues to manage, the law is an important consideration. That is why you need a lawyer. If you ignore the law or get it wrong, however, the law can become 100% of your problem. That is why you need a good lawyer.

Unlike disciplines that rely heavily on empirical evidence, such as marketing and finance, the law is a rhetoric-based discipline. A lawyer cannot run split tests on different mitigation strategies or tell you how many standard deviations away from the average damages award the settlement offer you received is. However, we can give you our opinion on the likely legal outcome of your case, project or problem based on our review of the law, patterns we’ve identified, our experience and the experience of our valued colleagues. That is why lawyers use language like “in my opinion” and send you opinion letters. The key is to find a lawyer whose communication style and logical reasoning process resonates with you.