The bad news is we are more than halfway through the summer. The good news is we are quickly approaching our 2016 Global Women’s Leadership Summit, the highly anticipated gathering where female GCs and senior in-house lawyers swap stories and share ideas about the shifting legal-services landscape and their evolving roles in it.
Today, more than ever, GCs must wear many hats—mostly because they are working with many constituents: C-suite executives, corporate boards, business unit leaders, human resources, employees and shareholders, among others. In order to preserve her company’s reputation and value, a GC must be on the front lines serving as business advisor to top management, overseeing compliance programs, combating regulatory agencies and responding to government investigations, to name a few duties. She must do it all in the context of business imperatives that make it increasingly difficult to cover this amount of ground. In the face of a growing body of laws and regulations, already limited resources are strained further by growing compliance mandates.
These are the kind of themes we will cover at the summit, where an impressive lineup of speakers and panelists will mine their diverse professional experiences and strong business acumen to deliver insights and provoke discussion. We have found that the most revelatory moments typically occur when our invited experts draw on their anecdotal experiences discussing day-to-day legal challenges and managing a legal department, and we expect much of the same for this year’s program. Also, for the first time, the two-day event will offer an ethics CLE session on corporate issues surrounding cyber-risk management and incident response plans prior to the official kick-off.
In the coming weeks, you will see a variety of posts and information about the summit on this blog, so be sure to check back with us. Additionally, we are going to be speaking with some of our panelists who will share insights on how they are driving innovation at their organizations, while also managing risk factors associated with globalization and major geopolitical events.
We look forward to seeing you in Chicago on September 19-20.
Lisa Haile is a partner at DLA Piper and chairperson of the firm’s Global Women’s Leadership Summit. She also serves as co-chair of DLA Piper’s Leadership Alliance for Women, an initiative that is focused on helping the firm’s women lawyers maximize their opportunities for business generation and leadership.