Nashville, Uvalde, Parkland, Las Vegas, Northern California, Puerto Rico, Wilmington, Panama City, Charlottesville, Minneapolis, and the U.S. Midwest and Southeast: all sites of horrific traumatic events in the last several years. Everyone has watched daily news reports with graphic images of people who are survivors of wild-fires, flooding, hurricanes, terrorist attacks, bombings, riots/protests or adults and children dealing with the aftermath of active shooter situations. And now, the aftermath of a global pandemic has changed our lives and turned our work environment, our businesses, and the economy upside down. But how often have we taken the time to really think about what happens to us as individuals when we experience traumatic or stressful events? Behavioral response to stressful incidents or crises and what is happening in the brain can be broken down into psychological stages that help to explain why individuals react in certain ways as they experience trauma. Given that in any organization, your most important assets are your people and your clients, this presentation will help those involved in disaster preparedness and crisis management gain a better understanding of the “human factor” in a crisis. This knowledge will better prepare your business and workforce for any situation that could affect your reputation.

Succession planning for lawyers and law firms is not something that has ever come naturally. Most lawyers don’t want to broach the topic of retirement and what the next part of their life will look like. But succession planning is critical to law firms and needs to be an integral part of the firm’s overall business continuity strategy before lawyers begin to think about retirement. Succession planning allows firms to prepare for transitions of key positions and major client relationships when shareholders or key partners leave the firm. Succession planning also helps the firm be prepared for any untimely loss of a critical firm leader. Neglecting the issue of succession can be very detrimental to the overall productivity of current lawyers in the firm, so the optimal time to begin a succession plan is way in advance of shareholders/partners reaching retirement age. This session will explore why law firms need succession plans in their firms now, issues that should be considered for creating a viable succession plan and what a comprehensive succession plan should look like.

We all know that a comprehensive written Business Continuity plan is an essential part of your organization’s Business Continuity program. Is your current plan gathering dust on a shelf? Are you struggling to put together a written plan that not only prepares your business in the event of a disaster, but also meets client and customer compliance and audit requirements, RFP guidelines, regulatory requirements and industry standards that have changed the playing field for Business Continuity globally in the aftermath of a global pandemic?  If so, then this session is for you. This session provides valuable information to any size organization where you will work through a check list of key components that should be a part of every written Business Continuity plan. That checklist can then be used to assess and revise your organization’s current plan.

Due to the reality of living in a world that is uncertain at best, most businesses have put some type of written business continuity plans in place to help deal with remote working and any other unexpected disasters or emergencies. But have those plans been routinely tested, or do they just sit on a shelf gathering dust? Do you have all the necessary and required resources in place in your organization to test your plans? Your plans could be outdated, not viable or have no real value in a true disaster in our current work environment. This session will look at the state of readiness of your business continuity plan, analyze how to ensure compliance with clients, customers, regulatory or industry standards/requirements and provide best practices for your business surrounding the testing of disaster preparedness and business continuity plans.

Workplace violence incidents are significantly on the rise, especially in the world we are currently living in with so much uncertainty and anxiety in our working environment. Workplace violence is a potentially serious risk to any business resulting in the potential for reduced productivity, decreased revenue, and loss of reputation. Higher turnover can result from the stress and potential traumatic after-effects of a violent incident. This interactive session on workplace violence prevention includes important information to assist you in protecting your business and your employees, including discussing types of workplace violence that occur, the characteristics and warning signs of potential violence, and steps that all organizations should take to prevent acts of violence from occurring, including  discussing what to do if the unwanted intruder intent on committing violence is a current or former employee of your organization.

It could be a burst pipe, civil unrest and protests, a fire in a neighboring suite, a workplace violence incident, a weeklong power outage due to wildfires, a cyber-attack and data breach or a global pandemic…..any of these disasters could close your business or affect its reputation. Does your organization’s current business continuity plan address all the essential components necessary to seamlessly continue providing services to your clients/customers? Executives are looking at their business continuity and risk management programs to determine current and future risks to their businesses and help make vital business decisions. In this session we will discuss business continuity planning and the steps that your organization can take now to protect your employees, make informed business decisions for working with clients/customers, and ensuring organizational resiliency and profitability. Items such as continuing to keep everyone safe while working in a hybrid work environment, conducting Business Impact Assessments (BIA’s) for your firm, the future of providing services to clients/customers, risk management and compliance issues, creating comprehensive written business continuity plans and testing those plans will be discussed.

In today’s world, the aftermath of the global pandemic has created an increased risk environment of cybersecurity threats, data breaches, vendor risks and third-party supply chain issues. Increasing directives from clients/customers for changes in business practices has made it imperative for businesses to include documented evidence of compliance and risk mitigation practices in their business continuity programs. Compliance with audits issued by clients/customers, stricter RFP guidelines, regulatory requirements and meeting industry standards have now changed the playing field for business continuity globally. In this discussion, we will share best practices for responding to audits and RFP’s and address how best to create a comprehensive vendor risk management program that will keep your business resilient in the face of any threat.

Organizations and their executives have a professional responsibility to protect their business and client/customer data.  This includes attacks made by on-line criminals, or threat actors.  Business servers contain a wealth of sensitive information, and cyber-criminals know how to access that data.  This session will discuss how organizations can develop a cyber resilience plan to protect against on-line threats.  Cyber resilience plans should document what specific technology is being used in the business, and the steps being used to Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover from any cyber threat that the organization may face.  This session will also focus on the elements of a cyber resilience plan and provide guidance for a plan that will comply with client and insurance requirements and help ensure the organization’s reputation if a cyber threat occurs.