Is your business prepared for the worst?

By Kim Jenkins

In uncertain times, the need to protect your firm’s reputation and business assets assumes even greater importance. Many organisations worry about how they would cope with a major catastrophe, such as fire, but what about less obvious disasters? For example, did anyone plan for the collapse of Lehman Brothers? And what would you do if the demise of a core supplier resulted in the loss of your essential IT systems or your premises?

In recent years, business continuity planning has become a major priority for law practices of all sizes and specialisms, with firms throughout the UK realising that it is important for them not only to review their own continuity plans on a regular basis, but also to examine and assess those of their key dependencies.

Business continuity planning is designed to enable an organisation to withstand interruptions to its business, ensuring that the necessary procedures are in place to allow staff to continue working, and data and systems to be recovered. And while major crises like the impending global recession are thankfully rare, it is a fact that serious incidents – and serious losses – do occur, and that a minimal amount of time devoted to continuity planning can pay enormous dividends.

Typical situations in which a plan could prove useful might include:

The collapse of key dependencies including landlords and external support;
Staff losses or redundancies;
The freezing of clients’ funds or assets;
The changing priorities within the firm; and,
The departure or unexpected long-term absence of a company principal or a fee earner.

Clearly, each of these scenarios requires a different set of responses, both in terms of incident handling and recovery. But whether your problem is the total relocation of your business, or simply finding someone capable of picking up the workload of a key partner for a few months, having a formal plan in place will help you move forward with the minimum of worry, disruption and delay.

It’s important to realise that planning does not have to be complicated, in many cases it can be extremely simple. For any prudent business, however, some level of preparedness must be a primary prerequisite.

In the next issue of FD Legal, I will explain exactly how a business continuity plan is formulated, and how it could save your reputation or business in the event of disaster.

In the meantime, I hope you will take a little time to review your firm's current procedures and those of your key suppliers and ask yourself – if the worst happened, and disaster struck, would you be able to survive?

Kim Jenkins is the director of Continuum Consulting and specialises in business continuity management and related corporate-risk issues, with specific experience within the legal sector. She can be contacted at kim@lighten-up.co.uk