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The March 9, 2020, issue of Bloomberg Businessweek contains a practical strategic checklist to "make your company disaster-proof-ish."

The nine steps listed in the article apply with full force to law firms -- especially small and midsize ones. It should be required reading for every law firm managing partner.

  Bloomberg Businessweek structures its checklist into three categories, each with three important action items:

the easy stuff:

  • Know the basics: emergency response and safety; crisis management and communications; IT recovery; and business continuity.
  • Establish a "war room," with off-site and on-line options.
  • Update your HR guidelines, especially with respect to communicable diseases.

the medium-hard stuff:

  • Identify critical operations.
  • Assemble skeleton staffs.
  • Consider a digital supply network.

the hard stuff:

  • Work the connections with companies that you rely on.
  • Defuse the supply chain time bomb.
  • Think creatively.

These nine steps are expressed and discussed in an "industrial" or "retail" context, but, when one thinks about them, they apply to law firms as well, which usually have a much lower tolerance for a failure to anticipate and respond to risk.

Click here to read more at the Bloomberg.com website.

For more information about how Walker Clark can help your firm do all these things, contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Norman Clark