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The most impactful legal expert at a large or publicly traded firm is referred to as the chief legal officer, or CLO. He or she acts at all times with a view to minimising legal risk within their organisation, by keeping its board of directors and other senior executives fully versed on any pressing legal and/or regulatory issues.

By Charles Edelstein of Executive Placements.

When being hired into a CLO job in South Africa, there are several key duties and/or responsibilities to which you will need to attend. These are:

• protecting the company by drawing up a corporate legal strategy;
• overseeing internal auditing and corporate compliance matters, alongside the compliance officer;
• delivering legal services and resources company-wide, where these are needed;
• advising all the other senior corporate officers, particularly the CEO, on legal matters, as this is required;
• assisting to draw up general management policies within the company, together with the executive management team;
• managing the legal department of the firm, and any external counsel with which it has dealings;
  and
• keeping the media, various authorities, and the surrounding community abreast of the extent to which your company activities are above board (which often involves making a statement to, or approving a press release for, your company’s marketing department).

When The Juggling Is Real

Described by global corporate consulting firm Deloitte as “complex and demanding”, this is also a position where it is necessary to move seamlessly and with mastery between what they describe as “four faces”, masks, or hats.

When donning your strategist hat, you will be required to bring clear legal strategy to the table, such that it guides your senior executive team on the legal matters they need to navigate – while striving to achieve incremental business growth. Their trust in your abilities is critical, especially when the regulatory environment changes and you need to steer them through these changes before traditional business matters can be handled.

When wearing your catalyst mask, you will need to bring a legal telescope to the executive team’s decision-making process. This approach will help them to select a legally viable path forward; especially when they are in dispute. This stance is all about ensuring that you lead as you would hope others would follow – i.e. in a just and compliant manner. You can bring about much-needed change when wearing this mask, if you point to what pleases customers, adds value, and works in tandem with company values.

Then there’s the guardian face, in which you will point to legal and regulatory matters throughout high-level discussions, to ensure that your firm is able to mitigate risk at all times. Never underestimate the importance of this “face”, which is often mentioned in CLO interviews as being foundational to your future work. When operating under this hat, you will need to identify anything which could cause brand or reputational risk; and advise on ways to avoid this by employing your high-level knowledge of governance and corporate integrity.

Last up, is your operator hat – the one you will wear during your day-to-day initiatives for the firm. As an operator, you will need to run the legal department, hire the right talent and keep service levels high, while also managing costs (by negotiating on fees with external counsel). Under this hat, you should ask yourself questions such as: Do I have a viable succession plan in place? Am I happy with the key performance indicators we are using to measure the work of our external counsel? Is the technology we have in place streamlining all our legal department work? If not, a meeting should be set up with the chief technology officer (CTO) to unpack this.

The research carried out by Deloitte reveals that most CEOs and their boards are keen for their newly hired CLOs to focus on the catalyst and strategist “faces” (60 to 70 percent of their time); while the balance of their time should be spent in the guardian and operator categories (30 to 40 percent). However, the reality often means that they need to focus on the guardian and operator hats for some time, until things are running as desired. If it’s any consolation: senior CLOs often battle to synchronise their time allocation to meet the expectations of their CEO, and company board.

It goes without saying, then, that to thrive in this demanding executive job in South Africa, you will need to be persuasive; an excellent leader of people, and manager of time and budgets; and know the business environment in which you are positioned like the back of your hand. You will also have to transition, with skill and grace, between the four hats or faces mentioned above, as your influence within the company grows and solidifies.

How The Law Differs From Place To Place

An interesting read about the way in which the law differs from one nation to another, and the reasons why, can be read here. There are, for example, legal systems built on civil law, those built on common law, and others built on the religion of a region.

The authors advocate: “The legal systems of all countries, whether English speaking and Western or based on ancient religious laws, are determined by a combination of history, culture, and politics. Since no culture is set in stone, no country’s legal system is incapable of adapting to changes in political or cultural circumstances, or trends that affect the existing legal system and require change. As technology allows the world to become increasingly global, an interesting question is emerging regarding the nature of dispute resolution in the future. Will disputes be settled in a civil law system or a common law system? Currently, the European Union and the United Nations are working towards an international legal system, that bridges the gap between nations for international dispute resolution.”

This international legal system, once fully developed and agreed upon, should make practising law across nations and territories so much more seamless.

Reputation Matters is an excellent partner for the CLO, working tirelessly alongside these C-suite executives to ensure that their corporate activities remain above board at all times, and that their reputation in their specific industry is a sterling one.

Artificial Intelligence is not going to go away. How do you navigate through it and manage your reputation? Listen to Benito Vergotine and Regine le Roux’s chat on the subject.

Listen to the conversation here.

Adhering to ethical standards remains essential for the best practices in public relations and communication. All members of APRA and PRCA are required to follow the APRA Code of Conduct and PRCA Professional Charter and Codes of Conduct, respectively, and are accountable for doing so.

The African Public Relations Association (APRA) and Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) have jointly released their report on the state of ethics and public relations industry in Africa for 2023. The report is based on a survey conducted across 21 African countries with 274 respondents.

The report highlights a shift in priorities for PR activities in the past two years, with crisis management (44%) taking over from digital and social media (40%) as the highest priority. Reputation management (42%) is also considered to be a high priority. Ethics management (16%), sales promotion (14%), and event planning (14%) have decreased in importance due to the impact of COVID-19 and the shift towards digitisation.

The joint research also found that training and development in communication strategy development (59%), reputation management (51%), crisis management (42%), and ethics management (41%) are highly recommended in the region. Respondents also expressed a strong interest in training sessions on the metaverse, highlighting the importance of keeping up with contemporary matters such as artificial intelligence.

Other key findings:

• Most respondents work within an organisation that has between two to five employees (17%), followed by 11 to 15 people (15%).
• Communications strategy development (61%) is the most common response for the main function of PR practitioners’ roles.
• Crisis management has taken over from digital and social media as the highest priority, with a 10% decrease compared to last year.
• Ethics management, sales promotion, and events planning have decreased in importance.
• Flexible working and remote working are valued only 14% and 10% of the time, respectively.
• 46% of respondents reported working in a hybrid model, 34% are in the office full time, while 17% are fully remote.

Reputation Matters Managing Director Regine le Roux said:

“Prioritising ethics is crucial within the public relations landscape, more so than ever before on our continent. At Reputation Matters we believe that research is the springboard to success, and with this collaboration, the insights will help to build and strengthen the industry to help build individual, organisational, and country reputations. We are thrilled to play a part in quantifying value across the continent.”

Reputation management is all about building and fostering relationships. When it comes to growing your business and reputation, one of the easiest things to do is to build closer relationships with your key stakeholders. However, all too often, organisations find themselves tripped up by a poorly managed database.

Take a moment to reflect: if you had to share urgent news with your closest alliances – employees, customers, the media, and suppliers – in response to a crisis, how confident are you in the state of your database?

Is it easy to access?

Is it up to date?

Does it include specific and correct information for each individual, rather than generic email addresses like info@… or helpdesk@… that are likely to be routed to a bot?

Consider this: do you know the best communication channels for reaching each of your stakeholders? Is it email, WhatsApp, or a phone call? If it’s the latter, do you have the correct contact numbers saved, so you can quickly send out multiple WhatsApp messages?

Failing to communicate quickly enough, especially during a crisis, to the right people can have a massive reputational risk for you and your business. Your database shouldn’t only become a priority when a crisis occurs. Frantically searching for key contact details during a crisis can be disastrous and costly.

It’s crucial to make time to declutter and organize your databases. Neglecting your database and engaging with the wrong people will waste a significant amount of your precious time. Moreover, engaging with the wrong people can also pose a reputational risk. Every individual on your database should have provided their consent according to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Additionally, they should be given a way to opt out of future communication. This can all be easily implemented with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

If you currently don’t use a CRM, consider investing in one. Business is all about forming relationships, and keeping track of these relationships is key to building your business. Personally,

As mentioned earlier, avoid using generic email addresses. Personalizing communication can make a big difference compared to receiving a generic ‘Good day’ email. Make sure that names and surnames are spelled correctly. Nothing is as irksome as receiving correspondence with your name spelled incorrectly. It might also be beneficial to keep a record of stakeholders’ birthdays, as this could serve as a good touchpoint to reach out and connect during the year.

Databases are particularly crucial when conducting research. Having up-to-date databases can greatly impact the success of your project, the quality of the data, and the turnaround times. If you have an up-to-date database that you frequently engage with, stakeholders will be more likely to provide you with reliable feedback. At Reputation Matters, our core business is quantifying value – whether it’s reputation, internal climate, or brand identity – for our clients. A big stumbling block that causes the most delays in getting a research project completed isn’t the questionnaire, data analysis or reporting, the biggest delays are usually caused by poorly set up and maintained databases. A lot of time gets wasted fixing databases. It’s quite frustrating for all parties, when you are keen to get the results in, just to put the whole project on hold to update the database with the correct format and contact information, something that could have been avoided if regular updates of the databases were done.

For more information on managing your reputation, please contact research@reputationmatters.co.za, visit our website at www.reputationmatters.co.za, or give us a call at 021 790 0208.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), what a complex and often controversial topic! I must confess, I’ve always been cautious about embracing new trends and technologies. Whenever I heard the words AI or ChatGPT, I tended to shy away. In my mind, I have convinced myself that it was a distant problem that might eventually fade away. I believed it wasn’t relevant to me. But boy, was I wrong. Very wrong. AI is not going away, and it will undoubtedly have a profound impact on businesses, business owners, employees, and reputations.

The thought of it all is both daunting and mind-blowing; it’s truly astonishing! To dip my big toe into the AI pool, I recently started experimenting with it to save time on creating social media posts for my social impact project, Re.Bag.Re.Use. Here’s how it works: you simply type in your request, such as creating 30 TikTok captions, and then choose the “voice” you want, whether it be that of a life hacker, salesperson, or journalist. A few seconds later, the tool generates 30 well-crafted social media posts complete with hashtags and emoticons. It’s incredible!

Time-saving: Undoubtedly, using an AI tool like ChatGPT will save you time. However, it’s important to note that it won’t do all the work for you magically. You still need to create the content; ChatGPT is simply a tool to refine your writing. You provide the inputs, and it helps you create better content based on your specific needs.

ChatGPT, as described on their website, is an advanced AI language model developed using AI technology. It is designed to generate conversational responses that mimic human-like conversations. In essence, it’s a tool that aids you in improving your language and communication skills. However, to get the most out of it, you need to be as specific as possible with your inputs, otherwise the tool will return generic feedback that you will most likely share with many other companies who ask Chat GPT the same questions.

Relationship building: When it comes to building your business and your reputation, relationships are key. Human interaction and relationship-building have never been more crucial, especially as AI gradually takes over our lives for convenience. Understanding the nuances and insights into what is important to your various stakeholders is vital. Without this understanding, you won’t be able to draft content that resonates with your audience.

Ethical referencing: I wholeheartedly understand the challenges that AI and ChatGPT present to academia. There’s even an “academic researcher” voice option, which can be quite overwhelming. I recently had a conversation with a colleague who is busy with her PhD and teaches at various tertiary institutions. I am grateful for how fortunate we are to have access to strong academic insights within our team. There are ongoing debates surrounding the use of AI and the best practices for referencing it. From a business perspective, referencing and giving credit where it’s due is non-negotiable when using specific sources, whether they are academic, business-related, or your own articles. Proper referencing is particularly important for academic writing. In the business world, the rules are slightly less strict. While you should still reference webpages, books, or articles when writing reports or media articles, tools like ChatGPT are more akin to Word, Excel, SurveyMonkey, or Grammarly. You don’t need to reference every single tool you used to write a document.

I believe there’s still much to unpack and develop regarding the ethical use of AI and ChatGPT in all industries. While some of us may be a little concerned about AI tools replacing our roles, we need to remember that personal relationship building is an exercise that AI is yet to replace. People want to do business with people that they share values and resonate with.

For more information on managing your reputation, visit www.reputationmatters.co.za or research@reputationmatters.co.za 021 790 0208