Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series - The Invisible Asset: How the Rule of Law Drives Ethical Corporate Value

Legal knowledge is the last great source of untapped competitive advantage in organisations. Legal knowledge not only protects firm value, it is also a source of business strategy. This presentation will outline five pathways of legal strategy that managers typically pursue when responding to their legal environment. While some of these pathways generate limited benefit, others enable the firm to generate a competitive advantage from legal knowledge and transform the organization’s culture toward its legal and compliance obligations. After exploring these five pathways, this paper examines how organisations can elevate the quality of their legal knowledge from one pathway to the next. Cultivating a valuable culture of legal knowledge does not happen overnight, and this presentation highlights the steps needed for a firm to achieve its legally strategic goals. This presentation is based on Robert’s book Legal Knowledge in Organisations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage, recently published with Cambridge University Press.