Legal registers are essential tools for businesses to manage compliance effectively. However, there are several misconceptions that can lead to improper use or avoidance of these powerful resources. In this article, we'll debunk 8 of the most common misconceptions about legal registers and clarify how they can truly benefit your compliance strategy. Let's dive right in!

Misconception 1: Legal registers are only for lawyers

Many compliance professionals feel overwhelmed by legal registers and assume that only legally trained individuals should manage legal obligations. They believe that a legal library is sufficient for lawyers to translate, simplify, and communicate these obligations to non-legal staff.

The truth:

A well-designed legal register can be a valuable tool for compliance professionals and other business personnel, not just lawyers. Modern legal platforms automate complex legal processes, providing clear answers in plain language. This allows compliance professionals to quickly find relevant information at the moment they need it. Moreover, if further clarification is required, knowledgeable legal experts are available to assist promptly.

Misconception 2: Training alone keeps employees updated on legal changes

Some believe that regular training sessions are enough to keep employees informed about the latest changes in legal provisions relevant to their roles and business units.

The truth:

Training schedules cannot keep pace with the frequency and complexity of changes in legal requirements. A centrally maintained, updated, and business-specific legal platform is essential for managing this ever-evolving landscape efficiently and cost-effectively.

Misconception 3: Legal audits are enough to educate employees

Legal audits/assessments/inspections can be used to keep employees up to date with the law.

The truth:

Legal audits typically happen once a year or once every two years, per business unit/site. The point of an audit is to assess compliance with the applicable legal provisions, not for the employees to learn about and be kept up to date with the law and the legal provisions that should have been complied with.

Misconception 4: Legal risks can be managed manually

It’s possible to link operational risk to legal risk by referencing legal provisions manually and then supplying access to the law arising in a legal library.

The truth:

This may be the biggest misconception. In effect linking each row to an Aspects and Impacts Register (AIR) or Hazards Identification Risk Assessment (HIRA) to the legal requirements, in a manual way, amounts to providing a legal answer to the complex legal question posed by each row. Unless this process is automated by an intelligent legal platform, the job is an almost impossible one to be undertaken in a time-based manner. Furthermore, this job will need to be repeated again and again due to the legal framework and operational activities at the company being updated on an ongoing basis.

Misconception 5: General compliance tools can replace a legal register

The utility achieved through a legal register can be replicated more cheaply in-house or by using other more general compliance systems/tools that may already by employed by the company.

The truth:

A legal register should automate the rules-based thinking that in-house legal personal do. The legal budget of organisations that use good legal registers will either be reduced, or the in-house legal teams can be freed up to focus on the interpretation of the relevant legal provisions and compliance strategy, rather than researching which provisions apply. General compliance systems/tools are not designed to be good legal registers and are seldom comprehensive or site-specific, especially in regard to all applicable legal provisions.

Misconception 6: Only focus on major legal provisions

Many of the legal provisions identified in a legal register are minor. Identifying everything is too overwhelming and confusing. It is better to only focus on the important things. A company should have a list of the main or most important acts – and focus on complying with those.

The truth: The law is binary

A company either complies with any given legal provision or it does not. It should not be comforting to believe that since a company complies with a list of legislation that it deems to be the most important, that it is therefore in a good position from a compliance perspective. In truth, many, if not most of the most important legal provisions, are contained in regulations. A company needs to see the full set of legal provisions applicable to each business unit/site in order to begin to decide how to rank its compliance priorities.

Misconception 7:

Focusing on site-specific applicability is overkill, it's perfectly acceptable to create a company wide list of applicable legal provisions.

The truth:

Due to operational and geographic differences, the legal provisions applicable to each site will vary. A one-size-fits-all approach can overwhelm users with irrelevant information, leading to confusion and non-compliance. A robust legal register should provide site-specific legal provisions and further filter them by topic or risk to ensure clarity and relevance.

Conclusion:

Legal registers are indispensable for any organization committed to compliance. Misconceptions about their complexity, relevance and utility can hinder their effective use. By understanding the true benefits of a well-designed, automated legal platform, businesses can streamline compliance management, reduce risks and empower their teams to navigate the legal landscape with confidence.

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