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The bottom line is that IT professionals are spending much more time on legal issues (see Figure 3). And most of them are doing so with a combination of in-house and retained counsel (among large enterprises, 95% use a combination; among midsized firms, 85%), with the remainder using in-house counsel alone.
The CIO at a company that provides services to the superaffluent says his relationship with his internal legal team has gotten much closer. "They are no longer just a group I use to vet contracts. I have and want to maintain a very close relationship with these people, as I need advice on policies, compliance issues, security, document management/retention, open source," he says. And further, "I want them to be scanning the horizon for areas I should be aware of."
"General counsel reliance has gone from being occasional/ optional to [being] constant/essential," observes the CIO at a state agency.
A Shocking and Dangerous Degree of Legal Illiteracy
Yet while the impact of legal issues is expanding exponentially, legal literacy -- on the part of both the IT community and the business -- is not. There is more to know, and the penalties for not knowing or not complying are growing ever steeper. We asked Habitat respondents if they thought IT and business people knew enough about the law, and in both cases it was nearly unanimous that neither understands the legal domain.
"I do not feel the IT professional understands the new laws and how they affect the world we are working in," says the CIO at a midmarket medical device manufacturer. "The rules are changing on a day-to-day basis, and we do not see how they affect us as individuals or as managers."
Respondents agree that the oft-cited route out of this ignorance is training, though no one reports having a program under way to accomplish this. "We need to educate ourselves and our staff beyond the requirements for avoiding sexual harassment problems, hiring and firing, etc.," an entertainment CIO argues. "Our legal training needs to extend beyond personnel management considerations."
While acknowledging their own shortcomings, respondents also want the legal side to come to the table more informed about IT. "The ignorance of our profession within the legal world is astounding. Lawyers still don't get it; and whenever there is an issue, we spend countless hours prepping them on the issues at $500 an hour," complains the CIO at a midmarket investment banking firm.
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