Ben
Johnson

CONSULTANT

Since I qualified as a solicitor in 1998, I have spent over 25 years as a partner in a number of top 100 regional, national and international law firms. Initially working as a corporate finance lawyer for both public company and private equity clients. In 2008 (as the regulatory focus on law firms intensified) I became Head of Best Practice & Risk guiding my firm through the first transition to the SRA's new outcome focussed regulation and being appointed the first Compliance Officer for Legal Practice.

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The Best Practice & Risk role, naturally, encompassed compliance & quality but also had management responsibility for knowledge management and learning & development.

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The combined roles affirmed my belief that strong knowledge management and learning in law firms is one of the biggest assets in controlling several professional and regulatory risks.

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My 14 years working in Best Practice & Risk exposed me to a number of systems developments and projects. The key projects being

• Selection (as a client of 3Kites) and implementation of a bespoke matter management system with enhanced integration capabilities and applications outside the legal practice areas including:

        o Client & Matter Inception​

        o Conflict checking

        o Milestones & critical date

• Legal process review (also with 3Kites) and implementation of various outcomes

• Implementing new house styles and templates for precedents and other knowhow sources using Document Excellence Group conventions

• Overhaul and re-certification of my firm's quality management system to ISO9001

• Attaining certification of the firm's information security management system to ISO27001

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The key lesson I have learnt is the importance that compliance requirements for a law firm (particularly KYC/AML) are tailored to 'living' risk assessments. Getting the right balance between prescriptive rules and valued risk-based judgements is very hard but is essential to encourage correct use of the processes and reduce compliance friction.

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I am very excited to be a part of 3Kites having worked with them extensively on projects over several years.