What is legal and business risk management?  What areas of your company and its operations expose you to the greatest risks?  Are there steps you can take to reduce your exposure to risk, as well as mitigate or remediate any risks that arise during the course of conducting your business?

The Watkins Firm provides extensive risk management, assessment and mitigation services here in San Diego and across California.  The central element of business is risk itself.  Without risk, the return on our investments and efforts would be minimal.  However, there are prudent risks, manageable risks, unforeseeable risks, and risks associated with every aspect of your company and its operations, from sales to service, from employees to management, from products and intellectual property to contracts and trade secret policies.

How can the Watkins Firm help your company with legal and business risk management?  Our firm has served the business, science and tech, real estate and medical / healthcare communities here in San Diego and across California for more than 40 years.  Each industry has its own unique aspects of risk and exposure.  Our medical practice and healthcare industry clients face a host of risks from HIPPA compliance to HITECH and Stark Law regulations.  California’s medical community faces substantial regulatory compliance requirements and constant risks associated with the management and protection of patient data as well as breaches and violations of established protocols, regulations and even laws.

California employers embody the element of risk.  Our state is the most challenging environment for any employer, no matter how small or large.  Employers face heavy winds associated with reporting requirements, Federal FMLA, EEOC and ADA regulations, as well as aggressive wage and hour and California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) lawsuits from plaintiffs attorneys heavily advertising for employees with a complaint about their employer an plaintiffs attorney can leverage into a lawsuit or PAGA action.  The Watkins Firm will review all existing employment contracts and documents including your policies and procedures and the employee handbook to help reduce, mitgate or outright remediate the exposures and risks you face as an employer.

Pro-Tip: “Well, according to the laws for decades, business entities are like separate legal entities from yourself. They’re actually something that you can turn into a very powerful and valuable asset just by creating it as a business. The biggest example is if you are Joe’s Pizza, then you’re just Joe and you have a pizza place. But if you have an Empire of Joe’s Pizzas all over the country, then your name is branded, then your entity has value, you can borrow against it. You can go to banks, you can go to investors. It becomes a very valuable and important tool. Probably the most important and most neglected tool that a business owner or a business formation person will go into. So when you think of your business, you create an entity and you create value for yourself and you create protection for yourself.

Risk assessment and management helps to protect that business entity, that separate “person” (as it was described recently by the Supreme Court).  This is all about maintaining your corporation in a legal and proper fashion, such that you’re in compliance with all the laws of the state of California, so that you may be respected in your corporate form as a separate legal entity. It’s about fairness, it’s about preventing fraud, it’s about doing business in a proper manner, which doesn’t rip off customers, doesn’t damage employees, vendors or lenders. If you maintain your corporation in a proper fashion and mitigate risk, keep your minutes, keep your statement of information with the Secretary of State filed, have your meetings and maintain proper records and do business separately, then you should have benefits.

You should have tax benefits, you should have investor benefits. You should have benefits of when you want to sell your company. You will make every step of business easier to take, while reducing associated risk.  Business is all about taking risks, prudent risks.  It’s also about preventing unnecessary risk and managing risk.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Are you searching for an experienced San Diego business attorney and risk assessment team?  How can our 40+ years of experience help you to implement legal and business risk management? We invite you to review our podcast Episode 10 – The Importance of a Strong Corporate Attorney as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.