Focus on: beyond the law

The repercussions of the global earthquake caused by the issuance of the GDPR in 2016 are still yet to settle. It is continuously proving to be a chronic headache for in-house teams.

The foreshock was seen in everyone scrambling around trying to be GDPR compliant even for those who are outside the scope of application of the GDPR. At those times, in-house counsels were struggling to explain to their boards that the seismic wave would hit via local legislations soon but the epicentre of GDPR is Europe.

The mainshock came not long after, as many jurisdictions followed suit and issued similar jurisdictions without enough study or preparation. The magnitude of such pieces of legislation and the implication on daily business posed a unique challenge for in-house counsel, specifically those with a role spanning several jurisdictions. I personally believe that many countries, in our area, enacted data protection laws to obtain an adequacy decision by the EU and thus maintain a competitive position when it comes to attracting big data companies and RHQs of big MNCs. Unfortunately, some of these countries did not bother to work out an effective plan to manage data transfers of these big data companies or those RHQs they worked so hard to attract, thus defeating the purpose of the enactment of the law in the first place and effectively putting in-house counsels in a catch 22 situation.

The fault line, promising more earthquakes, for in-house counsel comes from within, as most of these laws impose hefty fines for non-compliance while the budgets allocated for data protection are extremely limited.

The aftershock will come when governments start realizing what those laws are: Goldmines. With governments scrambling to address budget deficits and when imposing new tax is no longer an option, and with most companies not even understanding the implications of the data protection laws, the penalties are being brewed under the surface waiting for the volcanic eruption: the big collection day. Accordingly, I do recommend you go knocking on your board’s door for that budget increase and use it to protect your house against these seismic events and do not wait for the volcano to erupt, it would be too late by then.