Ten Things: Protecting Your Board of Directors

At the end of every blog, I always ask my readers to please let me know if they have any topics they would like me to write about.  While I don’t get a huge number of “requests,” I do get some – though I am still trying to figure out what to do with “My boss is an a$%#^le, what do I do?”  I did, however, recently get a reader request that I thought would be a good topic to cover this week.  If you work for a company of any material size, there is likely a Board of Directors.  For smaller, family-run companies, this usually means a Board comprised of several family members with very little risk of problems from outsiders.  But, as the company gets bigger, and especially if the company is publicly traded, the risk of problems grows quickly.  As in-house counsel one of your main tasks is to protect the Board of Directors from going down the wrong path or setting themselves up for potential exposure from lawsuits or regulatory sanctions.  This edition of “Ten Things” discusses some of the basic things you should be doing to help protect the Board, regardless of whether the company is public or private: