ONE-DAY CONFERENCE | 18 APRIL 2013 | LONDON

re nd fo a be ry 9 k ru a 1 4 oo b B Fe e th av 15 s

presents the 3rd

COLP & COFA

conference 2013
SPONSORED BY

Arm yourself against the personal and business risks that you are exposed to in your new role
A highly practical one-day intensive conference:
Get the latest guidance from the SRA and The Law Society, who made key announcements at both of our previous events Bring hypothetical breach scenarios with you and receive personal advice from your keynote speakers during our extended Q&A Benefit from a heavyweight speaker panel, featuring Risk Directors from many of the UKs largest law firms Know how to identify a material breach attend our practical workshop to benchmark your response to case scenarios Decide when you should report a breach, and when you shouldnt Get support from others performing the same role Determine whether you have sufficient budget and resources for your role Put effective compliance systems, controls and training in place Identify and mitigate risks arising from your international networks
Expert contributions and strategic insights from:

+44 (0)20 7549 2535 events@ark-group.com www.ark-group.com Or see back page for mailing details

A word from our chair...

The COLP and COFA nominations have now been approved and this conference will provide valuable insights and practical advice from both the regulators and leading practitioners in the professional practices sector, and is an opportunity for COLPs and COFAs to build a network of their counterparts in other firms.

Rachel Khiara, Partner, Khiara Law

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MORE INFO

WHY THIS EVENT?

these. This will present you with an ideal opportunity to sense-check your instincts and initial reactions against those of other COLPS and COFAs.

Your appointment as the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (COLP) or Compliance Officer for Financial Administration (COFA) has been approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and you have laid down careful preparations for your role and read through all of the regulators guidance notes so that you are ready to hit the ground running. But with any new role, there are bound to be practical issues that will only bring themselves to the fore once you have begun the role in earnest. Are you sure about what constitutes a material breach and what doesnt? Do you know what to report and when? What happens when you disagree with senior management? Do you have enough budget and enough resources to perform your job effectively? Any role within compliance or enforcement in a law firm is likely to be a lonely one at times, especially with fee earners having financial incentive to ignore due diligence during undeniably difficult market conditions.

You are in safe hands

Managing Partner has established itself as a leading provider of COLP and COFA learning and networking events. Our first two conferences were attended by in excess of 80 senior delegates representing the top 100 law firms and were selected by both the SRA and The Law Society as the perfect forums within which to reveal key industry announcements, which were later widely reported by the legal press. Our 3rd event will maintain this reputation and we are delighted to welcome back keynote speakers from the SRA and The Law Society once again to let you into the latest thinking from the perspective of both your regulator, and your representative body. The keynote from the SRA will be particularly well-timed, with the regulator having announced (at Managing Partners annual Risk Management for Law Firms conference) in December 2012 that it plans to decide upon the detail of the annual reporting requirements for the COLP and COFA roles during early 2013, and also to consult with the profession on international responsibilities between January and March 2013.

Dont feel that you are alone

Yet, you dont have to feel unsupported. Managing Partner brings you its incredibly practical 3rd COLP & COFA conference, appropriately timed for a few months following the start of COLP and COFA implementation, to give you the opportunity to come together to discuss the practical issues that you find yourselves actually facing in your new roles, with the overall strategic aim of keeping your firms out of trouble with the regulator.

The international dimension

Following the last two conferences it has become clear that more and more law firms are opening foreign offices or working with foreign clients and that there is no clear consensus as to how to interpret the SRAs regulatory guidance for these overseas territories. For this reason, our 3rd COLP & COFA conference features a specific panel session focused on identifying and mitigating international risk. Hear senior risk managers from major international firms, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and Berwin Leighton Paisner explain how they monitor risks arising in their extended overseas networks to safeguard your own firm against international risk when you return to the office. Having taken on the COLP or COFA role in a law firm, you have assumed a large amount of personal responsibility on behalf of your firm, and you may not always have the support of your partners. Attend Managing Partners 3rd COLP & COFA conference to insure yourself against the risks that your new role necessarily exposes you to. Leave at the end of the day armed with practical peer-level guidance; updated regulatory guidance and a business card holder full of numbers that you can call upon if you find that you are faced with a challenging breach situation in your firm.

More senior practitioners

Now that the COLP and COFA roles are in place, our speaker panel has been developed to include even more Directors and Heads of Risk Management from large to medium UK law firms, who will reveal to you their insights into the roles and responsibilities of the COLP and COFA from their individual perspectives.

More practical, interactive sessions

Based on feedback from our 2012 events, the conference format has been re-worked to include a greater number of discussion panels, giving you the opportunity to hear from more experts at once and to share your own thoughts and questions from the floor, as you work your way through the implementation hotspots together.

Awareness of best practice and the issues being addressed by practitioners. Mark Coker, Vinson & Elkins

We understand that the identification of material breaches remains one of the biggest unresolved issues for many of those taking up the COLP and COFA roles. So we are delighted to include, for the first time, a practical workshop session run by two senior risk practitioners which will explore, through a series of case scenarios, the key trigger points for reporting

CPD information
Attendance at this conference qualifies for 5 hours, 30 minutes (COLP) and 6 hours (COFA) of SRA accredited CPD (at intermediate/advanced level). To claim your hours, quote provider code: EEW/ARCL.

| TEL +44 (0)20 7549 2535 | E-MAIL events@ark-group.com

Past event feedback

Who should attend?

This conference is aimed at those who have taken on the COLP and COFA roles within law firms. It will also be suitable for COLPs and COFAs those who do not hold the official title but who are effectively responsible for maintaining ethical and financial standards within their firms.

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AGENDA
09:00 09:30 09:40 Registration and refreshments

THURSDAY 18 APRIL 2013

13:50 Building your role, your team and the resources you need to do the job Building your risk register Establishing clear, reporting lines Are people willing to go to you as the COLP/COFA? Do you need a deputy in place? Can your deputy report directly? Ensuring good communication between the COLP and COFA Panelists include: Bill Richards, Consultant: Compliance and Professional Standards, Lawrence Graham Chris Bull, Principal, Edge International Juliet Tainui-Hernandez, Director of Risk, Addleshaw Goddard Developing effective compliance training for fee earners to reduce the number of breaches you need to report Your new procedures may be impressive on paper but it is likely that very few of your people know much about the SRAs requirements. By building awareness you can improve compliance and reduce the number of breaches you need to report. This session will focus on matters such as: Establishing culture change, bringing everybody in Key compliance messages Devising internal incentives and/or penalties Responding to patterns of non-compliance Positive or negative reporting? Tim Prior, Independent consultant Afternoon coffee break INTERNATIONAL | Identifying the risks arising out of your foreign offices and networks Responding to the SRAs latest guidance on international affairs Adhering to outcomes-focused regulation (OFR) principles in your foreign jurisdictions Keeping alert to new and emerging risks in your foreign network What do you need to bear in mind when working with overseas clients? Panelists include: Moderator: Rachel Khiara, Partner, Khiara Law Nicole Bigby, Partner Director of Risk, Berwin Leighton Paisner Sonya Foulds, Head of Regulatory, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Andrew Cheung, Director of Compliance, Dentons Chairs summary remarks for COLPs & COFAs FOCUS ON THE COFA COFA SPECIAL FOCUS SESSION Understanding the relationship between OFR and the Solicitors Accounts Rules Monitoring the number of material and non-material breaches Identifying patterns of trivial non-compliance to develop training solutions Anticipating a new role for auditors Reporting to the SRA annually what should be in the annual report; when? Seizing the opportunity to encourage fee earner compliance Panelists include: Moderator: Chris Bull, Principal, Edge International Tracey Calvert, Director, Oakalls Consultancy Nick Lakhani, Finance Director, asb law Glyn Morris, Finance Director, Higgs & Sons Close of conference

Chairs opening remarks Rachel Khiara, Partner, Khiara Law UPDATED REGULATORY GUIDANCE KEYNOTE | Supporting risk-based and firm-wide compliance: A view from the Solicitors Regulation Authority Samantha Barrass, Executive Director Supervision, Risk, Education and Training and International Affairs, Solicitors Regulation Authority KEYNOTE | The new regime: Raising standards Pearl Moses, Practice Lead Consultant: Risk and Compliance, The Law Society

10:10

14:30

10:40

EXTENDED KEYNOTE Q&A Participants are invited to bring with them... 1. Scenarios that they have encountered in their firms or 2. Hypothetical situations that they are uncertain about ...in order to find out from Samantha Barrass and Pearl Moses how these incidents should be tackled, whether or not they should be reported and if so, when. 11:00 11:30 Morning coffee break 15:10 PRACTICAL IN-ROLE GUIDANCE 15:40 PRACTICAL WORKSHOP | Identifying material and immediately reportable breaches Participants will be presented with a number of different breach scenarios and will have the opportunity to discuss these on their tables in relation to the guidance on material breaches and criteria issued by the SRA. Delegates will then have the opportunity to feed their answers back to the workshop facilitator as part of a floor discussion concerning these cases. Additionally this session will look at questions such as: Is an issue with a supervision failure at heart necessarily a material breach? Given the personal obligation for individuals to report to the SRA, can you have a reporting policy that requires staff to report internally first? How do you manage reporting allegations of discrimination, harassment or bullying? Is it different if these are made against a Partner or senior manager? When do you get to a systemic failure? When you report to the SRA what do you report and what do you hold back can and when does privilege operate? Co-facilitators: Andrew Cheung, Director of Compliance, Dentons and Annette Fritze-Shanks, Head of Risk Management, Taylor Wessing Knowing when to report a breach You have established that you may have a material breach on your hands and you know that the SRA advice is that you should report it to them as soon as practicable but what about the internal considerations? Sources of information about incidents Systems and controls to support the COLPs monitoring obligations, including recording incidents and breaches Establishing whether or not you are dealing with a material breach Seeking internal and external advice Should you approach your Managing or Senior Partner (or the Firms Board) before you report? Avoiding internal strife e.g. arbitration what do you do if your firms management or others within the firm disagrees with you? Reputational issues Whistleblowing Robert Farrant, Head of Risk Management, Mills & Reeve Networking lunch break

16:20 16:30

12:10

17:00

12:50

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CONFERENCE 18 APR 2013 LONDON

COLP & COFA conference 2013

BOOKING REF: 1969-13

Book Your Place Now

One-day conference only 745+VAT
SPECIAL OFFER
Your firms COLP and COFA can both attend this event for the joint price of 1245+VAT (a saving of 245). Early booking disounts still apply.

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EARLY BOOKING DISCOUNTS

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