I was pleased to run a 2 day module on Managing Legal Risk for IEMBA students at ZHAW in Winterthur last year and look forward to repeating it this year.

I have long felt that it is a shame that many MBA students can emerge without an understanding of how to deal with the legal dimension or how to engage with lawyers to navigate the perils of legal risk.

This does not mean treating them as law students. I realised a long time ago that the worst way to explain the legal dimension to business people is to replicate how law students are taught. It is about looking at the big picture of relationships which give rise to legal risk and exploring how they can best be managed .

Business schools owe it to their students (and to lawyers) to reduce the dispiriting impact of a business person being told by a lawyer that their bright idea is flawed legally or that the route to implement it is strewn with legal issues.