Table of Contents

Introduction
Part 1: The General Context
1: Why Legal Risk is Important: a Short History
2: Risk and Capital
3: Legal Risk in the London Market
4: The Global Context
5: The Law-maker, the Regulator and Current Preoccupations
Part 2: The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-9
6: Market and Regulatory Failure
7: The Initial Impact of the Crisis on the Financial Markets
8: Legal and Regulatory Responses to the Crisis in the UK
9: Response to the Crisis by the EU and Elsewhere
10: The Legal Risk Implications of the Crisis
Part 3: The Impact of Globalisation
11: Legal Risk in a Globalising Financial Market
12: Social Responsibility and Governance
13: The Role of International and Multilateral Institutions in Financial Law Reform
Part 4: Early Perceptions of Legal Risk
14: A Landmark Case and its Aftermath
15: A Case of Conceptual Impossibility
16: Settling Differences
Part 5: Characteristics of Legal Risk
17: Definition
18: Sources of Legal Risk
19: Causation
Part 6: Examples of Legal Risk
20: Property Interests in Indirectly Held Investment Securities
21: Vague Laws
22: Recharacterization
Part 7: Legal Risk Management
23: The Essentials of Legal Risk Management
24: Lawyers' Responsibility for the Management of Legal Risk
Part 8: Conclusions
25: A 'Risk-based Approach' to Law
Appendices

About the Author

Roger McCormick is a Senior Research Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science and acts as a consultant on legal risk and related issues. He is also the director of the LSE Law and Financial Markets Project and the Editor of the Law and Financial Markets Review. He is a former partner of a major international law firm and has practised law in the City of London (with a brief spell in Paris) for nearly 30 years.

Reviews

`Review from previous edition The first to wrestle legal risk to the floor, McCormick speaks in an eminently reassuring voice. Solicitors are problem solvers, and McCormick has engaged a (considerable) problem, observed its characteristics, mapped its watering holes, and made very sensible suggestions for keeping the beast at bay.'
Joanna Benjamin, Journal of International Banking Law and Regulation (JIBLR), 2007, issue 2
`The book enters a number of familiar doctrinal debates, including charge-backs, property interests in indirectly held securities, changes on book debts. The technical difficulty of these is so great, and the controversy surrounding them so intractable that, generally speaking, the more one reads, the more lost one becomes. McCormick's gift is...to see doctrine as a resource and not as a burden. He is able to pick out the few essential propositions, and
suggest a sensible way forward (saving all of us a lot of time).'
Joanna Benjamin, JIBLR, 2007, issue 2
`What it does do is provide a toolkit using which (sic) both lawyers and non-lawyers can begin to approach each other and to develop a mutual understanding.'
Simon Gleeson, JIBLR, 2006, issue 8
`Of the many admirable qualities of the book, perhaps the most admirable is its approach.'
Simon Gleeson, JIBLR, 2006, issue 8
`Roger McCormick's book provides an invaluable intellectual underpinning for that endeavour.'
Simon Gleeson, JIBLR, 2006, issue 8
`It is.... a book that every finance lawyer should read before starting his or her career." "This is an essential read for every banking and corporate lawyer and it is an absolute must for anyone involved in setting out rules or guidelines in the management of legal risk.'
William Johnston, IBA Legal Practice Division Newletter, Dec 2006
`An excellent and insightful examination of legal risk in financial markets written by an experienced senior practitioner in the field. This work is a major contribution to legal risk management, and full of sound and sensible advice. A pioneering and perceptive work. The second edition has illuminating chapters on the recent financial crisis and its implications for legal risks'
Philip Wood, Head, Allen & Overy Global Law Intelligence Unit
`This financial crisis highlights the importance of the work by McCormick, daring because not even the financial markets understand the legal risks involved, and few lawyers, if any, would really understand the complexity of all the financial products. The book is therefore useful to policymakers, lawyers, and finanacial actors, besides academics.'
Review of previous edition, Journal of Risk and Insurance