Where 2022 is Headed

Clients –

As Stall Legal enters its second full year of operation, the Stall Legal Team and I cannot thank you enough for your interest and support of our mission to provide high-quality, business- centric legal services in a cost-effective manner. While we have certainly experienced growing pains, we have all learned a great deal about being entrepreneurs and the positive feedback we have received from clients based on our counsel, and work product has been truly gratifying. Looking forward, we are excited to help you traverse the ever changing legal and business landscape.

With businesses attempting to stay ahead of the effects of the pandemic, supply chain challenges, and inflation, one of the questions that we frequently hear from existing and prospective clients is “What are you seeing out there?” Although each clients’ businesses is unique and their needs different, some of the issues we expect to be working with clients on in 2022 include –

Commercial Contracts

• The pandemic, supply chain issues and inflation are causing clients to actively review existing contracts and rethink terms offered and agreed to going forward. Specifically, clients are seeking to better address or allocate “risk” of delivery delays and increased costs. Boilerplate force majeure clauses are being revised to specify specific obligations that a supplier must take when disruptions occur. Similarly, companies are adopting “dynamic pricing” provisions, where the pricing automatically adjusts if the underlying costs move outside a pre-defined range or “collar.”

Risk Management

• With the increase in catastrophic weather events, cyber-attacks, and the risk of supply chain disruptions, clients are actively engaging leadership and management in Enterprise Risk Management exercises that take a deep dive into identifying, quantifying, and addressing hazard, financial, operational, and strategic risks.
• Property & casualty insurers are actively evaluating emerging risks, modifying policies and adjusting the coverages being offered. For example, the market for cyber-risk insurance has witnessed a significant reduction in insurers offering coverage, retention limits rising exponentially, policy limits dropping,  and premiums increasing significantly.

Employment Law and Employee Benefits

• A top priority for clients is attracting and retaining staff, and clients are looking to add new tools for retaining and attracting talent, including rethinking remote work policies, new micro-incentive programs, and workplace culture initiatives. 
• The overall interest in engaging fractional talent continues to grow rapidly as companies recognize they can obtain customized advice from experienced, fractional team members at significant lower costs than traditional providers.  
• With the COVID epidemic approaching its second anniversary, clients are also recognizing that companies’ policies and procedures need to be updated to reflect the remote working status of many employees, the client’s current “covid-adjusted” policies, and procedures as well as the significant changes in local, state and federal laws and regulations governing COVID related leave and vaccination.

Environment, Social & Corporate Governance (“ESG”)

• Investor and consumer interest in how companies are addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues continues to grow exponentially. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has significantly increased  public company disclosure requirements regarding ESG related matters. In anticipation of evolving customer expectations and potential future regulation clients are evaluating their own “ESG status or state-of-affairs”, beginning to develop plans, and actively looking for ways to use ESG as a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

We are bullish on the opportunities that await our clients and Stall Legal in 2022, and we look forward to collaborating with clients to successfully develop and implement solutions which provide our clients with a competitive advantage.

Regards –

Mark Stall
Managing Partner