Trinidad and Tobago: The Last Word On Y2K

In my first article I identified several "hot" legal issues arising out of the use of information technology that are relevant to the business community on the brink of the 21st Century. However, because of the imminence of the Year 2000, my first focus has been on legal issues relating to the management of Y2K risks. Over the last three months I have emphasised:

• Y2K as a business issue, requiring the management of a wide range of commercial and legal risks;
• Senior management's responsibility to lead their company’s response to the Y2K challenge;
• The value of fostering a co-operative and problem-solving approach to Y2K with key business partners; and
• The critical need for contingency plans to address possible internal and external Y2K-related disruptions to your business.

It is in this context that the last eleven articles have examined the management of Y2K business risks, including such issues as:

• The legal duties imposed on directors and officers under the new Companies Act in relation to the management of Y2K risks;
• Shielding directors and officers from exposure to personal liabilities arising out of Y2K losses;
• Managing business and contractual relationships with key business partners, including customers and suppliers;
• Managing communications with third parties, including responses to Y2K questionnaire; and
• Reducing exposure to Y2K litigation, by creating a proper "paper trail" and utilising Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques.

Above all, I have emphasised the need for clear priorities. Our scarce resources (particularly time) must be focused on managing the mission-critical risks. I therefore suggested a starting point for your own definition of a "Y2K mission-critical failure". This definition may be adapted and used to bring focus to your continuing efforts to tackle Y2K issues in this final stage of the countdown to the Year 2000.

Since each business is different, management must assess and come to grips with all areas of exposure and set its own priorities. Various suggestions for managing Y2K risks must be examined in this light. At this stage, very few companies will be able to devote scarce time to all of the matters addressed in this series of articles. However, each area should at least be considered and given such attention as is warranted by management's assessment of its own business priorities.

I invite managers to consider these articles not as a roadmap to Y2K legal issues but rather as a menu from which they can select those issues that require priority attention in the context of their particular business environment. As they do so, they may want to refer to those articles that reference their own priority areas. To facilitate this, all of these Y2K articles have now been made available on the Internet at www.trinidadlaw.com.

Additionally, I have included links at www.trinidadlaw.com to a small selection of my favourite Y2K websites. Because much of the Y2K material available elsewhere on the Web is targeted at a US audience, in doing so, I have selected websites that primarily provide a legal or Commonwealth perspective on these issues.

I firmly believe that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" when it comes to managing all types of legal risk. This is certainly so in relation to Y2K. I hope that these articles (and the other Y2K materials made available at www.trinidadlaw.com) will contribute in some small way to the Trinidad & Tobago business community’s efforts to prepare for the transition into the Year 2000.

Companies that successfully meet the Y2K challenge will have turned adversity to advantage. They will have demonstrated business leadership. They will have honed their project management skills. They will have developed contingency plans to ensure business continuity and mitigate losses in a variety of scenarios that will remain relevant long after the transition into the Year 2000. And they will have cemented their relationships with key business partners by adopting a co-operative approach to a most thorny business issue. These companies are therefore likely to be among those that are best equipped to exploit the exciting new business opportunities of the 21^st Century.

In the rest of this series we turn our attention to several of the other "hot" legal issues that management must come to terms with as we prepare to engage in e-commerce and to compete in a global and virtual marketplace. These include:

• Protecting your business' valuable digital assets and intellectual property;
• Protecting domain names to allow potential business partners to locate your business on the Internet;
• Protecting new methods of doing business via the Internet;
• Managing the risk of being sued in a US court on the basis of your website being accessible within the US;
• Developing Internet Use Policies that adequately protect your business but at the same time leave sufficient flexibility to encourage the creativity of today's "knowledge worker";
• Managing risks relating to the authentication and proof of transactions entered into over the Internet; and
• Managing risks relating to payments over the Internet, including exposure to fraudulent activities.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.