In mid-June, at a UPS customer center in the South of Market district in San Francisco, UPS employee Jimmy Lam, 38, opened fire on his colleagues, killing three people and injuring two others. San Francisco police responded to an 8:55 a.m. report of an active shooter. As they entered the building, Lam killed himself.

“When something terrible happens that involves the loss of life at a worksite, even if the manager is a decorated, former member of SEAL Team 6, all you can expect is [that they] work with emergency responders and coordinate with getting employees out,” said Fisher & Phillips partner Howard Mavity, co-chair of the firm's workplace safety and catastrophe management practice group. “But someone has to step in and basically take over every other aspect.”

Sometimes, that person is the general counsel. Crisis response managers and lawyers said legal departments play an important role in these situations. The legal department and the general counsel have to create a crisis plan, designate security leads, develop a communications plan, potentially interact with investigators and insurance companies and, through it all, be careful about litigation that could be filed years after.