James Kerr, general counsel of Southern Co. Courtesy photo.

The most significant impact the #MeToo movement has had on Atlanta-based Southern Co. has been to inspire a broad dialogue throughout the gas and electric utility about workplace values, according to general counsel James Kerr.

“We are governed by the company's strong values statement,” said Kerr, who is also the company's chief compliance officer. “So we are not changing policies, but are changing the conversation. It has prompted an openness among leaderships and others … to fundamentally raise awareness around the importance of general issues of equality, diversity and inclusion, and around manifestations such as pay equity, harassment and the #MeToo movement.”

Kerr discussed the topic in relation to the latest general counsel survey from Consero Group, which presents executive conferences. Consero created the 2019 General Counsel Report from last year's general counsel forums with 73 chief legal officers from corporations with revenues at or above $500 million.

Kerr said he was a little surprised when 57 percent of his colleagues in the survey responded that the #MeToo movement has not impacted their workplace. Also somewhat surprising was that 54 percent said diversity is not a factor when considering hiring outside counsel. And 72 percent said they do not measure diversity as a function of their internal legal operations.

“The results were a little inconsistent with what I would have expected, but perhaps the answers were due to a narrow wording of the questions,” he suggested.

In other words, Kerr said such cultural issues might not have had concrete impact, such as being specifically addressed in a new workplace policy. “But I do believe these issues and similar issues are receiving much greater attention than one might be led to believe by the responses,” he explained.

He added, “Cultural issues like equality and fair treatment, and diversity and inclusion are increasingly relevant, especially given [environmental, social and governance] investor interest. Certainly at our company they are.”

A top priority for GCs in the survey, Kerr noted, involved privacy and cybersecurity. Nearly 40 percent of respondents cited that area as their biggest crisis management concern.

Nearly half indicated that their organizations had experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months.

Asked in the survey about the biggest data privacy challenge, the largest group—30 percent—cited not hackers, but regulatory changes relating to data privacy. Product liability issues were second, at 25 percent, while only 10 percent cited cyberattacks.

Some 77 percent of respondents said their companies were moderately to well prepared to deal with a cyberattack.

On another topic, some 60 percent of respondents said they have formalized legal operations functions.

The survey also showed a high percentage of survey participants, 75 percent, indicated that they do not have a formalized metrics reporting program that measures legal department value. Another 65 percent also stated that they don't leverage billing metrics for savings and improved relationships with outside counsel.

The report took a dim view of those responses. “In a corporate atmosphere where executives must demonstrate their business department's value while ensuring that they also function efficiently and effectively, general counsel would do well to focus on metrics and reporting in 2019,” it advised.

Kerr agreed with that recommendation. “I believe my organization needs to do better there, and it does not surprise me that other similar organizations also need to,” he said.

Kerr added, “I would be very careful about allowing metrics to become too significant, but there is an important place for them. In large organizations with large budgets, at scale metrics are extremely important to make sure you are managing the cost, execution and quality of the organization.”