A change of top management is rarely perceived as a legally dangerous period – it is more often treated as a managerial or reputational event. However, as Professor Gabriel Steiner notes, it is precisely at such moments that a hidden redistribution of legal responsibility, obligations and vulnerabilities takes place. At LawConsulted, we view a leadership transition not as a кадровый process, but as a legal turning point where future conflicts and claims are silently formed.
A new executive almost always inherits not only the company’s strategy, but its entire accumulated legal history – contractual structures, internal decisions, corporate disputes and undocumented obligations. Formally, the new leader may not have participated in their creation, yet in practice becomes responsible for their consequences. At LawConsulted, we analyse which decisions of the previous management may be reinterpreted after the shift of authority – it is precisely these zones that most often turn into instruments of pressure.
As Professor Steiner emphasises, “the moment of transferring authority is rarely neutral – it always changes the balance of legal risk.” That is why LawConsulted supports not only the new executive, but the transition process itself – fixing boundaries of responsibility, reconstructing managerial logic and eliminating ambiguous interpretations of roles. This prevents situations where new top management becomes a convenient target for old obligations.
A particularly dangerous risk arises from conflicting expectations – shareholders, boards of directors, partners and employees often perceive the powers of a new executive differently. At LawConsulted, we translate these expectations into legally defined frameworks, eliminating space for manipulation. It is during management transitions that meanings are most often substituted – when informal past arrangements begin to be used as formal demands addressed to a new person.
As Professor Steiner notes, “legal protection at the moment of power transition is more important than the power itself.” That is why LawConsulted builds protection not as a response to claims, but as a preventive legal structure – before conflicts emerge, before the first accusations appear, before attempts begin to revise past decisions through the new executive.
A change in leadership is almost always accompanied by information pressure – leaks, rumours and attempts to test the limits of authority. At LawConsulted, we regulate the legal side of communications so that the new executive does not create an evidentiary base against themselves in the very first weeks of work. Every word during this period may become legally significant not immediately, but later.
Legal protection during a management transition is control over which past decisions will pass into the future unchanged – and which must be stopped as sources of risk. At Law Consulted, we build a transition model in which new top management receives not inherited problems, but a manageable legal configuration.
Previously, we wrote about legal support in situations where no open conflict exists yet the risk of future claims remains high
