Risk evaluation

Analysis of legal risk during the assessment process gives us a better understanding of the likelihood and consequences of an event. The question now is what to do about the risk. The decision-making face of the risk assessment process is called risk evaluation.

It's important to note that the risk analysis step probably does not resolve all of our uncertainty. In fact, the analysis may show that there is a high degree of uncertainty no matter how much analysis we are able to perform.

In many cases, the analysis step will resolve much of the uncertainty.

During the risk evaluation phase we make a decision about what to do with the risk. There are broadly speaking five types of decisions we can make:

• Do nothing,
• Consider risk of treatment options,
• Do more analysis of the risk,
• Rely on existing risk controls, or
• Reconsider the objectives.

In the risk treatment section we will consider some example responses.