E-commerce is forcing lawyers to adopt an unnerving approach to risk management, according to last week's Martindale-Hubbell Counsel-to-Counsel Forum.

The forum was attended by 15 senior counsel from companies as diverse as Egg, Marconi and Balfour Beatty.

The lawyers were concerned that they were having to triage work on the basis of risk. The speed with which e-commerce moves means there are too many projects for counsel to consider all of them fully. The projects are also so radical that counsel are not sure they are even asking the right questions.

Because of this, ventures are assessed as high-, medium- or low-risk and time is spent on them accordingly. That inevitably means mistakes can be made - although in the virtual world, mistakes can be rapidly rectified.

The forum, entitled "Launching New Technologies and E-Services: The Changing Role of Legal Counsel", is one of a series on e-commerce.