Your Legal Compliance Checklist for Year-End and Beyond

By Jamy Sullivan, JD, Executive Director, Legal Practice Group, Robert Half

As teams head into a busy close to the year, legal compliance is once again a top priority. Regulatory deadlines, reporting obligations and risk management initiatives all demand close attention. A comprehensive legal compliance checklist helps ensure your company is not only meeting current requirements but also anticipating changes on the horizon. From corporate governance and employment law to data privacy, cybersecurity and financial reporting, the regulatory landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace.

Staying compliant is no longer just about meeting today’s standards—it’s about anticipating tomorrow’s shifts. Proactive compliance planning not only can safeguard your organization and keep you audit-ready, but positions you to stay ahead of emerging risks and regulatory changes, protecting your reputation with regulators and stakeholders.

A Legal Compliance Checklist for Smart Businesses

Update corporate governance frameworks for compliance
Evaluate and refresh employment law compliance
Strengthen data privacy and cybersecurity measures
Tighten up tax compliance and financial reporting
Plan ahead for compliance workloads
Emerging areas in legal compliance: AI, data use and regulations

Update corporate governance frameworks for compliance

Corporate governance documents are the bedrock of legal and regulatory compliance. These crucial papers, like bylaws and shareholder agreements, spell out what shareholders, directors and officers can and must do. It's vital to review and update them regularly to stay in step with current business practices and legal requirements. Companies should take a close look at how they're structured for governance, including who's on the board and how decisions get made.

Why update these documents? Well, things change. Maybe a shareholder leaves, or it's time to plan for who will take over next. And when you must make changes to bylaws or articles of incorporation, make sure you follow the rules laid out in your existing documents.

Keeping these governance papers up-to-date helps businesses stay on the right side of regulations and laws and keeps potential risks at bay.

Evaluate and refresh employment law compliance

Employment law compliance is critical for businesses, as they need to follow federal, state and local rules that shape how they hire, pay and support employees. This covers everything from hiring and wages to working conditions and employee rights. Compliance isn’t just about avoiding fines—it's about creating a positive workplace culture and protecting both employee rights and the company’s good name.

Key areas to focus on: wage and hour rules, overtime pay, workplace health and safety standards, and anti-discrimination and harassment laws. Employers also need to know what’s required—and changing—when it comes to employee benefits. It's smart to regularly review your employment policies and procedures to make sure you're keeping up with evolving regulations.

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Strengthen data privacy and cybersecurity measures

Organizations should regularly update their processes to keep sensitive information safe from unauthorized access and breaches. Regular review of your policies for data classification, retention and disposal is imperative to align with regulatory requirements. This means using encryption for data that's stored and data that's sent, doing regular backups and having plans ready in case something goes wrong.

Companies should also focus on training employees to spot current cybersecurity threats, like phishing and ransomware attacks. Keep an eye on data privacy and security measures and audit them regularly to catch any unusual activities that might signal a breach. By making data protection and cybersecurity a priority, businesses can reduce risks, stay compliant with regulations and laws, and protect their reputation in an increasingly digital world.

Tighten up tax compliance and financial reporting

Tax compliance and financial reporting are perennial legal and regulatory obligations that vary based on whether a company is domestic, has global operations or is publicly or privately held. For example, businesses must keep accurate financial records and prepare GAAP/IFRS-aligned statements. Companies need to categorize transactions properly, tracking sales and value-added taxes based on customers’ location, and file all tax returns on time.

Maintaining detailed records of inventory and cost of goods sold is important for understanding profitability and managing cash flow. Strong internal controls help prevent mistakes and fraud for reliable financial information, minimizing penalties and scrutiny and strengthening stakeholder trust. Take this time of year to review and update accounting policies to stay compliant with regulations and laws.

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Plan ahead for compliance workloads

To accomplish this work and more, start thinking about your team’s capacity before crunch periods. Designate a team member to flag upcoming regulatory changes that will drive workloads, identify skill gaps, and prepare for staff augmentation or coverage. Here’s a checklist when assessing resources for compliance work:

Assess upcoming demand by project and deadline

Assign a single team member to track rule changes and brief leaders

Map skills and bandwidth across your team

Recruit contract legal talent when team augmentation or coverage is needed

To meet end-of-year demand, many businesses choose to bring in contract legal professionals. Robert Half research shows that 47% of leaders in legal departments and 41% of those at law firms are hiring contract talent in the final six months of 2025 to support regulatory compliance and risk management projects. Flexible staffing helps alleviate skills gaps, keep high-priority projects on track and avoid the risk of burnout among permanent staff.

Emerging areas in legal compliance: AI, data use and regulations

The regulatory landscape is expanding into new and complex areas, and forward-looking businesses should incorporate these into their legal compliance checklist and ensure they have the resources to assess and manage these regulations:

AI and automation: With AI adoption accelerating, regulators are introducing guidelines around transparency, algorithmic bias and accountability. Legal teams should review how AI tools are selected, tested and monitored to reduce legal and reputational risk.

Data ethics and cross-border data transfers: Beyond traditional privacy compliance, companies must now manage issues of data sovereignty, global transfer rules (such as GDPR and new U.S. state laws) and ethical use of consumer information. Policies should be updated to address where and how data is stored, shared and processed. Global companies have a larger obligation to keep apprised of new laws and regulations like the EU Data Act, which took effect in September 2025. The act has substantial compliance obligations for companies that manage or process data from connected products or digital services in the EU, even if they’re based outside the EU.

Industry-specific regulations: From fintech and healthcare to consumer protection, many industries face industry-specific compliance obligations. Staying alert to new laws and enforcement actions within your industry is critical to avoiding gaps.

Legal compliance is not only a year-end exercise—it’s a discipline that compounds. Organizations that treat their legal compliance checklist as a living framework, not a once-a-year task, are better positioned to respond quickly to new rules, reassure stakeholders, scale the team with project demands and move faster than competitors.

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