Robert W. Walter offers audiences an unusual combination of legal expertise, a dynamic speaking presence, commanding knowledge of business, and over 10 years' experience in presenting full-day seminars on issues critical to today's business managers.

_IDENTIFY AND MITIGATE THE RISKS! _

"When company managers meet to discuss entering a new market or distribution channel, introducing an innovative product, or improving current operations, what fundamental issues do they ALWAYS talk about besides the opportunity?" asks Mr. Walter. The answer: "Where are the risks in our business, our markets, our operations? How can we reduce or manage the risk? Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend less on the lawyers, and more on growing our business - because we better understand risk management?"

As a practicing securities attorney with 27 years' experience, Bob Walter has "been there and done that" when it comes to helping his clients identify and manage business risks. His clients - most of which are public companies or companies planning a public offering - face some of the most serious risks imaginable: extensive government regulation, full disclosure obligations, and the nightmare consequences that come from failure to manage and mitigate the risk, i.e., class action lawsuits, government investigations and fines, exposure to criminal prosecution, and even the possibility of jail time for individual officers and managers.

All entities and business units face a set of common operating risks, as well as some unique risks. "If you look at every lawsuit or government investigation as highlighting risks to your organization, you can quickly identify the broad range of risks faced by you and your organization," Bob says.

"Take employment as an example: how does your organization handle employee use of the Internet and monitoring of that usage? Do you use GPS technology to track employees? Can you even do that? What kinds of employment policies concerning technology are cutting edge, and which ones will get you into trouble? What can you do about employees who make postings in chat rooms, blogs and personal web pages? These are just a few of the technology-related risks that entities currently encounter - and we haven't even gotten to harassment, discrimination, ADA claims, wrongful discharge, or any of the other garden variety employment-related risks."

When you add in use and defense of your entity's intellectual property (including trade secrets, trademarks, non-competes, infringement suits, licenses, royalty negotiations, and IP espionage), insurance coverages (including rescission risks, denials of coverage, what's included in your policy, defense costs, and understanding D&O and E&O issues), contract negotiations and protective clauses (confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement risks, the battle of the forms, provisions you always look to include, where to look for the latest in contract language) arbitration and ADR (whether to use arbitration, when not to use it, what are its dangers, and why the other side may prefer it, even when you don't), corporate governance (how to improve your rating, and how companies have lost touch with reality), mergers and acquisitions (the top ten points to consider when evaluating an acquisition, and how history demonstrates that people continue to make the same mistakes again and again), you can see why Bob has plenty to talk about!

Here's a real-life example of how Bob recently helped one client: in January 2009, Bob custom-designed and presented a full day seminar for a chapter of the National Association of Purchasing Managers on risk identification and mitigation for purchasing professionals. In today's business environment, businesspeople - including mangers in government and non-profits organizations - are looking for answers to the question of how to mitigate the risks they encounter in their business unit, department or even entity-wide," Bob notes. "I concentrate on offering the audience a lawyer's view of business risks - which isn't something they've often received - and practical, no-nonsense guidance about how to mitigate the risks."

Bob can custom design a seminar for your organization or client and use his entertaining speaking style to convey timely and important information on risk management to your organization's managers and employees. His perspective on risk management might be unique, because his credentials are much more than just your "average attorney." Looking for new challenges, Bob began speaking in 1998 for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the largest organization of CPAs in the U.S., with over 350,000 members. Taking to the classroom like a duck to water, Bob found that he really enjoyed the experience of leading one- and two-day seminars on business, accounting and finance topics.

As his speaking career began to grow, Bob knew there was more to becoming a great, well-rounded speaker on business issues and risk. "By 2000, I'd written my first 8-hour continuing professional education (CPE) course for AICPA on reporting responsibilities of public companies. But a number of my clients were struggling with other issues that didn't have anything to do with disclosure - the most critical was how to get capital to grow their businesses. That led to authoring my second 8-hour CPE course in 2002, AICPA's Guide to Financing the Small Business: Sources, Strategies and Disclosures."

In quick succession, Bob's first books on how businesses could find, negotiate and obtain growth capital were published: The CPA's Guide to Small Business Financing, AICPA (Feb. 2002), and Financing the Small Business: Sources, Strategies and Compliance, Commerce Clearing House (Aug. 2002). In 2003, Bob added business ethics to his repertoire by authoring his third 8-hour CPE course for AICPA, Real World Business Ethics: How Will You React? and having his third book published, Corporate Ethics for Financial Managers: Navigating with Case Studies and Practical Solutions, AICPA (July 2003). During this period, Bob's seminar engagements for AICPA grew by leaps and bounds: in 2008, for example, Bob led more than 60 full-day seminars for AICPA in 16 states throughout the U.S.

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Bob's fourth book, Financing Your Small Business, was published in 2004 by Barron's Business Library Series. This was his first foray into the business segment of the mass market, and was followed in 2005 by his fifth book, Completing a Small Business IPO, published by Aspen Publishers. In 2005, Bob took another big step in his professional development when he authored AICPA'S Annual Business Law Update, his fourth 8-hour CPE course.

"Once I researched and wrote the Business Law course, which includes detailed chapters on employment, e-business, intellectual property, corporate governance, insurance, arbitration and ADR, environmental issues and mergers and acquisitions, I knew I'd reached the point where I understood fully the range of business and legal risks faced by business managers, and the ways in which those risks could be mitigated," Bob says. _ _

Bob now updates annually for AICPA his Real World Business Ethics and Business Law Update continuing education courses, which allows him to constantly refresh his knowledge about the business risks faced by organizations, and the latest means being used to mitigate those risks. "Using this knowledge base, I can now custom design a full-day training program for organizations that incorporates risk identification and mitigation for ebusiness, business process, planning, strategic sourcing, accounting and governance - including individual risks faced by managers and entity risks faced by their employers," Bob continued.

Bob is a member of the Author's Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Speaker's Association, American Mensa, and various bar associations. He established the Robert Wheaton Walter and Robert William Walter Scholarship at the Duke University School of Law in 1987 in honor of his father. That scholarship is awarded annually to law school students at Duke whose backgrounds demonstrate an interest in both business and law. In 2009, Bob completed his debut novel and is now in the process of negotiating agent representation for this fictional work, his 6th book.