Increasing litigation in the software industry is a growing concern for software engineers. In some cases it can be a serious threat to the software commercial and financial success. Looking at current software best practice frameworks and international standards we have not found any guidance on legal assurance for software engineers. Project Management standards such as the Project Management Institute’s PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), Maturity models (MM) such as the CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 and international standards such as ISO/IEC 12207 do not currently offer guidance for software engineers on the topic of legal assurance. This paper proposes the addition of a legal management process as an additional management process within international standards life-cycle processes and maturity models, in order to provide guidance for the management of inherent legal risks associated with systems and software.